TOTW: Anarchy & Morality

Heroes go above and beyond the call of duty, acting boldly in the face of fear, defying it.
Cowards fail to do what they're expected, giving in to fear, shying away from action.
Is your anarchism duty-free, or duty-bound?

What are the countless duties imposed by society? Waging war, working, and providing care, all activities that ensure its reproduction and maintenance. Is your anarchism warlike, is it like a work in progress? Is it caring or careless, careful or carefree?

Who does society venerate as heroes?
Those who excel in their line of duty; frontliners: like soldiers, cops, firefighters, medical professionals; and those come to the rescue, rising to the occasion due to circumstance, rather than trade. Isn't the hero always the good guy?

Who does society vilify as cowards?
Those who refuse to attack as ordered; like draft-dodgers and deserters. As well as those who sneakily attack it; like violent protestors who hide behind masks and incite property destruction, or terrorists with their dastardly plots. It can also deem suicides as cowards. Suicide bombers doubly so.

What is it to be heroic or cowardly in anarchy?
Can there even be such a thing as anarchic duties?

Self-sacrifice for fear of being called a coward is conformism. Maybe heroism and cowardice are merely the carrot and the stick of Duty coercing you into doing as you're told, or as you’re expected to act. Rewarding you for good behavior, punishing you for bad behavior, enforcing obedience according to the dictates of Morality.

How is anarchy distinct from Christian morality and society's dominant values?
Can we imagine anarchy beyond good & evil? Where do you draw the line?
Does your anarchy consider terrorism, but not massacre?

In the upswing of revolt we've seen this year, we're seeing everyday people set cop cars and precincts ablaze with great approval from onlookers. Meanwhile anarchists make the best of the spotlight to explain to the public the truth about today's anarchists. Responding to people's perception of anarchism as dangerous, distancing themselves from anarchists of the deed in an effort to make people stop blaming everything bad on anarchists. To the degree that anarchy is rehabilitated for the general public, more people will ask themselves: "What's so bad about anarchy, anyway?"

As the most recent episode of the Anews podcast invites us to reflect regarding a recent NPR segment titled "What is anarchism?":

"Anarchism is clearly having a mainstream media moment and while I'm not 100% sure exactly what that says about that current moment, it does certainly bring up the question of whether anarchists should shy away from or embrace it in some manner, and in either case, how we do it. Now in terms of this NPR piece, I think we all know it was never going to be great. But the ever present Kim Kelly, the published by Penguin Ruth Kinna, and William C. Anderson as the not totally expected, but definitely expected to be wholesome guests, we get the talking points you'd expect: Anarchy isn't chaos, it's actually very orderly, anarchists aren't bomb-throwing terrorists, anarchists are nice and fluffy people who do mutual aid, etc.

What this will do for the typical NPR listeners' view of anarchism, I really have no idea. Shout-out to the caller who talked about all civilized societies needing governance. But how anarchists deal with mainstream media, particularly during a time when anarchism has been revived as America's bogeyman, should probably be a bigger topic of discussion. Does having people like Kim Kelly acting as the face of anarchy allow others to work in the shadows with less interference? Does it mean that anything that moves outside that cute and cuddly frame becomes a target for increased repression? Should we be trying to get on mainstream media news outlets to say that actually anarchists do sometimes throw bombs and that's actually kind of cool because explosions? Many more questions."

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It seems to me that anarchists like Kim Kelly, Ruth Kinna and William C. Anderson are speaking to the world they want to live in (at least at times in this interview) and that is why I don't agree with them. Because I have no idea what the shape of the world I want looks like, I just know that all parts of this extant world, all atoms of this society, none of it is worth saving. So, if I wanted to try to convince someone of my anarchy I would tell them why I want this world / society to burn, and the ashes to burn again. You know, I'm just not convinced the average NPR listener is up to the task, if you know what I mean.

Now, if I could imagine anarchy beyond the destruction of this world, if I were to try to describe how one might live in an anarchist society, it might sound like talk of mutual aid, and self-direction (though not self-government (sheesh)).

Which is to say also, any duty (IF there is duty) toward an anarchist world is going to be different from any anarchist duty (again if there is one) against this world. If you like -- the ethics one might have toward anarchy are ethics against this world, and that is hard to parse to non-anarchists, and even some anarchists, as we all know.

Something else about that NPR interview: the humanism. The mutual aid, the non-hierarchy, the no-power-over all that is understood to refer to humans only. So, in the question of duty, obligation or care taking, these look different if we assume only a human context, or if we assume a deeper, multi-species omni-species context.

a negative projection rather than be a blueprint for a new world we want to live in, since the current one is ultra dependent on authority, bureaucracy, institutions, and tech that is complicated and demanding enough that it needs experts/workers to stay in operation. As Wayoutthere has talked about, this requires somewhat of a minimalist ethic.

This is not to say that I'm opposed to ideas about what this will look like, like bolo'bolo, but my experience living has shown me that plans, especially when they are big and sweeping, are prone to failure...

Having a more extreme and nihilist anarchist perspective is outside of the imagination for most people, or what they imagine is some sort of horror movie where some teenage girl is getting raped by vikings. And yeah like you i'm sick of the moralizing, the left-accomaditing, and the identity politik type of anarchism which took center stage on the NPR show...it can't make room for any genuine type of lawlessness.

Maybe they imagine correctly about a possible anarchist horror show. Mob rules from what I've seen of anarchic street rioting, and its sort of fortunate that the moralist parents don't let their teenage daughters anywhere near the anarchic rioting and looting mob. The Viking pillages of the past were no different, they hated Christian meekness, and their forays were usually fueled by a quest to obtain more alcòhol during shortages of honey and fermentables during harsh winters in their own regions. You can talk about ubermen and masters over slaves, a very black and white Manichean interpretation of human psychology and behavioral tendencies written about from the safety of a basement room in a walled city, but infact the average non-alcoholic peasant is contented to stay at home and create intimate and repetitively banal morally restricted relationships with an extended collection of other humble workers not really interested in lawless pillage, conquest, extravagant wealth or fame, but instead content with just the simple affections of other lovers and friends in a pacifist and non-violent morally rich anarch existence, though a sheep or cow gets its throat cut every 3 months for meat.

