Political Systems and Nation States

[sSsflamesSs]

Anonymouse, since you are so clearly fond of Anarchism, why don't you tell us 'ignorant' ones about some if its positive aspects?

I don't mean just temporary advantages, but things that last in the long run.

[Anonymouse]

There have always been ideologies. Look at the Roman Empire, or read the Bible.
While I agree that national interests have caused many deaths, that all depends on the system the nation is based on. While a nation gone astray can be disastrous a nation gone in the right direction can also be very good, and ensure the wellbeing of MOST individuals. (Not all that is impossible)

All ideas and inventions come to fruition with the help of organization. No one does anything alone. The individual does not learn anything without the help of OTHER individuals. That is called organization.

Having the right to sue is an example of an individual’s right to fight an organization. The reason is irrelevant. If you think it is worthy or not is also irrelevant. There is no perfect system where everyone is happy. It is impossible. If you’re arguing for no system, that is also impossible. The more individualistic a nation is the more dangerous. The average human being is nothing special. “ideologies” and “isms” keep people from killing and raping each other. Anarchy is exactly that. A pointless existence.

I believe systems are not the brainchild of “the people behind the curtains” but a series of coincidences and problem solving of physical realities, as well greed for power. But at the end of the day it is people collectively that make things happen. The individual no matter how brilliant can accomplish very little. And also no matter how ruthless must be kept at bay.

As for the Bush issue. The Bush victory was the result of a half-assed democratic candidate with a Jewish running mate, who made Middle America nervous.

I suspect that many of us hold certain lines of thinking to justify our failures.

The fact that you speak of 'progress' and 'organization' are exactly the ideas of the Enlightenment. Progress at the cost of life. That is what manifest destiny and European Imperialism was all about. "Progress" because the "lesser peoles" were unfirt to do so. Isms never existed prior to the Enlightenment, they were introduced to language only during and after with such thinkers as Locke, or Smith, or Rousseau ( e.g., Liberalism, Communism, Nationalism ).

All ideas and inventions come from exactly the creativity of the individual. Organization has nothing to do with mans creativity, it had nothing to do with it when the caveman learned how to make fire with stone, nor did it have to do with the wheel, nor Michaelangelo's David, nor with the harnessing of electricity, etc. These things from from the individual and all history is written by individuals, because of individuals. All political groups want power over others.

You are just confirming exactly why individualism is dangerous for it will make the "organized political systems" which you speak of, obsolete. To those that profit from statism, that is dangerous. Most of us have been conditioned to confine the range of permissible thought about the nature and extent of political authority to an arbitrary continuum running from "left" to the "right." The assumption underlying such thinking is that if you are dissatisfied with a "leftist" government’s policies, you can switch your preferences to "rightist" candidates. But such thinking clouds the fact that the "left" and "right" are but two wings of the same bird of prey.

It is the leaders via the political systems that organize the masses that make progress for the system. Archimedes did not need a collectivist herd for the principle of the lever and inventing the compound pulley. Da Vinci didn't need the masses to help him with his art and inventions. Hell he drew blueprints for what we call helicopters. Pascal didn't need the masses either for inventing the machine that added and subtracted. Pasteur, Marconi, Newton, Einstein, Planck, or Cugnot were all individuals and their creativity reflected themselves, not the masses. The masses have nothing to do with history, the individuals do. Even ideas such as Liberalism, or the State, or Capitalism, go to individuals, for it is individuals that write history, not the masses. To not see that is to live in denial because one doesn't want to have a crack in their edfice of thought.

You say the individual may accomplish very little, yet it is exactly these select few individuals who are behind curtains who accomplish the most, via political systems at controlling the masses and the way of thinking. The average person doesn't care under what system they live under, they just want to live their lives. It is the political system's existence that must survive, for these individuals who rule the masses to hold their power, and they must resort to maintaining their power, by creating problems to market their political systems to the people so they can create faith in the people. It is a common tactic that goes back for centuries to throw disinformation and subterfuge towards your enemies making them think one thing, while attempting something else. Shun Tzu first spoke of that in The Art of War.

