How do you achieve that in an advanced society with millions of people?
I do think people can be responsible for themselves. I just don't think they can be trusted to value my rights. That's where the government institutions come in.
Are you sure that the intelligent people won't be able to take advantage of the rest of the people even more in an anarchist society? I just don't see how it would work.
Your rights are already not respected. Why should you be opposed to a better system? You're already living under a system that doesn't care about your rights. Now I understand there can be alternatives that are also totalitarian and so of course an alternative system would not necessarily be better- but my point is merely that a better system is possible.
And how can we say that we're the advanced ones? If you have a tribe of people who are technologically less advanced but socially and spiritually more advanced than we are.... I say those are the advanced ones.
Whether or not people can be responsible for themselves and actually support each other and live in harmony is dependent on their character.
And if it's an anarchist society.... pretty much by definition, your rights will be respected- if it's an anarchist society. I'm not talking about a Soviet Union society. But if we managed to actually create an anarchist society- if we managed to actually make an anarchist society then whether it actually managed to stay anarchist would be based on the character of the people. If they were intelligent, community-minded and not selfish and individualistic and they were prepared to defend their communities and the people were educated, it would be possible.
The fact is it's already been done on a small scale. There's no reason it couldn't be done on a larger scale.
Now when I say anarchist I don't mean a total absence of governance. What I mean is the people governing themselves. Self-governance. For example, in my building where I live you have a person who manages the building and you have various other people who impose their will. If we applied these ideas, then that class of people would simply be fired and everyone who lives in the building would simply come together and we would come together as equals with a horizontal power structure rather a vertical, hierarchical power structure and we would run the building ourselves.
What I am talking about is a decentralized power structure. Communities would govern themselves. It would not be some massive, centralized power structure. You would not have a centralized power structure and people all over would govern themselves and be responsible for themselves. As far as defending these decentralized communities, you would have to have all these decentralized communities come together to form some sort of way to unite in the event of some sort of external threat.
This is not purely theoretical- this was already done by the Iroquois Confederacy. You had different tribes retaining their autonomy and managing themselves and each tribe was also a part of the larger Iroquois Confederacy. The tribes were self-governing and autonomous and retained their independence but there also a larger confederation if they needed to do something like unite to face some large, external threat.
You say you can't imagine this sort of thing and I understand that. My message is simply that it has been done and it is possible.
The fact you can't imagine this.... it's totally deliberate. Because if people go out and spread these sort of ideas- and manage to gain a large following- what happens to them? There have been tons of people who were honest and sincere and wanted to make a better society and were not wanting to be dictators- and what happened to them? They got shot or died under mysterious circumstances.
The fact is the elites have engaged in torture, genocide, murder and psychological warfare and all sorts of evil tactics to erase these sort of ideas. And systematically educated us so that we are not strong, independent, independently-minded, community-oriented people so that we're not capable of forming these sort of ideas and forming these sort of communities.
But it's been done before and it's possible. The Iroquois didn't have the indoctrination, repression and psychological warfare directed against them that that we've had directed against us. That's why they were able to pull it off. As They Live said, "we are being bred for slavery".
Look at the food that we eat. Look at pretty much everything around us- pretty much around us is artificial. Could the average people around us live in decentralized, self-governing societies and manage themselves? Probably not but it's because they've been bred to be slaves and we have to recognize that the status quo is not natural. Alternatives are possible. Of course, that's hard for people to imagine but that's because we have been subjected to psychological warfare for that for very end- to kill off any idea that anything different is possible and to make us never question the status quo and to think that the status quo is normal and natural.
My point is a better way is possible. Our societies are corrupted and we would have to reverse the psychological warfare and indoctrination but a better way is possible- if people had the will to create it. If people were not just watching TV and polluting their heads with garbage and started really thinking..... it would be possible. Unless you somehow manage to take over the media, I doubt you can simply go and wake up the masses and make them rebel and turn against the system. It would be up to the will of the people to make the decision to go against the system. But if the people did it- a better way would be the possible. We've been indoctrinated into thinking this is the best we can do but it's simply not true. We've just been programmed to think like that. It's up to the people if they'll wake up or not.