Also, if you're a charming handsome morally considerate person there are ways to have consensual intercourse with teenàge girls which I believe the moralists have set the age at 18 years if I'm correct, no? Why become an amoral rapist Viking and hurt people and if caught by the majority moralists get killed or spend years rotting in a prison box :)

I hope you know how to fight you handsome charming loverboy 'cos that's my sister you are groping and I don't believe in consensual intercourse before the age of 21, and if before then my individual code of behavior calls it rape punishable by death. *Town lunatic after a couple of bourbons chestthumping and showing off his uberman power over the weak*

just using the example of vikings raping women, killing, pillaging, is usually what people associate in their minds with anarchy and lawlessness. Well, those things are clearly a part of anarchy and lawlessness...but they often go hand in hand with being a cop and a soldier as well. For example...scores of german women getting raped by russian soldiers after hitler lost the war...the law is just a way to get the more grotesque and violent aspects of anarchy done in a more hush-hush and efficient way.

So anarchy(ism) is just a fancy word for rape, pillage and murder amirite? When Trump or authoritarians degrade anarchism, isn't it the liberal-tainted anarchists who are the only ones defending it or giv8ng another version of true basic anarchy?
Let's be honest, a true individualist anarchist resembles most closely the amoral psychopath, and that is why it will never ga8n any widespread support. Only the gentle 8ntelligent and compassionate anarchs, and they are rare, can live secretive amoral lives secluded from mainstream society, because they know they are misfits.

than reality itself, that the only anarchist individualists are "amoral psychopaths". "Amoral psychopath" is actually a neo-moralist's idea of a person who is "bad", and this view is more strongly influenced by the institutions of psychology and psychiatry than christianity...

but yes i agree with you in the sense that not conforming to popular sentiment and morality can limit one's ability to make money, have friends, have sexual partners, etc.

I believe that’s an actual term but good anarchists and anarchs are actually asocietal commensalistic sociopaths. Hell Zen is actually a well crafted well disguised sociopathic orientation.

when you say "commensalistic", do you mean that in their relation to human beings or animals or both? I believe that's a biology term...

I agree that anarchists are more like sociopaths than psychopaths, because sociopaths have a lot of empathy yet do not connect with other people which is the source of their problems...yet the term itself in the psychiatric sense is largely a meaningless contradiction because it supposedly means someone with little empathy yet in order to be manipulative in the extreme as are sociopaths, one must have a very high level of empathy. My old theory when i was more of a socialist was that sociopaths were just products of capitalism, everything is a game that a sociopath must win...

yeah, I resolve this by not giving much credit to the shrinks and their labels. same would be true for ziggy's wordplay haha

and actually SE is a little more interesting to me than the shrink (even though not necessarily better) because...he is not a shrink! He's the average keyboard-warrior joe!

"... but good anarchists..."

so how is the word "good" not a moral descriptor?

whereas a "good" anarchist is one that lives in accordance with his SE's ideas of anarchist/anarchy/etc., but for SE themselves yeah it probably does have some sort of moral quality to it...

Good can simply be like/dislike acceptable/non-acceptable. It need not be loaded with some meta character/behavioral referent which is how morality operates going back to the Romans who invented it.

That is how we are born, alone, though mom is the only one who can be really counted on to be there. Morality doesn't exist in the child's world, and when we first comprehend the ramifications of being told to do something by our parents because they say it is the good thing to do, we have come to the first crossroad, to be a moral law abiding part of a group, or a social outlaw, sociopath, misfit, blacksheep of the family (lol), or loser, whatever the derogatory label may be, one knows in adolescence what you will be if you aren't already an obedient slave to tyranny. You can hide it and patiently wait to avoid the punishment and abuse unleashed upon you in your earl years, a certain shrewd wisdom and cynicism mixed with the hilarous gleefulness of having attained an inner autonomy at such an early age empowers you enough to experiment with society by assisting with empathy and punishing the badness with pain. You reach Jesus's level of wisdom at the age of 16 and kill the mythical gods of society with one wave of your imagination.
The world has become your oyster as you darn the old woolen socks under the overpass intò the modern city, inwardly crying for the millions of commodity slaves and their moral dedication to tyrants, for the torture of all the children and animals that die within the moral concentration camp of modern Western society.

And The Eco-Extremists view of reality doesn't look at it through the view of anarchist moralism, which I would argue is the more correct view.

that they are more correct, except the problem is that "anarchist moralism" doesn't really exist except in some vague un-defined form acted out through real life anarchist behaviors: call-out culture, anti-colonialist and anti-racist politiking, liberalism, anti-capitalist rationals, etc.

With that comment I originally wasn't trying to bash the eco-extremist, only to point out that their lense for viewing reality pits "humans" in a binary against "nature" or "the cosmos", which simply isn't accurate. Looking at those terms more carefully it's easy to see that it's all part of the same thing, even if the human presence on this planet is mostly just parasitic. There are still a few species of animals which benefit from human beings.

But "anarchist-moralism" does exist. anarchy has never beensocial rules but slowly the U.S specific anarchists have turned it into being equality, rights, identity based ideology that they define as anarchism or anarchy, instead of anarchy everyone is responsible for themselves it is now anarchy you have to follow these social rules or you are a fascist. which means policing speak, language, actions, thoughts. it also places the blame on Capitalism only, where as the Eco-Extremists, or what I have read of them seems to place the blame on the individual and the Human and each action they take, not as a whole but as a individual conflict

They're not "morally rich" if they cut sheep or cow throats every few months. Ever heard of vegans and THEIR very moral and ethical lifestyle hmm? Some don't even use fire!