So the fact that you have the "left" and the "right" matters not with dissatisfaction of people with both major political parties, because no matter who they vote for, the government always gets elected. That so many 1930s Marxists could so easily have become conservatives by the 1950s, while some "Leftist" radicals of the 1960s have become darlings of modern neoconservativism, illustrates the fungible nature of all political systems. It is an inner need to forcibly control the lives and property interests of others that motivates men and women of all political persuasions. Philosophic "principles" or "basic values" are no more to the politically ambitious than propaganda with which to create and solidify a base of power. Like commercial advertisers who declare "we do it all for you," politicians thrive on getting individuals to align themselves with their and the states interests.

Look at the consequences of losing our sense of individuality in collective herds. Events in your daily life should confirm to you that individuals are generally more decent, peaceful, cooperative, loving, and humane than are political collectives. This is not about establishing a "perfect system" or a "harmonious utopia" like in John Lennon's "Imagine", this is about offering an alternative to the ideological prism that pervades. Anarchism doesn't mean chaos or lack of order. That is precisely the first response of someone not familiar with anarchism. As the father of anarchism, it was Proudhon who stated that anarchism is not disorder, but order, rather the natural order of men as opposed to the artificial order which the states imposes. As the Italian Errico Malatesta stated to the critics:

"Under the influence of the authoritarian education given to them, they think that authority is the soul of social organization and repudiate the latter in order to combat the former....Those anarchists opposed to organization make the fundamental error of believing that organization is impossible without authority. Having accepted this hypothesis they reject any kind of organization rather than accept the minimum of authority....If we believed that organization could not exist without authority we would be authoritarians, because we would still prefer the authority which imprisons and saddens life to the disorganization which makes it impossible."

The 20th century anarchist Voline clarified this idea even further:

"A mistaken - or, more often, deliberately innaccurate - interpretation alleges that the libertarian concept means the absence of all organization. This is entirely false: it is not a matter of "organization" or "non organization", but of two different principles of organization...Of Course, say the anarchists, society must be established freely, socially, and above all, from below. The principle of organization must not issue frmo a center created in advance to capture the whole and impose itself upon it but, on the contrary, it must come from all sides to create the nodes of coordination, natural centers to serve all these points....On the other hand, the other kind of "organization", copied from that of the old oppressive and exploitative society....would exaggerate all the blemishes of the old society....It could then only be maintained by means of a new artifice."

As stated earlier, if you doubt the destructive nature of the state then confront these hard facts: during the 20th century, governments managed to kill 200 million men, women, and children in wars, genocides, and other acts of formalized violence. During that same century, how many people were killed by individuals acting without political authority? I'm not speaking of perfection, just an alternative.

[Anonymouse]

Anonymouse, since you are so clearly fond of Anarchism, why don't you tell us 'ignorant' ones about some if its positive aspects?

I don't mean just temporary advantages, but things that last in the long run.

You see it's hard to define something in just a few simple paragraphs. I gave a few glimpses of what the thinkers of anarchism tried to state. It is the opposite of centralization, of federalism. Because of the "progress" you speak of ( a concept introduced during the Enlightenment, and it was that idea of "progress" that led to imperialism, colonization, and exploitation of the rest of the world by mostly Europe ), the idea of centralization, or federalism, inevitably lead to internationalism, and there are many examples of this from history. The American Civil War is perhaps the best conflict on this continent that illustrates the conflict between the federalists vs those of states' rights. With the victory of the North in the Civil War over the South, America became a Nation State. Prior to it America was known as a Republic. There is a big difference between a Republic and a Nation, another code word for Empire.

[Anonymouse]

To the top you go.

[surferarmo]

Anonymouse, where are you going with this? I like the idea of a nation and everything that comes with it. I belive in nationalism, I believe in security, I believe in loyalty. The idea of a nation is set up to give people a sense of security. Even the controllers want this security. Security then results in nationalism which results in loyalty, or vica versa. Either way, the whole idea is great and those that came to realize it are genius.

[Anonymouse]

Anonymouse, where are you going with this? I like the idea of a nation and everything that comes with it. I belive in nationalism, I believe in security, I believe in loyalty. The idea of a nation is set up to give people a sense of security. Even the controllers want this security. Security then results in nationalism which results in loyalty, or vica versa. Either way, the whole idea is great and those that came to realize it are genius.

