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Venn diagram of the people on the autistic spectrum and the friends of anarchism
I am on the autistic spectrum and reject all forms of hierarchical organisation 52%  52%  [ 27 ]
I am on the autistic spectrum and perceive hierarchy as the only scalable form of organisation 42%  42%  [ 22 ]
I am non-autistic and reject all forms of hierarchical organisation 4%  4%  [ 2 ]
I am non-autistic and perceive hierarchy as the only scalable form of organisation 2%  2%  [ 1 ]
Total votes : 52

jbw
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21 Sep 2014, 10:03 pm

Last week I had a fascinating discussion with a neurotypical colleague and friend. He confirmed that also from his perspective psychopaths play a significant role in shaping society and culture. We then discussed the suspected link between the autistic spectrum and a sense of fairness that is compatible with the philosophy of anarchism.

My friend could follow my line of reasoning, and suggested that the world needs more autistic anarchists. I did not expect this level of support for my point of view, and the conversation has got me thinking about a possible avenue for improving the interface between autistics and the neurotypical world.

Anarchism covers a broad range of philosophies. The commonalities across the board boil down to non-hierarchical forms of organisation. I am not sure what percentage of anarchists are on the autistic spectrum, but the set of all those drawn to some form of anarchism is bound to include a significant number of people without strong autistic traits but with a strong sense of fairness.

Perhaps the non-autistic part of the Venn diagram of people on the autistic spectrum and people drawn to anarchism represents the ideal interface between the autistic and the non-autistic world.

Even if the set of non-autistic-friends-of-anarchism is no larger than the set of people on the autistic spectrum, it may provide us with a concrete recipe for constructing autism-friendly organisations that are capable of interacting with the wider neurotypical world in the best possible way.



androbot01
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21 Sep 2014, 10:11 pm

jbw wrote:
The commonalities across the board boil down to non-hierarchical forms of organisation.


I've never understood hierarchical structure. No one can be at their best all the time. So it should come down to a fluid group effort, I think. But I'm not sure I understand this to be anarchy. Rather a different way of achieving a shared goal.



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21 Sep 2014, 10:23 pm

androbot01 wrote:
jbw wrote:
The commonalities across the board boil down to non-hierarchical forms of organisation.


I've never understood hierarchical structure. No one can be at their best all the time. So it should come down to a fluid group effort, I think. But I'm not sure I understand this to be anarchy. Rather a different way of achieving a shared goal.

That's what most anarchist consider to be anarchy. Not a lack of social structure, but a lack of a solid/forced hierarchy or simply put, without ruler. Most people see the word and think things about it that aren't true, "CHAOS AND ANARCHY" they say. Although, they don't understand either of those words. Both of the words have been redefined in recent years to mean a state of disorder. Chaos is traditionally defined as formless, void, or empty. Anarchy used to mean the idea of not having a ruler. Now both mean lawlessness, evil, randomness, and insanity.

I don't understand hierarchical structure for most things; it only makes since to me in the realm of religion, i.e. Nyx is higher on the hierarchy of the Greek Mythology than Zeus. I have never operated well in a hierarchical structure and see it as being highly irrational for humans. I think a fluid group effort is most effective.



jbw
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21 Sep 2014, 10:27 pm

androbot01 wrote:
jbw wrote:
The commonalities across the board boil down to non-hierarchical forms of organisation.


I've never understood hierarchical structure. No one can be at their best all the time. So it should come down to a fluid group effort, I think. But I'm not sure I understand this to be anarchy. Rather a different way of achieving a shared goal.

Anarchism is a very broad umbrella term, see the definition at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism. The poll question is about the common denominator. Don't worry about the label, focus on hierarchical vs. non-hierarchical organisation.

Also don't get distracted by the colloquial meaning of "anarchy" as outlined here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy.
Anarchy has more than one definition. Some use the term "Anarchy" to refer to a society without a publicly enforced government. When used in this sense, anarchy may or may not be intended to imply political disorder or lawlessness within a society. Many anarchists, like Anselme Bellegarrigue, have complained that "vulgar error has taken 'anarchy' to be synonymous with 'civil war.'"



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21 Sep 2014, 11:11 pm

I've considered myself to be an agorist (a sort of anarcho-capitalist that believes non-violence & certain natural rights for all human beings) for some time. I began to move towards being an anarchist (though I don't often use that word because it typically brings to mind an entirely inacurate image of what I stand for) when I was arrested at 12 years old for playing with fireworks. I was charged with manufacture of a destrctive device, posession of a destructive device (which are both felonies, barring me from voting, inheriting grampa's antique firearms & making it significantly harder to find a job) along with criminal mischief & a few other misdemeanors that I can't recall.