And pacifism?

One of the best anarchists I have known called herself a pacifist, so in the knowing of actual individuals who called themselves such, I have shifted my thoughts. It is possible to disagree with an ideological stance and also to not condemn the person holding that stance. Given the violence of the world as it is now, the world I want to see burn, there is some sense in holding a pacifist stance, in not wanting to add to the general violence. Others have called this jettisoning one's ressentiment. I tend towards this stance with the exception of self-defense (self-defense broadly defined). I personally don't think pacifism for the sake of pacifism is any more coherent than violence for violence sake.

those two terms to me are nothing but the carrot and the stick that reinforce duty. If one is too hesitant or scared to act, then one must ask themselves, why push them forward? And on the flipside, bravery and stupidity are often closely related, so to praise one or the other as an idea is an act of stupidity. Rather a world of anarchists would not act seeking some sort of sort of approval from a crowd, they would just do what they felt was necessary, or better yet, do what they want.

A troll preaching their faith in weakness... who would have thought!?

Those characters or archetypes aren't only about enforcing values and ideals upon others. Just like technology and arts, they can be twisted and used for authoritarian purposes. So? That's not all what they do.

They're also about an ideal of personal strength and holding true to your ideas and morals, or rising above what undermines you. That's why I hesitate to totally condemn heroism.

"Genealogy of Morals" read it up!

Cult of strength and/or valor is what makes us achieve greater things, push our limits and be overmen. The overmen was also misunderstood by so many (including fascists) as a state, the natural quality of some people; while the concept was meant to express a becoming, a process of accession towards a higher, better being, that can overcome their own misery.

Who would be 100% ok to stagnate and rot in their boxes? Only slaves and cowards, who're the same.

Admiration of others' great feats and aspirations to emulate or surpass them is natural.
Cults are definitely something that can be done without if one values freedom in itself, including from rulers, icons and overbearing ideas. Desires and clarity can guide your quest to strive for your own notion of enjoyment in a path of pain and pleasure which you may call greatness, but to see that as superior to humble idleness, which might be what someone else desires, is just ideology.

To say that theres only rotting in boxes and expressions of heroic strength. Part of the reason why I'm not in the street fucking thinks up is because I don't want to rot in a box.

I wasn't condemning strength and aggression, I was condemning the binary of heroism vs. cowardice, which forms a much greater part of our cultural weltenshuung than does white supremacy and even racism. It's a necessary component for a technological system that seems bent on turning the whole planet into an easily consumable product.

You see, this is actually an instructive case in how not to think. I wasn't even talking about weakness and strength, that was something you brought up. Not suprising seeing a keyboard warrior hero troll backing away from complexity and nuance out of fear and resentment.

There are 2 "a"s in weltanshauung, and though I am pleased to see someone else use the term, I get sooo tired of people mìsspelling it. Wow, and your inclusion of the word "ressentiment" in the same paragraph, reminds me of my early Nietzsche 101 phase when I was grappling with existentialist angst in the face of irrepressible self-pride and arrogance.
Otherwise, keep up your quest to not end up rotting away in a box and all should be well, tomorrow ;)

weltanschauung

Thankyou, a little test by me to see if anyone was paying attention. Good work there anon!

In English this translates directly as "worldview". But since this sounds too prole and not German superiority complex enough, you had to keep saying it here, hipster scum.

Are we the baddies?

Anarchists, as people, can be considered hero, villain or antihero, even changing from one moment to the next.
They can live in fame, infamy, or anonymity. Anarchists are neither the good, nor the bad, nor the ugly, but the brilliant, because beauty is in the eye of the beholder and anarchy is the beautiful idea.

Yes. That's the condition we gotta accept. Even when doing good shit to others, for PR or to give ourselves a better conscience, we remain the villains.

To me it ain't that hard, as I grew up to become a villain, the way society has taught me dishonesty, cruelty and herd stupidity.

But what it means to be the villains in a world made of bullshit?

There's a modern psychoanalytic term called sociopathic which describes a dysfunctional relationship with the common herd, and anarchists are roughly thrown into this group by the authorities serving the collective herd values and promoting their welfare. This is where it might be helpful to be knowledgeable of Tzu's The Art of War and Machiavelli's The Prince if one wishes to avoid spending most of one's life rotting in confinement or recovering from injurie, because the herd are not an enemy, they are victims living in blissful ignorance of reality, and deserve the same respect as ones closest frienď. Yes, even the local capitalist bankmanager is a nice person and not a target for anarchist rage, nor are police, because they also rescue babies from burning buildings and risk their lives carrying octagenarians across flooded roads. Time to conquer ressentiment and the cop in your own heads my anarchist friends!
I don't approve of the term myself, probably because I could be described as a tad sociopathic,* nyuk nyuk nyuk,*because contrary to this institutionalized definition I believe the sociopath is more intelligent and sensitive to social injustices which fly over the radar of the herd..
I am moral to the point of live and let live but break or damage someone who harms me or someone I regard as innocent, so now I've promoted myself to the envious status of being a sociopathic judge and executioner anarch just sayin' ;)

Which includes the not-so-brilliant notion that anarchists shouldn't talk to cops, ever. Which like in some situations is likely to get you into way more trouble than you'd wanna afford. Public relations should be used with everyone in your favor, including the pigs. Of course, when you're caught and detained that's another story, but I admit having been stupid enough to play cowboy vs indian in times where deescalation was better.

