Subject: Re: Absolute Anarchy=Goverment
Date: 14 Jan 2002 22:06:53 +0200


On Mon, 2002-01-14 at 20:43, Kristopher K. Barrett wrote:
> On 14 Jan 2002 at 15:18, heather wrote:
> 
> >  It is exactly this kind of situation you need yer "anarchist
> > government" to deal with. Personally I believe it should be left up to
> > the dead persons next of kin and friends. They are the ones bereaved,
> > they should convict and punish the culprit however they see fit.
> 
> In the absence of a state, this was exactly what happened in most
> northern european cultures.
> 
> Someone would commit a murder, and the victim's next of kin would
> go find a respected person or group to verify that a tort had
> happened and that the murderer is now an outlaw and should not be protected by others. 
> The next of kin would then be able to make their
> own justice, and any of the murderer's kin who interfered would also be considered outlaw.

Anyone know what the etymology of "vengeance" is? Mostly the meaning I
attach to that word right now is something that somebody does that is
somewhat unsavoury and allied to things like kangaroo courts and mob
justice. Which has kicked in here (South Africa), especially since the
official end of apartheid, given the inability of courts and police to
prosecute criminals. Every few weeks there's a story in the local papers
of a murderer or a rapist (often a child rapist - there's a myth that
having sex with a virgin or a baby will cure AIDS) who's been stoned or
beaten to death by a mob, sometimes after being released from police
custody. And the minister of justice keeps on bleating about how people
shouldn't take the law into their own hands. Well, shit, maybe if the
legal system worked...

On the other hand, I've heard many stories of people who've shot and
killed armed robbers, and the cops turning a blind eye to some extent (a
video of the scene carefully avoiding the blood on the wall, for
example) because they know they're overworked and probably couldn't do
justice anyway. But for every cop who does something like that, there's
another one who's selling the marijuana from the roadblocks. And another
who asks "do you want us to open an investigation?" when you report a
robbery.

This is interesting, I think, because when the criminal justice systems
starts breaking down, folx do things so that mechanisms kick in to
provide some kind of justice. But the other end of that scale is, IMHO,
the warlords of Afghanistan, or Somalia, or Rwanda, or Yugoslavia (hmm,
not sure about that one). Which is of course what the government bleats
about to ensure it's own power.

Anyway, my guess is that once upon a time, vengeance was a duty that one
owed to one's family, and not to be undertaken on a whim. Maybe the
entire process was one of the thews (now there's an old-fashioned
word...) holding societies together. Which is exactly why it was a duty,
and why the concept of duty was so important.

These days, duty is something to be sneered at, or something to be
undertaken at the behest of your employer. Because there are now other
things holding societies together. Like anger and fear of punishment,
maybe?

I was looking at the stars the other day and thinking that money has a
law of attraction similar to gravity. No money and you're left out in
the interstellar void. Money (or should that be Capital?) attracts money
to itself.

bye
John