During my incarceration, I witnessed the most extreme acts of violence I've seen in my life (and I consider mine to be a life defined by violence). I spent most of my time in what ammounted to informal solitary (I was told to sit up perfectly straight in an empty cell & the only human contact I had was when my meals were brought to me), but when I was allowed out to be shouted at about how "When you all finally die, your thumbs will be the size of your arms because all you ever did with your miserable lives was suck your god-damn thumb" I witnessed extreme acts of violence on behalf of the staff at the facility I was at without any kind of provocation. I count myself lucky that it was never directed at me. They typically just mocked me, claiming I was "too stupid to speak" because whenever I wasn't alone in my cell I'd have a crippling anxiety attack and would struggle to speak.

I got out on conditional release and had to have somebody watch me 24-7 (this included while I was in the shower, while I was sleeping, while I was on the toilet & doing anything else I might have done). As soon as I was let off conditional release, I was put on suicide watch because I explained to a psychologist that I really didn't want to continue to live if that was all I had to look foreward to. The whole thing was a long, painful experience that did a lot to shape me.

During that time, I had to question why all of this was necesary. How could somebody possibly call this "justice" if "just" is synonymous with "fair". It got me thinking. It got me asking important questions about the world. Before the day some folks in all black pointed their guns at me, threw me on the ground and decided to make my life hell for years despite the fact that I'd not done anything to hurt anyone, I always thought of myself as a republican simply because I was raised to be a republican. After that though, I grew older I came to understand just how fundamentally destructive the status quo is. I explored everything from radical right-wing views to communism, but in the end agorism just seemed the most apealing to me.

If nobody out-ranked anybody else, I highly doubt somebody would get away with smashing somebody's 12 year old daughter's face against a concrete floor because she forgot to say "excuse me sir" like she was instructed to during the orientation. In an anarchistic society, people that kidnapped and tortured non-violent people would soon find themselves dealing with violent people. Unfortunately, we don't live in such a world just yet.

If you'd like to learn more about agorism, feel free to google it, but I recomend reading The New Libertarian Manifesto by Samuel Edward Konkin III (who is widely considered to be the father of agorism) as well as FREEDOM! by Adam Kokesh (a moderately popular agorist web show host who learned of the evils of government while he was a marine deployed in the middle-east).

Sorry if there are a bunch of typos in this post, but I really need to go to sleep now.



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21 Sep 2014, 11:34 pm

i believe there should be a government and a president, but that i am the equal of everyone.



Birdsleep
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22 Sep 2014, 12:56 am

LocksandLiqueur, your life story really upsets me, I hate this kind of cruelty.
I'm very sorry you had to suffer this bad.
My guess would be that you live in the U.S., at least, what happened to you sounds very typical of
that rotten fake-democracy government system.
Though I think that anarchy could work in a society of very mature people, I don't think it is
so much the system that matters, but rather the level of corruption in any kind of system.
The best ideology can be perverted and twisted into something unhealthy, if there are enough
psychopaths pulling the strings and enough ignorant people to put up with it.
Yesterday we had elections in New Zealand, and in spite of the timely exposure of the despicable corruption
of the current government, the same government got voted into power again,which clearly shows,
that society at large is not ready to demand fairness and integrity from it's leadership.
Let alone to work out fair and wise consensus solutions in a non-hierarchical way.
I'm definitely in favor of such a mature system. But I would call it rather Synarchy than Anarchy, a system where each member has the well-being of all the others in mind.
Like a bee-hive. As a beekeeper I know that bees are true anarchists, because no worker bee ever tells
another worker bee what it has to do, but all love to work for the common good of their hive,
because they instinctively know how much they depend on each other.
(Of course it's a bad comparison, because humans are more individualistic and complex than insects, but even bees are not like cyborgs at all, that is a wrong stereotype.)



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22 Sep 2014, 4:26 am

It is my personal believe that a country needs a strong, fair and just leader to be successful, and that in society there will always be those higher and those lower on the social hierarchy. I do not consider myself below anyone else and feel equal to all others as a human being, whether they be a janitor or a heart surgeon, from a rich part of town or in the ghetto.