And Machiavelli did write his own Art of War, that dealt with this pattern. Behaving civilized in the face of raging brutes is more powerful than giving them what they want, yet being the vice versa equally works.

is anyone seriously saying the moment you grunt at a cop, we pull your a-card and you're a scarlet letter liberal forever?
average traffic stop would escalate immediately if you refused to speak lol

a cop says, "please step out of the car", and then i say "i do not consent to a search", then cop says, "sir, i have probably cause..." and then you just roll up your window. Not illegal! The cop could react violently which is the thing you always want to avoid, but i'm wondering if anyone here has tried this...i might just try it one of these days...luckily though no cop has ever searched me in a traffic stop...

yes ... people have tried it. are you serious right now? what happens next depends on exactly where you fit in to the structural oppression olympics haha or whether that pig got laid recently, or any number of other random factors.

how nice that you've had so few police interactions!

it's just that they've never searched me for drugs, which is lucky because i used to do lots of illegal drugs. I've had cops harrass me for walking and "looking suspicious" a couple of times, yet all they did was take my ID and run it through their system. I've also got multiple speeding tickets and last year i had to go to this boring class to prevent getting my license suspended...

well, i am serious, so what has happened when people did that? I've never heard of someone doing that before, normally people just do what the cop says.

same anon speaking, i just remembered this. One time when i was in peru and haging out with stoner friends, we went somewhere barely outside the city to smoke some weed, clearly my friends weren't that smart in guiding me around so the cops found us and searched everyone, when they got to me i said in spanish "i do not want to be searched", then they just said "shit!", because i found out from my friends later that peruvian law towards foreigners says that im within my rights to refuse a search. I didn't have any drugs on me i just wanted to fuck with the cops and keep them from molesting me. After they cursed at their failure, they were joking about how they were going to call Barack Obama on me.

big topic, depends where you are, lots of conjecture, etc.

I've seen youtube vids where savvy types make sure they've got a camera running and then assert their rights pretty firmly. In one case, the cops got pissed at this guy for sass, insisted he get out of the car and subjected to search, find the camera and then have a casual chat with each other on camera about how they can't fuck with him as hard now because camera. So there's this whole chess game you can get in to but ... begs the question: should you?

Unless you're super knowledgeable of local laws or rich and lawyered up or both, probably not!
Worth pointing out that a different set of slightly nastier cops would have just made the camera disappear.

Okay, now here's 14 things you need to know about "car anarchy":

- There's no such thing as car anarchy. A car is a dangerous machine of tech domination over lives, especially wild life, and you gotta prove your ability and sanity to drive one, and respect the road code. It also ain't autonomous at all as this ton(s) of expensive hardware always need to burn fuel from the oil industry, and now electrical power from Elon, to advance.

- bis 12x times

- get a bike, you idiot. Or at best an e-bike.

-however around where i live people tend to get hit by cars when they ride bikes on the road, it's windy country roads and i wouldn't do it.

-the internet is a form of technological domination you fucking hypocritical loser. The more time we spend on the internet, the more time we lose learning to live without money and learning to communicate socially without any form of telecommunication system.

-i need my car for my job, sometimes i have to drive several hours away.

So this is exactly the type of thing that kristian williams was talking about in his recent book, about how so many "anarchists" are these puritanical asshats. If you think that adhering to some sort of consumerist list about lifestyle choices is going to make all the shitty, domineering things about the human race go away, you're fucking wrong. On that note, truth is I have a used car so someone was going to end up driving it anyway. Every dollar you spend, even in that little vegan co-op you cherish so much, goes to fund wealthy assholes and the system that sustains them!

lol anon 22:54 on a first name basis with sun tzu. such a wise anarch

U.S anarchists lead in building moral societies cloaked in anarchist words and language... Same with the U.S Antifa

the entire philosophy and ideology of the U.S anarchists is moral stances, moral societies, morally superior people with equality and rights, and U.S anarchists and Antifa end up being the authority they claim to be against

Morality is a bit shit. Only useful for ye olde shaming, cancelling and acquisition of social capital.

Yeah, we can all while away a moment with a good ol' chin-wag opinioning the whys and wherefores; Converging and diverging like the waves of the sea; Fawning upon and calling out each others' wet dreams; Falling out, and falling in love. But ultimately, like the hero and coward, good and evil and the surrounding rainbows reside in the heads of individuals, and are really not a concern while they reside in the head. Dreamers will dream.

As far as anarchy is concerned, it is the ethic and the enduring tendency toward diversity that are surely the concern. It doesn't seem very important for anyone to know or understand any individual's reasoning for wanting to fuck shit up, only that the shit is recognised as shit and that the shit gets fucked up.

The rest is poetry.

You better know how to fight if I catch you staring at my girl again you amoral anarchist tea drinking nancyboy YOU HEAR ME!! *Town bully takes a big swig from a pint of ale from the other side of the tavern bar* ;)

She comes and picks me up in her camper. We climb trees and go to the beach. He bust a blood vessel.

Where have u been, Liminal!?

Town bully, bloated with frustrated macho ressentiment, gets drunk and drives car off cliff!!
Liminal D tears the spine out of the bully's corpse and holds it up victoriously. Poetry in motion.

Anarchism is always revolutionary. It is not ideology, but composed of countless struggles. It is struggle that sanctifies anarchism, but some have reversed it. Those who dress anarchists as saints or good ideologies only create herds and naturalized clowns.

But on the other hand, I am not alone in finding the same moral imperative in Stirner's individualism, dominated by an individualistic rationalism. Because of this tendency, it regards freedom as a kind of morality and is worthy of action, sacrifice and defense. It was made by Stirner's German believers, but it didn't fit Steiner's intention. Because it became idealism and made new idols.

So these two trends, in my opinion, are complementary pairs of contemporary civil society. And their development always stays in the established discourse given by history. So that's why we need to think about some of the current situation. It's not a reflection, it's a penetrating force of thought to figure out how things work.

Obviously all this is difficult, but since the world has fallen to such a degree, we have no reason to give up.

