Anarchism and Authoritarianism

Beyond the Authoritarian Wall

In order to recognize, and thereby navigate beyond, the Authoritarian wall that has so effectively blocked humanity's progress toward our full potential, carefully consider an apparent contradiction in this quote from James C Scott's Preface for Two Cheers of Anarchism, and try using inductive reasoning to imagine that all arguments against humanity's progress might share this contradiction. Let's imagine, together, right here and now, a way beyond the wall constructed by the thinking illustrated in this quote, and thereby imagine a way beyond the Authoritarian wall itself. Here's the quote:

"If relative equality is a necessary condition of mutuality and freedom, how can it be guaranteed except through the state? Facing this conundrum, I believe that both theoretically and practically, the abolition of the state is not an option. We are stuck, alas, with Leviathan, though not at all for the reasons Hobbes had supposed, and the challenge is to tame it. That challenge may well be beyond our reach."

We can all relate to a fear of the unknown, as articulated by Scott, when facing such a disruption of our life support structures as he articulated. But we can also see the feasibility in our replacing the state by securing for our individual selves everything we need when we redirect our faith/hope/trust away from authoritarian strategies/structures and toward humanity, i.e. toward our very own selves, nature's ultimate miracle, always on display with profound abundance.

We visualize all people participating meaningfully in replacing all authoritarian strategies/structures (including the state) to cooperate on strategies of least work, least, cost, least harm, to meet all of our universal needs. We maintain this vision as a foundation for all thoughts, choices, and actions, processing all inputs (such as Scott's message) in the context, frame, or terms of our vision, so that the logic, meaning, and understanding we create for all our perceptions and conceptions of observations, messages and ideas are always structured ethically/rationally. In this way, humanity utilizes its unique capacities to participate in nature's order-building process, to reach our full potential. Spectacular benefits await.

Anarchism and Authoritarianism

Anarchism and Authoritarianism are two opposing ideals. Anarchism asserts that maximized, balanced equality and autonomy among people are natural while authoritarianism either asserts these to be unnatural, or wholly/partially denies, or only pretends their relevance.

The outcomes are that we meet our universal human needs with least work/cost/harm, i.e. reach maximum universal wellbeing, when practicing anarchism, while we create mountains of misguided strategies to meet needs, with catastrophic results, when practicing authoritarianism. The explanation for these opposing outcomes is that anarchism recognizes the truth about human nature while authoritarianism denies this truth.

The following dichotomy list details the difference between anarchism and authoritarianism. When we are able to 1.) make strong connections in our minds among items in the anarchism column, and 2.) make strong connections in our minds among items in the authoritarianism column, and 3.) effectively keep the two columns separate in our minds, we reach tremendous clarity and capability in all our thoughts, choices and actions, in all our daily activities. When we individually learn to consistently choose positive over negative then, predictably, entire communities, societies, and eventually the whole world, can reach maximum universal wellbeing.

Philosophy	Anarchism	Authoritarianism
Direction Our most important choice.	Positive Direction of minimum work/cost/harm and maximum universal wellbeing.	Negative All other directions.
Harm	Zero	Non-Zero
Help	100%	Not 100%
Attitude toward life	Optimism powers virtuous circles	Pessimism powers vicious circles
Honesty	Yes relies on verifiable truths	No relies on false claims
Outcomes	Helpful	Harmful
Corruption	Rejected	Accepted
Faith/Hope/Trust	In Humanity	In Authority
Breeds	Hope	Despair
Motivates	Cooperation Collaboration Concensus	Competition Contest Conflict
Source of Motivation	Internal	External
Practices	Serving Life & Meeting Universal Human Needs	Domination/Exploitation
Strategies to Meet Needs	Natural Aspirations Giving/Sharing Minimizing Work/Cost/Harm	Rewards/Punishments Duties/Obligations Merits/Earnings Disciplines/Rights
Domination Strategies	None	Fault/Blame Guilt/Shame Accusations/Apologies
Distractions	None	Labels/Judgments Assumptions/Expectations Justice/Fairness
Motivators	Heart Aspirations	Ego Ambitions
Resources	Shared	Hoarded
Information	Revealed	Concealed
Knowledge	Shared	Secret
Occupations/Skills See Kropotkin: Brain Work and Manual Work & Balanced job complex	Generalized Helpful values/views/relations.	Specialized Harmful values/views/relations.
Production	Localized	Globalized
Nature	Preserved	Plundered
Providence	Nature	Authority
Agenda	Solidarity	Domination
Power/Control	Distributed	Concentrated
Wellbeing	Universal	Privileged
Consideration	Inclusive	Exclusive
Vision	Clear	Confused
Ideas	Integrated	Fragmented
Approach	Natural	Artificial
Relations	United	Divided
Lifestyle	Simplified	Complicated
Society	Simple	Complex
Interaction	Cooperative Assertive Confident	Competitive Aggressive Arrogant
Work	Minimized	Maximized
Consumption	Minimized	Maximized
Commerce The amount of commerce is inversely proportional the wellbeing of people.	Minimized Minimizing commerce enhances wellbeing.	Maximized Maximizing commerce diminishes wellbeing.
Dependence	Interdependence	Codependence
Campfire	Make Small/Sit Close	Make Big/Stand Far
Earth/Life	Respect/Serve	Disrespect/Exploit
Serve	Life	Empire
Change	Permanent/Stable	Temporary/Unstable
Emphasis	Harmony Asserting need for perpetual coherence, cooperation, peace	Controversy Asserting need for perpetual compromise, competition, conflict
Stability	High Refinements of best practices guided by natural law	Low Cyclic rise/fall of markets/empires
Analysis A vital difference:	Observation Non-controversial facts encourage consensus.	Evaluation Controversial judgments inflame conflict.
Solicitation	Request	Demand
Associations mental	Coherent separate harmless & harmful ideas	Incoherent mix harmless & harmful ideas
Connections conceptual	Consistent separate harmless & harmful things	Inconsistent mix harmless & harmful things
Illness	Prevention	Intervention
Love	Unconditional/Sincere	Conditional/Insincere