Still... human nature can be sh***y. People screw each other over any chance they get, they abuse each other and take advantage of the situation when it suits them. There needs to be some form of higher power or authority to prevent things from collapsing. Now I am not personally big on authority but at the same time I realize that we cannot do without it. Without governments and law enforcement and military the world would be overrun by thugs, criminals and IS-like rebel groups running rampant.



jbw
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22 Sep 2014, 6:10 am

Charloz wrote:
It is my personal believe that a country needs a strong, fair and just leader to be successful, and that in society there will always be those higher and those lower on the social hierarchy.

These beliefs and assumptions are what most cultures teach their children. Noam Chomsky correctly describes the education system as a system for indoctrination of the young https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVqMAlgAnlo.

People on the autistic spectrum are not immune to indoctrination. However, we often tend to question so-called authorities if they make a mistake. Over the years we gather plenty of evidence that teaches us a different story regarding the legitimacy of hierarchical authority.

Charloz wrote:
I do not consider myself below anyone else and feel equal to all others as a human being, whether they be a janitor or a heart surgeon, from a rich part of town or in the ghetto.


Such an egalitarian mind set is frequently mentioned on WP. Don't you see a potential inconsistency with the belief regarding the need for a leader and the inevitability of a social gradient as you outline above?

An interesting example of distributed decision making is the head of the Swiss federal government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_C ... witzerland).
Each year, one of the seven Councillors is elected by the United Federal Assembly as President of the Confederation.[8] The Federal Assembly also elects a Vice President. By convention, the positions of President and Vice President rotate annually, each Councillor thus becoming Vice President and then President every seven years while in office.
According to the Swiss order of precedence, the President of the Confederation is the highest-ranking Swiss official. He or she presides over Council meetings and carries out certain representative functions that, in other countries, are the business of a head of state.[9] In urgent situations where a Council decision cannot be made in time, he or she is empowered to act on behalf of the whole Council. Apart from that, though, he or she is a primus inter pares, having no power above and beyond the other six Councillors.
The President is not the Swiss head of state; this function is carried out by the Council in corpore, that is, in its entirety. However, it has recently become usual that the President acts and is recognized as head of state while conducting official visits abroad, as the Council (also by convention) does not leave the country in corpore. More often, though, official visits abroad are carried out by the head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. Visiting heads of state are received by the Federal Council in corpore.


This is not a working example of anarchy but a good example of an unusual style of organisation that minimises the level of hierarchical power that can be exerted by any individual. Another feature of Swiss government is the high level of decision making power that resides in the 35 cantons that make up the federation vs. the limited power that is exerted at the federal level. Each canton has its own taxation and immigration laws. This power structure is the opposite of what is found in most countries. At the same time Switzerland is one of the last countries that granted women the right to vote. Human societies are full of inconsistencies.

Charloz wrote:
Still... human nature can be sh***y. People screw each other over any chance they get, they abuse each other and take advantage of the situation when it suits them.


This may be true in many cases but there are exceptions. You have to realise that established hierarchical power structures have a strong interest in propagating exactly this competitive perception of human nature. Ideologies such as capitalism or authoritarian communism justify their institutions based on the need to keep human nature under control.

Charloz wrote:
There needs to be some form of higher power or authority to prevent things from collapsing. Now I am not personally big on authority but at the same time I realize that we cannot do without it. Without governments and law enforcement and military the world would be overrun by thugs, criminals and IS-like rebel groups running rampant.


Think about it. What evidence do you have to support the validity of these statements? Each hierarchically organised society uses compelling narratives to propagate overly simplistic assumptions about human nature, and such narratives are swallowed by the neurotypical majority hook line & sinker. I am not disputing the power of these narratives, in particular their influence on neurotypical behaviour. I simply want to point out that significant parts of human behaviour are not an immutable genetic part of the human nature but rather the result of pervasive cultural programming.



Last edited by jbw on 22 Sep 2014, 7:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

jbw
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22 Sep 2014, 7:05 am

LocksAndLiqueur, thanks for your detailed post.

Mainstream society brushes experiences such as yours under the carpet with derogatory comments such as "life is not fair, grow up and deal with it". If that kind of society is the best that humans can come with, then it's time to pack up on this planet.

The reason why I stick around is because I have a loving family, and because I believe
- that a lot of horrible human behaviour is the result of cultural programming,
- and that in principle most humans are capable of constructing significantly more compassionate and egalitarian cultures.