According to Heraclitus, struggle and war are the father of all things. But don't let us understand it as a kind of stupid fascism. Self struggle is also a struggle. The anarchist revolution is an invisible war. There are no heroes or cowards in war. A hero in line with the expectations of the masses often comes from vulgar imagination or historical moral deletion. Just like the story of Theseus saving Ariadne: Heroes and cowards have different opinions in the eyes of different people. Theseus is a typical hero, but after foreseeing the disaster in his dream, he timidly left Ariadne and fled.

In my opinion, many people don't realize what revolution means, or what it means to be strong. The hero in the movie only caters to the herd morality, while a revolutionary is the one who tries to tear everything apart.

Modern people tend to forget their contributions to war. An analytical mind is more important than ideological dogma. Compared with "do gooders", Sun Tzu's art of war is more worthy of learning. Although Machiavelli served the monarch wrongly, some of his judgments were correct.

So this is revolution. It's not to say that we can do everything without principle, but to make us stronger and more beautiful. A strong and beautiful person has principles.

sense of fairness is innate but varies along gradients from person and according to context
this does not equal morality but is the base of it
anarchism does not equal christian morality but is based on it and has much overlap
an absolutely amoral person would not be an anarchist
repression is not solely dependent on what anarchists say and do, the state has power, initiatives and whims

"Sense of fairness is innate" is a structuralist view, just like Chomsky. If it works, then why is human history full of war and killing? In fact, fairness is not congenital, it can only be the result of constructivism. The innate fairness is actually a kind of vertical governance of life, which dominates a transcendental inner plane, and finally leads to Kantism. Anarchism cannot be laid in innate justice because it is a foundation of principle, as Jean Luc Nancy mentioned. Friction, collision, passion, desire, these are the manifestations of life, and then there will be a kind of ethics. This is a lesson of Nietzsche: the power will is not the will to acquire power, but the desire that power wants to give.

Emma Goldman has also expressed a similar view that morality is always lagging behind, so it is always old-fashioned. So "thinking with a hammer" is always necessary.

fairness...

non-human animals do not appear to be driven by such ethical factors, although i - indeed anyone - can not possibly know what is going on within another. non-human animals appear to be driven by biological imperatives; survival, reproduction, etc. but again, not possible to know. human animals, at least modern "civilized" ones, appear to be driven by all kinds of other factors, in addition to the biological ones that drive all of life. whatever it is that seems to differentiate humans from other animals, definitely does NOT help the human world. unless you consider the ability to have a meeting with 10 people spread across the globe - or the ability for 10 people to travel across the globe for a meeting - to be a vital need for the human animal, that is.

"sense of fairness is innate"

oh boy, here goes the "human nature" determinists. i'm sure you have solid scientific evidence of this "fact".

Animals are more moral than activist anarchists because they don't attack other authoritarian animals and steal their property!

If we take it all back to Rome etymologically Morality is essentially defined by societally mediated character and behavioural control. There’s no anarchy in morality.

At this late hour of the game, anarchy has dropped all pretenses of Revolution, of ending capitalism or any State, so people group according to affinities, those who want to do charity for the sake of charity, those who want to do vandalism for the sake of vandalism, for example. They try to justify their actions with rhetoric and call it ethics, morality or philosophy. Those who want to do charity will not say it's a fanciful whim, but espouse humanism and moralism and make their case about why they are good and virtues. Meanwhile, those who want to do vandalism (or extreme vandalism, will espouse a nihilist philosophy and have us belief they are amoral.
Both types, among others, get a very personal sense of satisfaction about how they're perceived by others. The first want to be seen as wholly good and the second as unscrupulous threats, dangerous people. These are just a few of the many types of narrative, ethic and aesthetic adornments people give, to give meaning, to their meaningless lives, otherwise known as culture or subculture in these cases.

so I'm guilty of throwing out the accusations of cowardice but not because I think hero vs coward is necessary for anarchy, far from it!

it has more to do with the empty posturing around revolution and/or revenge and/or attack, the poisoned kool aid incidentally produced by some anarchist theory... but mostly by the turbocharging of the spectacle thanks to the electric ego trip of the internet. sad little fan fiction power fantasies written by those who need to LARP to forget their crushing sense of powerlessness. sometimes the LARP even crosses the rubicon, look at the boogaloos! far fewer examples of this from my idea of legitimate anarchist theory but there's some cross pollination fer sure.

Anyway, most of the ethics is about the personal level for me: how I treat the people I actually want to have relationships with. You need the sophisticated tools for working out the detailed human problems.

That's not really required for enemies, things are much simpler in that realm. Either you are dangerous from your enemy's perspective or you aren't. They'll behave accordingly.

but I sympathize with your reaction to the spectacle as a form of cowardice, living through the spectacle is cowardice in it's purest form, yet isn't a better term to describe what you are saying "ignorance", "stupidity"? Bugaloo seems to be pretty brave but dumb at the same time, awful combination...

that's not really what I meant? the spectacle is unfortunately what people are often using to measure their action or lack thereof, because they use it instead of something with more basis in reality ... because it's all they know.

heroism and cowardice are public relations terms. they have no concrete meaning to anyone other than the one using the terms, unless one buys into the mainstream portrayals.

"They'll behave accordingly." OooOooh, trembling in fear and running away with their tails between their legs from big dominant scarewee lumpentroll.

Was thinking more the opposite, when your enemies sense your weakness, their behaviour reflects it.

"Either you are dangerous from your enemy's perspective or you aren't. "

that is a bit binary, but broadly speaking it is spot on. that is why i usually want to appear NOT dangerous to the state - so they don't mind me. it is also why i make sure new acquaintances see my gun early on.

combat is binary!!! just like hurricanes over the niger delta motherfucker!