Anarchian Glossary

These definitions are revealed through self-observation, simplified for clarity and understanding, and assumed to apply universally. This clarity/undestanding is in turn dependent on one's clarity/understanding of the terms used in the definitions. Universal clarity/understanding and applicability/consensus are likely to provide maximum stability for progress toward humanity's full potential.

Universe - Everything that exists that can be conceived as a whole.

Nature - Everything in our universe that we more directly experience, in particular our Earth ecosystem.

Natural Law - Causality and constraints that determine how our universe operates, either with total predictability or quantifiable probability. Natural law is universally verifiable directly through the senses by observation or experimentation.

Life - Matter's organization of itself into living organisms, driven by the life force.

Life Force - Force transformed from energy and expressed by life toward perpetuating itself.

Life Potential - The peak of life's capacity to thrive.

Life Need - A requirement necessary for life to perpetuate itself. The quantity of available resources applied to such requirements are in balance at all times when life is perpetuating itself at its potential.

Life Purpose - Natural law programming of an organism to participate in nature's order-building process, to serve life, to thrive, to reach its potential, e.g. for a bird to fly, for a fish to swim.

Harmonizing - Collectively pursuing least-cost strategies to meet universal needs.

Parsimony - A criterion of least work/cost/harm, applied in decision-making processes. Parsimony in depth.

Homeostasis - A stable state of optimal functioning maintained by living systems through control mechanisms involving inputs, control references, and outputs.

Human Nature - Natural law regarding humanity, including not only how we work/behave but also what our needs are and what strategies meet these with least work/cost/harm. Human Nature in depth.

Human Potential - The peak of humanity's capacity to thrive.

Human Need - A requirement for humanity to achieve full potential. Human needs are identifed when individuals identify internal aspirations that defy suppression. A basic account of universal human needs include, in order of priority: food/shelter, sun/air/water, safety, love/belonging, esteem/respect, and actualization (achieving full potental).

Human Purpose - Natural law programming of a person to serve life, in order to thrive, to actualize, to reach human potential.

Priority - A placement in a list of needs ordered by a least work/cost/harm (parsimonous) fulfillment strategy.

Intrinsic Worth - The capacity of one to function as a living organism.

Free Will - The capacity of one to think, choose and act restricted not by another's (past or present) influence, but only by natural law. A universal life need.

Ethics - Gaining gratification from the perception of universal consensus and cooperation toward the maximum thriving of life.

Reason - Expanding conceptual/categorical knowledge by executing induction/deduction processes on observational inputs.

Safety - An absence of harm. A universal life need.

Equality - An absence of restrictions placed on the potential to meet one's needs. Power is self-determined for all.

Autonomy - An absence of restrictions placed on the process of meeting one's needs. Control is self-determined for all.

Power - what drives action. Realized for all life being via respect for our intrinsic worth. Infringed upon by economic organization.

Control - what directs action. Realized for all life being via respect for our free will. Infringed upon by political organization.

Affects - Pleasure/pain, i.e. comfortable/uncomfortable experiences, triggered by senses/perceptions/conceptions of gain/loss as motivators to seek/avoid things. Perceptions/conceptions may be of things anticipated or manifested. Pleasure/pain often trigger learned responses, including facial/bodily expressions. Pleasure/pain may then trigger happiness/sadness, producing laughing/crying, etc, to enhance pleasure, and/or dampen pain. When accompanied by perceptions/conceptions of causes and anticipated outcomes, pain may then trigger fear/anger producing motivation and physical arousal for flight/fight.