I have summarised my perspective on the cruelty of mainstream human cultures in the following post http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp6135252.html.



adriantesq
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22 Sep 2014, 7:32 am

How about a similar exercise for autism and nihilism (the way of the buddhist) verses autism and controlled nihilism (the way of the bodhisattva)


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jbw
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22 Sep 2014, 7:32 am

Birdsleep wrote:
The best ideology can be perverted and twisted into something unhealthy, if there are enough
psychopaths pulling the strings and enough ignorant people to put up with it.


Yes, this observation is spot-on. There is significant evidence that typical human brains are primarily cultural copying machines. The fidelity of the copying mechanism is quite impressive, certainly from an autistic perspective. Some researchers even present the human ability to copy behaviour as the greatest achievement of humanity. Psychopaths seem to have an intuitive understanding of the typical human copying mechanism, and they simply present their victims with templates that serve their special interest in dominance, and then know exactly how to activate the copy button... again and again. The hierarchical structure of societies is no accident. It is the result of psychopaths playing copying machine operator with the typical population.

Mainstream society is programmed to propagate psychopathic social pyramid schemes and associated forms of corruption.

Birdsleep wrote:
Yesterday we had elections in New Zealand, and in spite of the timely exposure of the despicable corruption
of the current government, the same government got voted into power again,which clearly shows,
that society at large is not ready to demand fairness and integrity from it's leadership.
Let alone to work out fair and wise consensus solutions in a non-hierarchical way.


I also cast my vote in that election. It was depressing to see the extent to which the media is complicit with the establishment, blocking off critical discussions and using linguistic engineering to create a systematic bias designed to protect established institutions.

Birdsleep wrote:
I'm definitely in favor of such a mature system. But I would call it rather Synarchy than Anarchy, a system where each member has the well-being of all the others in mind.
Like a bee-hive. As a beekeeper I know that bees are true anarchists, because no worker bee ever tells
another worker bee what it has to do, but all love to work for the common good of their hive,
because they instinctively know how much they depend on each other.
(Of course it's a bad comparison, because humans are more individualistic and complex than insects, but even bees are not like cyborgs at all, that is a wrong stereotype.)


Humans are mainly special in their ability to consciously ignore physical reality, even to the extent where it threatens human existence on the planet. Humans have a lot to learn from other species. Nature is not nearly as competitive as the modern social Darwinists would like to have us believe. Two very interesting books on this topic:
- MUTUAL AID - A FACTOR OF EVOLUTION, BY P. KROPOTKIN, published 1902, http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4341
- The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society, published 2012, http://www.amazon.com/Age-Empathy-Natur ... B006WB7KEA



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22 Sep 2014, 8:59 am

I can understand the anarchist argument up to a point. Hierarchy should be based on merit (and by merit, I mean the ACTUAL SKILL TO LEAD AND/OR DO THE JOB, not merely the charisma to convince others to put you in the top slot regardless of relevant ability) and also fluid (which is to say, there should be no, "I am right because I am El Queso Grande;" might or social standing should not make right).

But that's as far as my understanding or acceptance of it goes. Unless about 6.5 billion people are going to die off and we are going to go back to living in small, isolated communities with total interdependence within the community (what I have referred to as The First Republic of Our Holler, the only anarcho-collectivist society in which I would live), IT IS NOT GOING TO WORK.

"No government, no authority" sounds nice. It really does. If there are no positions of entrenched power, there are no positions of entrenched power for people to abuse. We would all be nice to each other (after all, we're nice, with the occasional exception, autistic people are some of the nicest, live-and-let-live-est people on Earth).

WE WOULDN'T. The survival of the anarchist society depends on a very high percentage of the people (I'd say upwards of 90%) having the autistic sense of fairness (and not just as it relates to self, but extending into social justice). Most of us do...

...but most people DON'T. That's something I realized after leaving Saint Alan's kingdom (and for sure in dealing with his estate, in which my stepmother and I were the ONLY ones who gave a damn about 'right' and 'fair,' and everyone involved laughed at me and ignored her entirely): Most parents do not negotiate with their kids, most people do not negotiate with each other, and most people don't care so much whether it is right or fair as they care whether they themselves are going to come out on the "right" (read: winning) side of the imbalance.

THE PEOPLE WHO WISH TO ABUSE ENTRENCHED POWER WILL ALWAYS SEEK TO GATHER AND ENTRENCH THAT POWER, WHETHER A POSITION ALREADY EXISTS IN WHICH THEY CAN DO IT OR NOT.