Oh wow my awithmetic is wery good. 300 spartans all fighting one opponent each equals 300 x 2 = 600.
Six hundred individual battles going on is not binary 2, its 600!

has "morality" been defined in this thread?

i see morality as an overarching belief in a broadly defined "right" and "wrong", applied not individually but universally, and rooted in the idea that some set of laws/morals/rules/thoughts/behaviors is the "correct" way for all humans to act.

i see personal ethics as an individual's freedom to act as they see fit in any given situation, rooted in their own personal needs, desires, priorities and preferences. they need not be accepted by or coordinated with the personal ethics of any other individual (much less a society), although relationships will greatly impacted by how one's personal ethics plays with those of another.

a very broad term, often associated with "right" and "wrong" in western civilization, yet I'm not sure why you need a specific definition, to me what i see as morality is close enough, there's certainly some overlap in terms of other people's ideas of what morality is but probs never the same. If you want a definition, there are other websites for that, yet the definition is not as rich as what people tend to imagine in their heads.

I typically view ethics as being more like a list of rules, often for corporate and business applications, for example, "conducting a humane experiment" in the psychiatric/behavioralist fields, the rules you fallow to ensure that you don't get bad press.

there doesn't seem to be much consensus on this difference between ethics and morality, I know because I've gotten in to this debate far too many times and it's kind of a pointless semantics one so I find it annoying.

that said, this distinction between a rulebook for behaviour and a customized method that an individual constructs for themselves, is a very interesting difference and the latter is what I mean by the word "ethics".

Hero and coward are very subjective terms. In the words of politicians and the media, those of us who strike at the system where it is weakest and make demonstrable impacts will always be called cowards, while those of us who participate within the system and protest with a compassionate and soft image will be called heroes once the political system incorporates our messages to placate the revolt.

As for anarchist duties, I don't believe any of us have duties for each other. I just hope that your actions don't harm me and my aspirations.

They sure are! here, I'll demonstrate

HOW DOES THE BOOT TASTE, COWARDS!? WAY TO JERK YOURSELVES OFF, SHITPOSTING ON @NEWS WHILE THE WORLD BURNS!!! I'LL BET YOU DON'T EVEN VOTE!

To your last point, there's many more possibilities besides "hope" for preventing harm, no?

Few people realize the foundation of morality in the present age. In other words, in the era of game theory, what is morality. Why do people choose to be friendly, trust and be good? Because in economic and computer systems, such behavior is encouraged, and it's in the "interests of the majority" (and it's also Christian). The game theory of corporatization and social control has always dominated the interpersonal relationship, which is our current morality. Therefore, the paradox arises. If a simple man wants to be a good man, he will only suffer in society because he does not understand game theory. Here he has two choices: to form a new community of interests, such as identity politics, to join the game, or to become a black sheep. Narrow economic egoism is only one part of the game. However, from the perspective of life form, we will find that the interests assumed by game theory are inconsistent with the interests of life.

Therefore, we find that in the era of game theory, the so-called "good people" are not good. But those poor people who insist on kindness are oppressed in this "era of good people". Those who insist on being kind carry a heavy burden, like walking a tightrope, against the system. Many others fell off the wire and died.

So that's why we should help those who walk the tightrope - they are friends of Zarathustra. But it taught them evil and a healthy personality. There is no God at all in game theory. If good and evil lose their meaning, what else can't be done? How about fighting for life? What about a bigger evil?

The so-called trust and friendship are always empty talk. Game theory has never been friendly to radicals. Why not arm yourself in a world that's going to be broken and boring? Start with your mind. Only in this way can we have true friendship.

> Few people realize the foundation of morality in the present age.

good thing we are so bless to have you to explain it to us, wise one.

new topic of the week: anarchy & arrogance!

still understands the foundations of morality in this day and age, the thing that makes our era unique is that there is so much baggage added to it through the internet: it's like there's a giant stadium packed with babies who are crying and children who are angrily arguing! They are clouding out their intuition with too much sensory input.

In the face of moral truth and authority, I suggest you learn to be arrogant. In a repressive culture, there is nothing wrong with self affirmation, although it is often understood as arrogance. The reason is that Socrates forced healthy people to remain humble in the name of truth. Then this culture led to a pale Faust image. But life does not serve truth, but truth serves life. Is it arrogant when Lucifer rebelled against authority? In a sense, yes, but on the other hand, he just regained his glory and pride. In addition, uncivilized barbarians, revolutionaries, or energetic young people, in a conservative culture dominated by Socrates and Platonism, are always regarded as ignorant and arrogant. It's not up to them to decide. Just like a savage meeting the Chinese emperor, he has to be seen as arrogant.
So arrogance, as one of the seven sins, is not necessarily a bad thing.
But for relationships, arrogant and prejudice are not a wise choice. This arrogance often comes from hierarchy. When an emperor accuses savages of arrogance, the emperor is also arrogant. Fascists are often proud of their blood, race and rigid culture, and treat others with arrogance. But it's a sign of incompetence. And Fascists are actually becoming barbarian hybrids, like the Nazis, into Scandinavian hybrids. But they never admit they're hybrids. Fascism can only start from the established value and authority, which is synonymous with capitalism.

You forgot your friends the Vikings and their tendency to rape teenage girls and blaming it on arrogance, like, ---"It wasn't me that did it, it was my arrogant dick,,,,,"

The Vikings raped the girl, and then? Americans don't rape girls? Does the Vatican Pope not molest boys? Is that your level of intelligence?

The way you worded that, the implied "Everyone rapes, what's the big deal, its normal.,," sounding like the apologist serial rapist psychopath, not the empath, but the sadistic arrogant bully, proud boy style,,,,scary :(

When you say the Vikings are rapists, don't you feel ashamed that the Americans are raping the earth? Look for moral stains and insult the whole ethnic. Who is trump? Who is fascist? You're just an asshole. Don't pretend to be a saint!

