Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 18:54:25 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: arch-anarchy


>--- Ze Sprout <anarchie-AT-buelinckx.net> wrote: 
>    At 03:22 -0700 04-04-2001, Z Zed wrote: 
>>...  Or perhaps 
>>the question that I should really be asking is: How 
>>could you prevent someone ELSE from doing whatever 
>>they choose to their person and still call yourself 
an 
>>anarchist? 

>Because being an anarchist is about indivivualism 
>AND solidarity. You can't have one without the other 
>if you are an anarchist. 
 

By my understanding of things, I would loosely define
individualism, in the anarchist sense, as "doing
whatever one chooses, so long as that action does not
prevent anyone else from doing the same" and I would
define solidarity, in the lesser sense, as "a basic
agreement as to the actions or philosophy of some
group or individual, whether or not we are able to
assist" and in the greater sense as "using direct
action in support of some group, individual, idea, or
goal with which one is in basic agreement".  Do you
agree with these definitions?  If so, how could you
prevent the previously described actions? 
    You're obviously not going to be in 'solidarity'
with every single thing another person chooses to do. 
Six billion + people aren't going to be able to agree
with much of anything, let alone everything.  While
you may disagree with what someone else chooses to do
to themselves, I'm still not seeing how an anarchist
could prevent any type of body modification someone
else chooses to do to themselves, provided that that
modification does not, in and of itself, cause injury
to someone else. 

>    So if this other is turning herself into a 
>killermachine damn well i'll do something about it. 
>
>Erik 

We could certainly TRY to do something about it. 
Hmmm, now that I've thought about it a bit, I think
that this is actually an argument FOR allowing people
to modify themselves.  Let me elaborate:  Any such
"killermachine" would almost certainly be the creation
of some secret government/corporate program, and would
therefore be unknown until it was too late.  Wouldn't
we find it beneficial to have people around that had
made potentially "defensive" modifications to
themselves?

     All this sounds like it would be a good segway
into someone going into an anti-tech type rant, but I
think that would be naive.  Some people, even a lot of
people, could try to destroy all the knowledge,
scientists, books, equipment, whatever there is, but
all that would do is force the technology underground,
where it would still be worked on by renegades in
secret labs, which could potentially create an even
worse situation; and/or it would be left to the
exclusive domain of a few government/corporate powers
with the military resources to fend off the
ultra-luddites.

     I'm not trying to say that these things are
happening right now (not in any major way, that is),
but I do think that it's obvious that things of this
nature will definitely become major issues in the
relatively near future.

-Z




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