in support of anarchy

it bothers me, immensely, that so many people never consider anarchism as a legitimate political philosophy simply because it is surrounded by so much negative social stigma. so- this is my 2 cents. take from it what you will.

why governments are ultimately ineffective:
governing bodies are essentially designed to protect human rights. but we all have a natural desire for independence - the ability to control our own lives - and circumstantially this manifests itself as a desire for group control also. as a result, all (most) governing bodies eventually develop into hierarchies, and the presence of a hierarchy establishes the notion that the handful of people holding administrative power are more valid, and more valuable, than the masses. this is not to imply that all governments are corrupt: in any circumstance where millions of people are living together in an organized community (see below), a central administration is imperative to the preservation of order. the idea here is that this paradigm of supremecy a) reinforces feelings of inadequacy in those who are not included in the supreme which b) sends the proletariat into a ratrace towards empty notions of “success.” wealth and social elitism are considered to be the most worthwhile outcomes- even if wealth and social elitism do not coincide with happiness or personal fulfillment.

in addition to effectively eliminating the emotional security of any submissive populous, the concept of supremecy also gives the supreme administration in question a false sense of import. for lack of a better term- an intensely bloated ego. the struggle for dominance suddenly is not limited only to the people; the administration itself wants superiority over other governments. in that quest for absolute authority, the administration’s nobel origins fall by the wayside; to better itself economically, the government begins to exploit the very people it was designed to defend.

why anarchism isn’t necessarily bad:
we are competitive creatures. in our collective history, in the days when we were all still young, natural selection drove this into the depths of us. competition is what keeps us alive. it is natural. what’s unnatural is that as a society we have started focusing this competitiveness in the wrong direction; we do not determine what we have, but we can determine what we do with it. the biological need for victory was within us, and - dizzied by the architecture of tangible prosperity risen in the wake of organized government - we decided victory meant material return. we want to climb the allegorical ladder, and if the top of the ladder is the administration, and if the administration is primarily concerned with expanding its economic clout, then the ladder’s rungs are wealth.

but in the end, the desire for wealth/power is only an expression of the desire for happiness, because we are taught that financial ease is the same as fulfillment. if we could teach ourselves to pursue fulfillment by more direct means, we could actually reach it. if we could learn to see our shared yearnings for what they truly are, and if we could adjust our cultural behaviors accordingly, we would all be much, much happier. yes, humans by nature want to better themselves. but to reiterate: it isn’t what you have, it’s what you do with it. the success of an anarchy hinges not on a destruction of greed, only a shift.

anarchism is also generally dismissed because there is a general distrust in the integrity of the human moral code. (disclaimer: the rest of this paragraph is purely hypothetical.) arguably, in a world devoid of legal retribution, people would murder and rape and otherwise abuse each other even more vigorously than they do now; but jealousy is the driving force behind most or all of these unfortunate actions, and in a (remember, hypothetical) community where everyone has realized that every jealousy is nothing but a manifestation of a personal desire - one that can only be satiated by the self (not by the murder or rape or pillage of any other individual) - the problem of crime evaporates.

granted, it is totally unreasonable to believe that this could actually happen in practice. anarchism could only be feasible in a world where we lived in groups, small ones, so that anyone who might rise to positions of influence would be more apt to retain a sense of empathy, and a sense of responsibility. even this would not constitute a true anarchy; a true anarchy could only be possible if we all lived in solitude, thereby eliminating any sort of organized community (this is the part i was referencing above when i wrote see below, by the way). but since neither of these postulations are at all a part of the foreseeable future (and since even if they were, food production and distribution would still be near impossible), it’d probably make sense here to disregard anarchy as something that is lovely in concept but catastrophic in reality.
which brings me to

real-world applications:
for me, anarchism’s greatest strength lies in its liberating qualities. by its nature, anarchy demands a complete abandon of the materialism that promotes the paradigm of personal weakness. (YOUR POTENTIAL IS INFINITE. you are only restrained by one being- yourself, your own mind. transcend doubt.) conversely, this mental bondage is reinforced by administrations and the hierarchies beneath them.

anarchism to me is granting the power of the government to the individual. by determining every aspect of what you do in your own life, by prioritizing the personal moral code over social expectation, the mind in turn is freed also. but something distinctly similar to this could be set into place by decreasing the barrier between the administration and the masses; democracy is designed for this exactly. unfortunately, phobias and selfishness in “representative” officials (people who are wealthy enough to run campaigns) often act as impediments in proletariat empowerment. if something is good for the whole rather than merely the uppercrust, it is deemed a mark of socialism and promptly ignored. until this is changed, we will stand stagnant. peace is progress. as citizens, as human beings, it is our duty to be progressive.