Maybe its the 42% Scandinavian gene tendency that makes me an asshole, unless its a posteriori, oh wait,,,,,I just made a joke unintentionally,,,,,,hahahaaaahaaaa,,,,,,,,, :-/

American humble Dick, all over the world, but never honest.

No,,,but honestly scared,,,of being penetrated,,,,,from behind,,,,,by an arrogant Muhrican dick....like Trump's,,,,very disturbing.....

I know, Nietzsche, barbarians, evil, immoral, it sounds dangerous. But it is more dangerous to use subjective prejudice and forced confession. Such an order of trial comes not only from the moral subject, but also from Freud's psychoanalytic strategy. However, many people still turn a blind eye to this, which leads to the superficial and misleading thinking about fascism. Incomplete thinking and simple conformity do not keep people away from Fascism.

The narrative of rape is actually questionable. Because in order to avoid rape, capitalist sex industry has become a necessity of modern civilization. But the sex industry, in turn, encourages criminal trade. So the liberal argument about rape is always hypocritical. I'm not, of course, inciting rape. Rape doesn't make a person evil because it's a universal rule of civilization. Many people are raped in order to survive, and moralists are likely to put all the blame on individual rapists. What does it mean when someone accuses evil = rapist?

JJ is something of a trad moralist. I, in addition to being an amoralist, actually have quite a fondness for people in the sex industry and see it as a satiation of the higher margins of desire. I also think the sex industry represents a HIGHLY preferential form of work from an anti-work perspective(a number of people who hate work end up as sex workers). On another twitter account I just like and retweet porn performers for fux sake. I'm very much in league with someone like Conner Habib on matters of human carnality.

I'm also a panpsychist not a materialist like him.

I was "raped" by an indigenous person but regarded the act as a gesture of reciprocity in exchange for the land, wealth and culture taken and raped by the invaders and therefore decriminalized and extinguished the moral assumption concerning premeditated intent and guilt

Also, anyone ever heard of a male or female Viking running along the beach waving their arms screaming ---I'VE BEEN RAPED. I'VE BEEN RAPED RAPE RAPE,!!---- No, because the word rape isn't in their vocabulary of emotional relationships. Basically, rape is a X-tian concept moralized to protect property, that women were the property of men. Rape equates to the theft of carnal intercourse of another man's female property. That is its origin, but it was not applied to indigenous people or their land and wealth by the colonialists. Rape is a patriarchal concept in a monogamous culture.
I do not run around flapping my hands screaming rape because I am a Viking-esque amoral sociopath with an understanding of emotional reciprocity within relationships.

And again I don't want people to thìnk I am ranting because of my multiple comments, but Bill Cosby was not a "rapist" he was "STINGY" !!
If he had been more empathic and given these women more money, the rape allegations would have just gone away. Cosby was guilty of being mean and greedy with his emotional reciprocity exchange rate!! He had no idea that sexual intercourse DOES NOT COME CHEAP. you are entering the psyche and body of another sovereign being, you are violating its sanctity, and YOU HAVE TO PAY UP BIG IF YOU ARE A MILLIONAIRE CELEBRITY. The figure starts at 100,000 dollars or 10% of your expendable income or liquid assetts. Simple, BUT COSBY BLEW IT, but it wasn't rape technically.

I can understand how for example, if one is attacked by someone intent on killing you that you can kill them in self-defence and it isn't murder, and so likewise, if someone has taken something precious from you or intends to, you can rape them in self-defence instead of harming, imprisoning or killing them, so rape in self-defence could be seen as an act of mercy, And it no longèr is called rape but payback outside of any moral compass.

Justifying vile acts with poop argumentative logic is not flaunting some rare amoral standpoint, but constructing a distorted morality that is servile and utilitarian to perpetrate abuse. That is precisely what gives morality a bad name, when it can be used and imposed from above as a code that makes abuse the norm, extols it as virtue, and protects it from critique.

Exonerating rapists just makes you morally bankrupt, and moral bankruptcy is not the disappearance of moral currency or a moral economy, the values of the culture and society you are embedded in. Passing judgement on others to absolve them is as much a use of morality as passing judgement to punish them.

Only silence and unthinking action can be considered amoral, and loses it's claim to amorality once it makes any meta statements about morality since it makes it self-aware of morality and positions itself in relation to it, demarcating its own morality. Fancying amorality as a preferred framework for rhetoric and argumentation to justify actions, rather than some other philosophical tradition with a renown brand name, just makes you an idiosyncratic and obscure ideologue.

You are a creature so vile, you stain mirrors, and pollute bodies of water with your reflection. God committed suicide upon realizing the implication that creation suggested the possibility of you ever existing. Since the moment, all of godless existence has conspired in developing the most horrid forms of torture with the hopes of punishing itself from being able to engender and sustain the mere suggestion of the possibility of your semblance. Wouldn't I love to put a cheese grate to your face until I hit bone and then dunk your head on bucket oxyclean! Just to start! Le Way, (aka whoever the fuck & et al) whoever you may be: may you live long enough to see your body fail and decompose in the most pathetic fashion! May live be long and cruel! I can already relish your rantings as early forms of dementia! Rambling and repeating yourself perhaps disoriented. Did you already type that imbecility? Maybe you should type that again. What day is it? Did I type the same imbecility week after week for years? What day is it? Is this an anarchist forum?

How does it feel to be the proof that there is not a single redeeming feature of life and existence? Nothing is worth the chance of you, nothing offsets the atrocity of you.

Wuh? I live in the Now, my amorality is based upon a priori intuitive actions. What plays out are subliminally inspired actions which recall primitive value systems concerning surplus physical matter and intuitive empathy/mercy. Not some plastic written codified set of behavioral rules of conduct! My views ARE NOT POOP LOGIC!!