You are just confirming everything I have said. You stated about your "belief" in the system. Essentially it is run on faith, to make you believe that you have that "sense" of security from the enemies the state creates to justify existence.

The war on terrorism is the best example of the "red scare" being replaced by a new scare, that of terrorism, and just like the "Red scare", the terrorists were created by this state.

You are right in one sense, those that realized the idea of enslaving the masses in ideological prisons, via the state system are geniuses and have managed to be the ones who create history, manipulate things, and control the wealth, at the expense of life around the world.

[surferarmo]

Not everything about it is bad though. While one suffers from it, one is flourishing. That is the system. Terrorists are real tho. You need to specify which state they were created by. I believe they were created by their own state. They were jealous and desired material wealth, and nationalism is what caused them to bomb us in 9/11.

You might say that, "they are religious people therefore they were not doing it out of nationalistic motivations." I disagree. There nation is built on the preface of religion. They, people of the middle east, for the most part control their masses with the idea of religion, therefore religious motivations are state/nationalistic motivations. They created themselves. They took their faith and bashed western style, they took their situations, and blamed it on us just so they could have the WESTERN EVIL SCARE. They are doing the same thing.

[surferarmo]

To the top, the only thread worthy of time from skating.

[surferarmo]

what goes up must stay up.

[Anonymouse]

I would like to thank you for at least trying to maintain the only thread worth participating in. The other threads get boring fast.

Was stated:

Not everything about it is bad though. While one suffers from it, one is flourishing. That is the system. Terrorists are real tho. You need to specify which state they were created by. I believe they were created by their own state. They were jealous and desired material wealth, and nationalism is what caused them to bomb us in 9/11.


There are several flaws with this statement surfer. The conventional American, mostly neoconservative argument ( those who support the war on terrorism ), state that "they", meaning the Islamic and Arabic countries, are jealous of our "lifestyle" and "wealth". While that has no bearing in reality that works very well to garner support for this holy crusade.

The terrorists in existence today are the byproduct of American imperialism. It was America and the CIA which funded into existence the various terrorist groups, namely to combat the "red menace", which back in the day the Wall Street bankers helped fun. America imperialism in the region throughout history has created the animosity that pervades, not because our lifestyle is "better". While Saddam, 911, and Bin Laden have no connection with each, the majority of the masses believe this is true. No evidence has been established that links these two events, yet Herr Bush used the 911 event as pretext for his oil driven ends in Iraq.

The idea that "one gains but the other suffers" is very counter productive. Man has for ages sought to centralize everything under his grasp and not until the Enlightenment, did genius truly emerge since then thinkers and secret societies became conscious of how to manipulate not just the little regions and areas under kingdoms and feudal society, but the whole chunks of humanity on a global scale. Such thinking about "progress", as I've stated before is responsible for the manifest destiny and the genocide of the natives of this continent, the raping of the Third World from its riches by European imperialism in the name of "one benefits from it". Such thinking is what justifies eternal war. If man continues to think along those lines, then war is a necessity to maintain the nation state because only through war do you have the "benefit" which you speak of. A state requires an alliegance, and an allegiance requires a cause, and the state manufactures these causes.

I am very weary of people evading the responsibility for wars, by dismissing organized butchery as expressions of "human nature." Man’s inhumanity to man, as the argument goes is simply the way we are, and therefore, we shouldn't fight against it. Such thinking saves man the discomfort of self examination and self criticism. If violence and slaughter are manifestations of inborn character, as intrinsic to us as the pursuit of self interest, then our participation in such acts should not be condemned. It is just "who we are" and it is unrealistic of us to think we can change our genetic makeup.

But if this is true aren't murder, rape, arson, mayhem, and assault also the fulfillment of our violent nature? If we are not critical of nation states for mobilizing destructive tendencies and creating war for the benefit of the statist, why should we punish individuals who engage in similar actions? Why do we give the severest of punishments on those who do, individually, what we so blithely accept when done in greater numbers by political systems? Do you see the inherent contradiction that we are posed with?