Of Bookworms and Anarchy

This morning I was riding the bus in to work and I looked ou tthe window and saw a small, very nerdy looking asian girl. She looked like she probably read a lot and studied very hard for school work. What made this girl stand out in my mind, however, was the anarchy sign on her tshirt – half-hidden by her jacket sitting unzipped on top.
I was quite honestly surprised.

I started thinking about anarchy. Anarchy is a total absence of governance. Dictionary.com says that anarchy is “a state of society without government or law”. I began musing about this out loud. It seems to me that with any number of people, anarchy becomes a complete impossibility. I don’t think that complete anarchy is possible. If two people interact, they will almost always draw up either explicit or implied guidelines governing the behaviors of the two individuals. Anyone who enters into a partnership tends to start off with “you do this for me and I will do that for you,” or something similar. At this point there is already guidelines set up as for the proper behavior. It essentially becomes a law. If it is violated, the trust between the two individuals is violated and there are consequences for the violation of the law.

It is essentially impossible for humans to interact in numbers larger than 1 without developing relationships. Relationships have very much ingrained rules about trust and betrayal. It would appear that law is not something completely external to humans. While not every culture has the exact same laws, and not all cultures agree on the same things as being good or bad, all cultures have sets of acceptable and unacceptable behaviors. These are laws or cultural mores. The need for law is rooted so deeply in humanity that it tends to wind up being expressed externally through written contracts and guidelines, but every human has a sense of law or fairness. To pull an Ayn Rand, I refer you to the first chapter of C.S. Lewis’ book Mere Christianity for a more in-depth look at law as a basic property of human nature.

If law is a part of human nature, it would then logically follow that anarchy is impossible without a suppression of human nature, and that any group of normally functioning human beings will attempt to externalize these laws in their relationships and partnerships with other people. If anarchy is impossible due to the technicality of being human, why wouldn’t normal intelligent people realize this?

But then again this is Penn State.

I suppose that intelligent people would promote ideals that are similar to what they are currently looking for. I would assume that this promotion of an impossible concept is due to a lack of faith in the current structure and a desire to change what is currently going on. The Bush administration has not necessarily been very endearing or inspiring trust in our country’s leadership. So the girl wants changes in government; probably due to a feeling of corruption or evil. Something is wrong with the current government. So promote change of the government. Unfortunately people do not tend to listen to exactly what is being said. Promoting change in the government will probably not have a big enough impact to make a difference in anyone who is looking, so promote the extreme. Promote anarchy. Promote the abolishment of the government. Promote something extremist so that people will listen. Wear an anarchy t-shirt.

At least that’s what I’d like to believe that’s what she was thinking when she got dressed this morning.

~ by earcaraxe on September 27, 2006.