Typo -- should include empathy/mercy reflexes.

Anon 01:04 I may be amoral, but I'm still courteous enough to reply to my ideas with some thoughtful untainted analysis.

Thanks anon for not being A MORONIC CHRISTIAN PURITAN TROLL!!

and the puritanical christian troll just because you both made me laugh...but that got deleted...i wonder why? Of course that sort of idiotic censorship logicking perfectly justifies you praising yourself, i praise that! I true stirnerian show of self-love!

and yes, you are correct about bill cosby...if he was generous towards any of the women he drugged and took advantage of, he would have not been such a hoarding and miserly old coot, and would have probably avoided his prison sentence entirely!

Hmm yes, it is good to hear approval from other Stirnerians. Are you familiar with the "Now Gaze" ? Its the intuitive skill to look into someone's eyes in The Instant and decide whether to offer them empathy/mercy, or to punish/withdraw. It saves alot on boring longwinded moral narratives and time consuming legal processes, courts, prìsons, ressentiment etc.

"works about as well as trusting what you feel, and other deductions?" Weeeeell it goes a little bit deeper than that. A sharp fast visual analysis of facial expressions around the eyes called physiognomy, a long lost art of ancient pre-Western social skills. The scrutiny can also be extended to body language. AmI boring you,,,,?

to take in as much information is possible before silently passing some sort of judgement to them, yet you are right, eyes and facial expression will tell you a lot...personally i try to put emphasis on what someone says in the context they say it, that generally tells me all i need to know in time...i also take into consideration just the amount of data i have as well, along with just my personal comfort level...

Prosecutor: "DNA samples show semen in her vagina, her bruises indicate rape, all accounts from friends say that you bragged about it, so let me ask again, are you guilty of rape?"

You: "No! I didn't rape her, my penis did it! My testosterone filled balls drove me to do these things!"

Prosecutor: "No more questions your honor..."

But the Scandinavian DNA argument could sway a jury if they saw and enjoyed the Vikings with Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis.

I AM SOOOOO OVER THIS WHOLE AMORAL VIKING =RAPIST THREAD MOST VIKINGS 95% STAYED AT HOME AND LIVEĎ QUIET LIVES ONLY THE TESTOSTERONE BEER SOAKED JOCKS OF THE TRIBE GAVE US ALL A BAD NAME. THE ANGLO-SAXONS AND NORMANS WERE MORE CRUEL AND DESTRUCTIVE WARMONGERS THAN WE NORSEMEN EVER WERE. NOW STOP MENTIONING VIKINGS AND RAPE,,,MMKAY?!

my talk of the vikings (yes it was i who started that conversation piece...) was only a ploy to call-out the civilization pandering that so many Americans do, i want to learn more about the pre-civilized activities of the europeans considering that so much is associated with hitler, the damn empire-building brits, and white supremacists...

cool, yeah. maybe do it without the edgy 14 y.o. 4/chan version of a thought experiment next time?

blah blah blah viking morality, blah blah! If I had $5 for every time you recycled this tired noise ... fukin lazy hack

yeah, the assassins creed one, a neatly curated little piece of electric ego trip for you to safely consume at home.

if you actually had a time machine, somebody would be drinking mead out of your skull within a week son!

I AM ODIN! And I will smash all the peasant skulls and pillage the country side, ARGH!

one word.

A bit more spontaneous humility, empathy/mercy and gentle persuasion and you may find what 95% of Vikings settled for.

being in society makes us bored and powerless, therefore let's jump on whatever virtue-signaling bandwagon our bored opportunist minds can: lock the rapist up, what scum, he should have his balls chopped off in addition to human torture through imprisonment

anarchists responses to the media has been so cringy and pathetic and unintentionally funny.

who had thought npr would've annoyed anews to crank the whinge up to 100 just like the nyt did with crimethinc. they take 'murican liberal press more seriously for some reason and it bothers them.

Oh are you trying to have a so called "discussion" here?

I am an adherent of Anarcho- Bart Simpsonism and i say "No Rules Man!"

Mods feel free to leave this comment up thank you.

I would like to nominate Le Way to be sole moderator of Anews. It's time we got a true stirnerian anarch in office

LeWay, is it true you are running for moderator of anarchist news?! If you win the election, will you remove any comments??

Lol, though seriously I used to get deleted often and I never had any resentment towards mods deleting me. I would not wish to be one actually, if I was I would keep it simple down to a few basic guidelines for comments -- keep it on topic and anarchistic

considering that's what the moderator does, delete comments, what would you do differently from thecollective?

Not much different, this site allows what I regard as the most extensive and diverse data base and news pertaining to anarchist and free-thought expression in the known universe, so why should I, being a lovable and compassionate Stirnerian, wish to whine and complain about the present condition of the Now?

PS One thing did come to mind regarding content, that some unique and diverse subjects about the psychology of anarchy be given more attention, such things as my "The Esoteric X-ray Gaze of the Anarch and its Use in the Disarmament of Neo-Liberals" which I mentioned earlier.

This is where the creativity of the commenter's can juxtapose into the news any relevant psychological aspects. To be honest I visit this site for not just the news but also the conversation. I am drifting off topic, unless you can add something about the psychology of herd morality, psychic slothfulness, and the mind of the puritan tyrant.

everything in modern society is oriented towards some future value, clearly money sets a precedent for that, along with all the idealistic worldviews and whatnot...

Yep, future orientation vs spontaneity, my argument revolves around the impossibility of any morality or capitalism when one lives in the Now. Ever noticed how humble poor people smile more than wealthy tycoons? The mortgage is a tyrannical contract, Judgement Day is a fraudulent proposition.
I sympathize with the victims of weakened power and broken will.

Uos comrade enemy of Z of commisionar Minister, Lukashenka say vote McDonald Trump his friend!!!

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