I used to be strictly materialist and atheist. Now I’m pretty spiritual. Don’t necessarily follow a religion and don’t support bigotry but yeah, I’m fairly spiritual now. This is a recent development and I never thought I’d be here like 5 years ago.
I used to be strictly materialist and atheist. Now I’m pretty spiritual. Don’t necessarily follow a religion and don’t support bigotry but yeah, I’m fairly spiritual now. This is a recent development and I never thought I’d be here like 5 years ago.
Speak for yourself. All kinds of groups from conservatives to liberals to fascists to communists (although let’s be honest, it’s mostly the conservatives and liberals and ‘enlightened centrists’) love to arrogantly imply that their current worldview is the mature, rational conclusion that any intelligent person should reach in adulthood, and any other is just childish, naive, and poorly conceived. The people who do this aren’t speaking to anything concrete about the world, they’re just high on their own farts and confident in their ignorance.
And it’s the anarchists who catch the bulk of the sneering insults from these types, who will often demonstrate their own ignorance as they dismiss them as naive and uninformed. You did this yourself by extolling the virtues of markets as a defense of capitalism, apparently not knowing that markets are not exclusive to capitalism.
Oh? Which ideology on that list the push for, then? I’m in the picture, I used to agree with OP on a lot and now I agree on less, but can you even guess how?
Nothing is being sold here, I literally just listed a couple anarchist things OP believes. Learning as you get older is a real phenomenon, at least for most people. And, there’s no shortage of older people who have more complex, less absolute ideas about any number of things than they did when they were younger.
I used a different word on purpose, because capitalism doesn’t really have a consistent definition. According to Hexbear, China isn’t capitalist despite having all the associated features, for example.
Alright, I’ll have a go at guessing your ideology since you asked. Given your status quo preference (“the generations before us aren’t stupid and things are the way they are for a good reason”), you’re not a radical so that leaves conservative, liberal, or centrist. Given you’ve implied that you used to have some anarchist beliefs it’s unlikely you went from that to conservative, so most likely you’re some flavor of liberal, like a social democrat. You’re vaguely sympathetic to some socialist and anarchist ideas but think you’re too smart to commit to them because the world is “just more complicated than that.” Capitalist realism has pulled you back from becoming a radical as you’ve gotten older.
Actually, you pretty much nailed it, nice. TBF that makes it kind of a trick question, since it’s not neatly in any of the categories.
Do you think the world isn’t complicated? Even anarchists usually do. If anything, you see the argument that the world is too complicated to be reduced to numbers and laws.
I think the world is more complex than any individual person can possibly comprehend, but that doesn’t make us incapable of moral judgement or unable to imagine radical alternatives to the status quo. Yes, things are the way they are now for a reason, but rarely a good reason. I see the appeal to complexity as a cognitive trap serving as a thought-terminating cliché, and it’s the trap that a lot of social democrats have fallen into. It is easier to stick to what you know than to speculate about a world you’ve never experienced, but I promise you the latter is more fulfilling and a great antidote to cynicism.
I won’t speak for you, but when I was a social democrat I was pretty miserable and cynical. I recommend the book Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher, as it is what snapped me out of being a social democrat, personally. That sent me into the world of radical politics and I found footing by reading David Graeber (The History Of Everything, Bullshit Jobs, etc.) which helped me put my thoughts into perspective and realize my beliefs had already been fairly anarchist for a while. I’m not an anti-realist like a lot of anarchists are, my worldview is still grounded in materialism, but I have become a bit more agnostic in that regard over time.
You’re right, it is a thought terminating cliche for a lot of people. If you get rid of the thought terminating cliches and put in the work to understand, you open yourself up to all the ideologies, not just anarchism.
If you want to turn this around and sell something to me, fill that in with details. Anarchists have a way of pointing out things that seem terrible, but then when you ask how things should work instead, getting really vague.
On it’s own that says nothing about the movement itself. But, when it’s literally all you can find even looking hard at an old idea, it starts to seem like there’s nothing there.
Doesn’t “a bunch of other things have been tried, and they had X problem” count?
On policy specifically, that’s usually the gist. There’s been a lot of history, very little is original unless new technologies are involved, and even there it’s uncommon (eg. tech monopolies are railroad monopolies).
You know, maybe I will. I’m pretty sure I did read Bullshit Jobs. Or maybe just the notes?