Arousals - Curiosity/Concern, triggered by affects in the context of perceptions/conceptions, as motivators to seek/avoid things.

Emotions - Happiness/Sadness/Fear/Anger, i.e. conditioned psychological/physiological responses, triggered by perceptions/conceptions as facilitators to seek/avoid things.

Feelings - Affects/arousals/emotions triggered by perceptions/conceptions in specific, and often complex, combinations and/or conditions.

Happiness - A felt response to a conceived/perceived experience of wellbeing.

Sadness - A felt response to a conceived/perceived threat to one's wellbeing and a judgment that the only recourse is to shift energy away from an anger/fear response toward conservation/preservation/healing.

Fear - A felt response to a conceived/perceived threat to one's wellbeing and a judgment that the only recourse is to escape the threat, and a physiological reaction that raises physical strength and mental focus to achieve this objective.

Anger - A felt response to a conceived/perceived threat to one's wellbeing and a judgment that the only recourse is to banish the threat, and a physiological reaction that raises physical strength and mental focus to achieve this objective.

Suffering - A compounding of pain, triggered by conceptions/perceptions as a misguided, costly strategy to meet needs.

Laughing - A compounding of pleasure, triggered by conceptions/perceptions as a very helpful strategy to meet needs.

Gratification - Pleasure experienced from imagining, anticipating or manifesting the meeting of a need, and the physiological motivator to participate in nature's order-building.

Imagra (Imagination Gratification) - Pleasure experienced from imagining meeting a need.
Antigra (Anticipation Gratification) - Pleasure experienced from anticipating meeting a need.
Manigra (Manifestation Gratification) - Pleasure experienced from manifesting meeting a need.

Love - Pleasure experienced from perceiving a stable source of gratification.

Observation - A verifiable fact we gather from sensory information.

Conception - Creating an object in the mind. A mental creation that represents subjective meaning or that stimulates our senses.

Perception - Identifying an object through the senses. Subjective meaning we form from observation in a specific context.

Induction - Applying logic from a special case to a general case, like developing a hypothesis, like creating art.

Deduction - Applying logic from a general case to a special case, like utilizing a theory, like practicing science.

Faith - A belief in something, an alternative to ethics/reason, influencing thoughts, choices and actions.

Hope - A wanting for something, an alternative to ethics/reason, influencing thoughts, choices and actions.

Trust - A belief in someone, an alternative to ethics/reason, influencing thoughts, choices and actions.

Heart - The source of aspirations (anticipation gratifications) within us seeking to maximize universal wellbeing.

Ego - The source of ambitions (anticipation gratifications) within us seeking to achieve personal wellbeing at the expense of others.

Violence - Physical, mental, or spiritual activity that harms, usually motivated by anger.

Help/Harm - Order construction/destruction.

Mandate - A specific strategy required to meet a life need, determined by evolution.

Process - An activity refined and repeated as needed to produce a predictable outcome. A process receives input and produces output according to a formula, and may be carried out physically, mentally, or spiritually, by an individual, group, ecosystem, or universe. Processes include deriving meanings based on observations and references, and making decisions and solving problems based on observations, references, and meanings.

Entropy - The process of desconstruction of order.

Feedback - The outcome of a process feeding back into the process, amplifying the outcome. With multiple processes in a feedback loop, outcomes are maximum when equal, like a rectangle area is maximum with sides equal (square). Amplification provides for a rate of order-building to meet and exceed the natural rate of entropy.

Vicious Circle - Multiplying of negativity in thoughts, choices, and actions by frequent repetition, producing habituation/conditioning, increasing probabilities of future negativity.

Virtuous Circle - Multiplying of positivity in thoughts, choices, and actions by frequent repetition, producing habituation/conditioning, increasing probabilities of future positivity.

Value - Total benefit per total cost.

Conscious - One's perception of one's thoughts, or one's awareness of the focus of one's attention.

Subconscious - One's thoughts detected only through one's feelings.

Frame - Subconscious priorities, underlying a conscious observation, giving it meaning. Exercise: Try to identify the difference between this definition and Wikipedia's and explore potential benefits of the anarchian definition: Wikipedia - In the social sciences, a frame comprises a set of concepts and theoretical perspectives on how individuals, groups, and societies, organize, perceive, and communicate about reality.

Habit - A learned/conditioned thought/action response, regularly/reliably triggered by external/internal stimulus.

Learning - Causing a stimulus to reliably trigger an anticipation gratification by associating it with a manifestation gratification.

Conditioning - Causing a stimulus to reliably trigger an anticipation gratification by associating it with another stimulus that already does so.