The following debate originally took place upon my Facebook wall, after I shared artwork posted to the page, “Anarchist Memes” by a fan…
Rayn:
“What people think Anarchy is
What Anarchy really is”
Murilo M.: I like your posts Rayn, but this is one I have to disagree with. How can you be sure? Have you ever seen a country in which anarchy worked well?
Rayn: “I am often asked if anarchy has ever existed in our world, to which I answer: almost all of your daily behavior is an anarchistic expression. How you deal with your neighbors, coworkers, fellow customers in shopping malls or grocery stores, is often determined by subtle processes of negotiation and cooperation. Social pressures, unrelated to statutory enactments, influence our behavior on crowded freeways or grocery checkout lines. If we dealt with our colleagues at work in the same coercive and threatening manner by which the state insists on dealing with us, our employment would be immediately terminated. We would soon be without friends were we to demand that they adhere to specific behavioral standards that we had mandated for their lives.
Should you come over to our home for a visit, you will not be taxed, searched, required to show a passport or driver’s license, fined, jailed, threatened, handcuffed, or prohibited from leaving. I suspect that your relationships with your friends are conducted on the same basis of mutual respect. In short, virtually all of our dealings with friends and strangers alike are grounded in practices that are peaceful, voluntary, and devoid of coercion.” – Butler Shaffer
Rayn: “Until shortly before the common era, the very last 1 percent of human history, the social landscape consisted of elementary self-governing kinship units that might, occasionally, cooperate in hunting, feasting, skirmishing, trading, and peacemaking. It did not contain anything one could call a state. In other words, living in the absence of state structures has been the standard human condition.” – Yale professor, James C. Scott
Has Anarchy Ever Existed Before?
https://theruleoffreedom.wordpress.com/2012/06/11/has-anarchy-existed-before/
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