timbgray t1_j0zlav7 wrote
I thought it worth a quick read. Two points:
“the foundational recognition that nature, including conscious human nature, is inherently intelligent”; If this is foundational, then the argument topples quickly. Nature is “selective” not intelligent. Lots of good arguments for the idea that we didn’t evolve to be rational, we evolved to survive. Intelligence and rationality are consequential, or emergent, not fundamental.
Second: given the way the world works, including our basic biology, hierarchies are inevitable, and ubiquitous. A functional anarchist society would be populated by non-humans.
Recognizing the truth of the claim that if you have to resort to analogy, you’ve lost the argument, I’m unable to avoid suggesting that an ant colony or bee hive is …more like… (but not equivalent to) an anarchistic society than any potential human anachronistic society could be. See my next/last point, but the ants and bees do what they do without force or coercion, or the execution of power, ie absent all the so called shortcomings supposedly ameliorated by anarchism. They are simply driven, as a species, as we are, as a species in aggregate, by biology.
And finally, I get the feeling that if the argument went further it could be easily repurposed as an attempt to evidence libertarian free will.
Fluggernuffin t1_j115y6z wrote
I would argue that there is a difference in the way we behave versus "nature" in the sense that human beings reject things that are beneficial or even critical to their survival, in the pursuit of less concrete aims.
Your example of the beehive got me thinking about that film with Jerry Seinfeld, The Bee Movie. The plot of the film anthropomorphizes the human ideal of freedom of choice on a worker bee. From a natural perspective, this makes no sense. Worker bees simply do not question their nature. However, the idea of being born to simply perform a task until we die sits poorly on the human mind.
Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments