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Be hostile to hostile architecture
(files.mastodon.social)
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/15059816
transcript [text overlaid on several pictures of benches and outside windowsills. the benches have bars, or gaps to prevent someone from sleeping on them.
text reads "Ban anti-homeless arctithecture"]
sauce: https://mastodon.social/@AnarchistArt/112901196516297447
Hostile architecture is among the symptoms of the hostile modern city, where neighbours never say hi, and people die on the streets as people walk passivly by.
This is legit my biggest thing with anarchists. Rules without rulers, and such. Okay. So there’s someone violating the rules / laws / social contract / acceptable behavioral norms. What now?
Direct action.
So every single person in the world should be a vigilante?
No way that can end poorly.
Maybe if people had to be responsible for the violence they outsource to cops maybe they'd think about it twice.
You're kidding me, right?
Suppose some jackass steals from you. If you don't want to risk your life to get it back, you just shouldn't get it back? What kind of libertarian bullshit is that? I thought anarchy was about collectivism, or at least pretended to be.
There's a divers range of anarchist schools of thought & some of the oldest are forms of individualist anarchism, Max Stirner was contemporary with Marx. You should read his work it not only deals with formal hierarchies but also not being ruled by arbitrary concepts, he's famous/infamous for using hagelian dielectics to deconstruct hagelian dielectics(I'm some what of a hagelian myself /meme).
I was using outsourced figuratively, I was trying to express that the vast majority of people are completely divorced from the violence committed on their behalf. An example is when someone calls the cops over something minor & the cops show up & immediately escalate until they kill someone.
Edit: You can have formal & informal systems in place to minimize/help prevent unnecessary violence under anarchism, they just need to avoid hierarchy.
I don't have time to go read the works of a philosopher I've never previously heard of before continuing a conversation with you. Since you already seem to understand it and like it, you perhaps give me a summary of his ideas? By the way, I think you meant "dialectics" -- a dielectric is something you put between two pieces of wire to keep them from shorting out.
Sounds like we need police reform and officers trained in de-escalation, not a complete abolition of the police. You'll hear no argument from me that the current state of policing in the States is our biggest point of national shame and bordering on fascism, but I am truly tired of leftists seeing this fact and jumping to the conclusion that these problems extend to policing as a concept, and proceeding to work to abolish that.
My brain subconsciously corrects as I read so I often don't see errors.
I am way too tried to summarize Stirner, I'd think I'd rather try to explain quantum physics to a five year old(exaggeration).
Yeah real police reforms would be nice. Anarchism I would say isn't necessarily a simple policy change, yes anarchist have short term goals, but it's really more of a ongoing process, for me less about a finite end of history but trying to build a space of respect for autonomy no mater how ephemeral.
A book on that subject for when you have time: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_Autonomous_Zone
Okay cool, so like a set of people whose role it is to go after people who act against the interests of the group, and who are authorized to do that?
sigh
Ranger, my guy, we've already discussed why a society without hierarchy is not possible. If one group has the unique authority to exert control over bad actors, a hierarchy exists. If everyone has equal authority, whoever threatens the most violence will see everyone else capitulate.
Obviously a society set up to force citizens to engage with power structures like police isn't going to mesh will with anarchist ideas. A lot of anarchists just don't do shit when they get victimized like that. The cops aren't going to find your stuff and if they do they aren't going to give it back. You suck it up, accept the loss, and ask your community for mutual aid.
But what if society wasn't like that? What if we created other avenues for empowerment besides go to the cops or deal with it? What if there was a justice system based on restorative justice and rehabilitation instead of violence and oppression? It turns out that most people are only stealing things because they can't meet their needs any other way, and most people actually don't want to just randomly hurt others if they have adequate food, shelter, services, and community. Build a society based on helping people up instead of beating them down, and appealing to your community for help no longer necessitates violence.
ah yes, the secret third option: tell yourself that whoever stole your thing probably needed it more than you and beg your neighbor to give you another one.
we're already doing that, it's called gofundme, and it's not working out great
it is true that, in a just world where people's needs are provided for, there would be fewer bad actors. there will still be bad actors regardless. these bad actors would be the sort of greedy arseholes who currently run megacorporations, but they would operate on a much smaller scale since society would be less conducive to their will. even still, having no plan to deal with their actions besides "shrug and be thankful for what you do have" is not an attractive prospect
It sounds like you don't actually want to discuss this and just want to have an argument tbh. You're misrepresenting what I've said and it's definitely not good faith.
I hope your capitalist community comes to help you when the cops don't give your stolen things back.
I'm not arguing against police reform. I agree that the police in their current state suck massive donkey balls, are not trained to de-escalate, frequently do things that would get an ordinary citizen five years minimum without so much as a slap on the wrist, and increasingly resemble a military more than anything else. I am sick to death of leftists pretending these problems extend to policing as a concept and working to abolish that instead of working towards a future where psychologists are called rather than SWAT teams.
Not just that. But what if two anarchists disagree with each other? Who wins? The one who is willing to escalate the highest? My neighbor doesn’t like my native wildflowers, so we yell at each other until someone pulls a gun?
If you're both batshit insane, sure.
