avevale_intelligencer: (Default)
avevale_intelligencer ([personal profile] avevale_intelligencer) wrote2008-09-13 12:22 pm

QotD

In connection with what we've been talking about:

"There are only two kinds of social structure conceivable--personal government and impersonal government. If my anarchic friends will not have rules--they will have rulers. Preferring personal government, with its tact and flexibility, is called Royalism. Preferring impersonal government, with its dogmas and definitions, is called Republicanism. Objecting broad-mindedly both to kings and creeds is called Bosh; at least, I know no more philosophic word for it. You can be guided by the shrewdness or presence of mind of one ruler, or by the equality and ascertained justice of one rule; but you must have one or the other, or you are not a nation, but a nasty mess."
--G K Youknowwho, What's Wrong With The World, p. 43.

The second sentence encapsulates the reason why I do not believe in anarchy as a way of life; because I do not think, without rules, it can be prevented from decaying into a despotism of the person who wants most to be in charge. There are those who say it has never been tried; possibly it has, but like an exotic particle, it did not persist long enough to be observed.

My copy of this book is falling to bits. There's a moral here somewhere, Grobbendonk.

[identity profile] zanda-myrande.livejournal.com 2008-09-13 06:53 pm (UTC)(link)
Yup. Imagine a world full of people like that and little or no organised police or judicial system to restrain them, and you have a clear picture of what I believe an anarchistic/libertarian society would in very short order become. I'd rather be dead.
ext_12246: (TGIShin)

[identity profile] thnidu.livejournal.com 2008-09-14 12:13 am (UTC)(link)
And in such a world, both of us probably soon would be.

Grobbendonk?

[identity profile] zanda-myrande.livejournal.com 2008-09-14 12:47 pm (UTC)(link)
Grobbendonk. (http://www.dreamnation.fsnet.co.uk/supp3.html#grobbendonk)
ext_12246: (melonhead)

[identity profile] thnidu.livejournal.com 2008-09-14 08:37 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, that Grobbendonk (whom I'd never heard of before). All right, but I still want to see the other one's flag.