File spoon-archives/anarchy-list.archive/anarchy-list_1999/anarchy-list.9907, message 62


Date: Sun, 04 Jul 1999 02:44:09 -0500
From: Sandi & Scott Spaeth <vespags-AT-stlnet.com>
Subject: Re: The next best thing...


At 01:13 AM 7/4/99 -0400, OOTSONATI-AT-aol.com wrote:
> Maybe instead of shooting for the perfect society we should aim for a 
>mediocre society. That way our expectations could be easier met and possibly 
>eventually lead to the perfect society. As long as people believe the system 
>is perfected, there will be no room for the critic.

Well, we're halfway there then.  We've got the mediocre society.  Unfortunately
though, we'll (not just us, the human species in general) never get the perfect
society.  One of the mistakes of the 19th century was the belief in the
perfectability of mankind.  We could be much better than we are to each other
and ourselves, but what does being 'perfect' even mean?  And with flawed people
comes flawed society.  Even when I dream of genuine Anarchy, with my
great-great grandchildren thinking of our time as being as barbaric as we think
of the dark ages, even then there will be conflict, and people who don't like
each other, and maybe even pissed off minorities.  It'll be much better, just
as few of us would tolerate serfdom or slavery today, so they'll haughtily
think that they would never suffer the life of a wage slave, but unless they
adapt to the point of seeing constant social change as normal, they'll instead
have found some new servitude that they surrender to, and it might be for a
very long time because it is less obviously evil, before they rebel against the
new servitude.

I have a pet idea that power is a conceptual virus.  It uses us as a means to
replicate and multiply itself independent of how we like to think we can use
it.  It's natural tendancy is to collect itself into a smaller and smaller
group of hosts, and like biological viruses, it doesn't know that it can
overcome and kill it's hosts and be destroyed along with them.  Unfortunately
for us, it's also a symbiotic virus, in that without some power, the power of
our individual hands and minds, nothing can happen, there can be no communes,
no poems, no houses.  Since we can't wipe out power all together without taking
us with it, the best we can do is live in constant struggle to keep it as
spread and diminished as possible.  And at times, societies, groups will be
more up to the challenge than at others, but the challenge, the struggle will
always remain, and there doesn't seem to be room for that struggle in any of
the Utopias I've been informed about.

Anyway, I could be wrong, but as I see it, it's the struggle against power and
against priviledge, towards liberty and equality where the real importance of
anarchism lies, because that's where a real, honest, worthwhile life is to be
found.  And although I believe in the possibility of a better humanity, it's
the egoistic, selfish desire for a genuine moral and intellectual life that
primarily motivates me.

again, incoherantly yours,
scott
---------------------------------------------------------
Be it never forgotten that the cure for evil and 
disorder is more liberty, not suppression.
                                -Alexander Berkman
 
Piston Ported Vespas:
http://www.piston-ported.com
words
http://home.stlnet.com/~vespags/words.html
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