Of course normal people just have polite conversations.
Fortunately for us, everyone on earth has totally rational responses to all situations. And we all agree: we want things to be good, and not bad. And it’s very obvious what things are which!
The thing about the flowers is obviously trivial. There are other matters where a violent ‘direct action’ is obviously warranted.
There are a million things in the middle that are nuanced and difficult and entirely susceptible to ‘person who threatens the most escalation wins’ outcomes.
And hierarchies are made up of people who totally have rational responses to all situations.
Especially the people who naturally gravitate to the top.
Hence why maintaining a society without any form of explicit or implicit hierarchy is very very possible.
Is this a genuine question?
Yes, genuine question. I don’t understand how the system doesn’t devolve into constant, chaotic vigilante justice.
Okidoke, thanks for answering.
Well first of all, we have to look at why people do things. Once we figure that out we can figure out how to prevent such things from happening.
Secondly, since rules were mentioned: What are the rules? Who do they serve? How did they come about? etc. These things must be looked at in any system that is attempting to create and maintain civility and cooperation.
With these two things in place processes can start being created in order to both constantly update our understandings of things and to ensure that such behaviours that you mention are either unnecessary or can be rectified (with things such as restorative and transformative justice etc) instead of devolving into "constant, chaotic vigilante justice".
Such a system requires a lot of work to impliment, a lot of educating everyone on the best practises for dealing with problems should they arise, a lot of instilling values, a lot of looking at said values and seeing if they fit with the wanted goals any more etc.
This is not a simple or easy path to tread, it'll take a lot of time to get there and there will be I am sure a lot of struggles along the way, including the vigilante justice you mention to some degree, however, problems do not mean failure, only when we stop trying is it a failure.
Basically it requires slow yet constant work on ourselves, unlearning all the harmful practices of this world and the way it is now, and a desire to do better instead, to help instead of hurt.
Does that help? Feel free to discuss it more with us if you'd like.
That genuinely does help. It sounds like the implementation of anarchism is a transformation of peoples’ attitudes and values. In a world full of people who think and behave that way, anarchism is the natural state of being.
My gut reaction is “well people tend to be just the pits, so that’ll never happen.” But I guess the argument is sort of like the argument for changing the way we do things to combat climate change. Some people think climate change is fake, but even if it is, we’ll end up with clean water and cheaper electricity in the end anyway. Similarly, just because we might not reach a state of anarchism in the next year, or ten, or fifty doesn’t mean the social transformation isn’t worth starting now. There are short term benefits that don’t yet involve a stateless society.
It does feel like a certain fraction of the population is always going to be, I guess, shitheads. I think unpleasant things are going to be necessary to weed those folks out. But even well-intentioned people, when forced to do unpleasant things, tend to be transformed by that process in a pretty negative way. And whoops, now we’ve got idealists who are good at wielding violent force, and those people tend to build followings.
We are glad to have helped! Yeah, exactly, we aren't there yet, but doesn't mean we shouldn't head towards it.
Hmm, do you know why it feels that way for you? Also, even if there were 'shitheads' why is the only way to deal with them to do unpleasant things?
I dunno, it feels like we’re not gonna be able to convince the Bezos / Buffett / Walton family types to be cool with just words. And that’s not even going into the people who think violent political force is actually very good as long as their favorite strong man is the one to control it.
Oh, we see what you mean. Well, there we agree and disagree. We agree that it is unlikely those already in power will give it up, so yes, there may be need for violence in some cases currently to topple the existing power structures.
However, violence does not always have to be a sledge hammer or other very powerful weapon, it can be a scalpel, wielded decisively to remove a problem and then it no longer needs to be utilised, at least not against the same exact problem. However, that is not the end of the story, at least in the current system, what happens after that is hopefully healing as we start transitioning more towards systems of justice that actually work or it can be sometimes when people have lost everything that they start really considering things and no longer being afraid of it, pardoxically, whatever systems work, we will have to see.
There is also another option though in dual power, that is subverting existing power structures by building the things we need ourselves, thereby completely undermining the power people such as the examples you gave have less and less of it over time.
As for the future, we don't necessarily agree that there will be 'shitheads' or if there are it will require quite the same means to ensure they don't ruin the civility or cooperation for us, partially because folks will be more educated and so unlikely to just follow anyone, partially because there will be systems in place that negate the ability for a lot of 'shitheads' to subvert things, as for what to do with them if noticed, in such a system, it would likely be theraputic, restorative and transformative justice techniques, rather than the need for violence.
You're correct of course that a lot of people still think that violence is always necessary and that it's okay as long as those people they trust the most or who are their favourite wield it, currently. This is why we place such emphasis on needing to unlearn the current worldviews and thinking. Things like having heroes, favourites or that violence is okay on a mass scale and not just a tool to be used if absolutely necessary if either it's obvious nothing else will work or as a last result.
Gotcha. I think I’m entirely in agreement about what the ideal outcome would be on this. I guess I just have a more pessimistic view on human nature and whether or not it’s possible to get there.
And hey, this is better than when I went and talked to the hexbear people. Someone there said I should be killed, and then they banned me! So I may be a normie liberal, but you guys are all right.