I do not care for the hierarchical system we have currently in place, but I am left with the sad conclusion that SOME for of hierarchical system, in which the fluidity, fairness, and honesty of the system is vigilantly guarded by the people not (currently) on the top of the hierarchy, is the most workable system Homo-allegedly-sapiens has come up with to date.


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22 Sep 2014, 2:57 pm

BuyerBeware wrote:
I can understand the anarchist argument up to a point. Hierarchy should be based on merit (and by merit, I mean the ACTUAL SKILL TO LEAD AND/OR DO THE JOB, not merely the charisma to convince others to put you in the top slot regardless of relevant ability) and also fluid (which is to say, there should be no, "I am right because I am El Queso Grande;" might or social standing should not make right).

But that's as far as my understanding or acceptance of it goes. Unless about 6.5 billion people are going to die off and we are going to go back to living in small, isolated communities with total interdependence within the community (what I have referred to as The First Republic of Our Holler, the only anarcho-collectivist society in which I would live), IT IS NOT GOING TO WORK.

"No government, no authority" sounds nice. It really does. If there are no positions of entrenched power, there are no positions of entrenched power for people to abuse. We would all be nice to each other (after all, we're nice, with the occasional exception, autistic people are some of the nicest, live-and-let-live-est people on Earth).

WE WOULDN'T. The survival of the anarchist society depends on a very high percentage of the people (I'd say upwards of 90%) having the autistic sense of fairness (and not just as it relates to self, but extending into social justice). Most of us do...

...but most people DON'T. That's something I realized after leaving Saint Alan's kingdom (and for sure in dealing with his estate, in which my stepmother and I were the ONLY ones who gave a damn about 'right' and 'fair,' and everyone involved laughed at me and ignored her entirely): Most parents do not negotiate with their kids, most people do not negotiate with each other, and most people don't care so much whether it is right or fair as they care whether they themselves are going to come out on the "right" (read: winning) side of the imbalance.

THE PEOPLE WHO WISH TO ABUSE ENTRENCHED POWER WILL ALWAYS SEEK TO GATHER AND ENTRENCH THAT POWER, WHETHER A POSITION ALREADY EXISTS IN WHICH THEY CAN DO IT OR NOT.

I do not care for the hierarchical system we have currently in place, but I am left with the sad conclusion that SOME for of hierarchical system, in which the fluidity, fairness, and honesty of the system is vigilantly guarded by the people not (currently) on the top of the hierarchy, is the most workable system Homo-allegedly-sapiens has come up with to date.


I agree with this. I lost interest in politics the moment I realized that humanity can't handle true emancipation from arbitrary hierarchies. A society like that would implode on itself or another group would destroy that society. It's a great ideal, but this world isn't ready for it. It is an alien concept to most people.
In a fluid group, the most skilled would make it to the top of society naturally, but I don't consider that a hier-"archy" because it wouldn't be the same as a true ruler. The group would consume a false leader.



jbw
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22 Sep 2014, 5:54 pm

BuyerBeware wrote:
I am left with the sad conclusion that SOME for of hierarchical system, in which the fluidity, fairness, and honesty of the system is vigilantly guarded by the people not (currently) on the top of the hierarchy, is the most workable system Homo-allegedly-sapiens has come up with to date.

That would be a huge step forward, but mainstream cultures are not even progressing towards such a configuration.

Triggered by the options available in the poll, this thread has developed into the classical discussion of the viability of anarchy as a form of organisation for an entire society. The points or view raised so far set the scene for the kind of discussion that I would really like to open:

Would non-autistic-friends-of-anarchism, who will typically share the concerns about the practical viability of anarchism at scale, provide a good interface between autistic culture and the surrounding mainstream cultures?

Modern technologies allow autistics to create and propagate a distinct culture that is quite different from the mainstream cultures in which we find ourselves embedded. Online forums such as WP provide a substrate from which concrete autistic-friendly forms of organisation can emerge that successfully operate within/across mainstream host cultures over extended stretches of time, potentially even over hundreds and thousands of years.

A concrete example in the small: In several WP threads I have mentioned that I run a decentralised non-hierarchically organised software and professional service business. It took a lot of effort to get off the ground, but it has now been working for quite some time. From my perspective the question of how to optimise the interface with the surrounding culture is very concrete.

I have real concerns about the prospect of unthinkingly taking on board typical non-austistic people to interface with the surrounding culture. I have not have created a business for it to be taken over by a psychopathically influenced neurotypical "manager". In fact I've been down that route once and it failed spectacularly. There are more than enough businesses that systematically exploit autistics, especially in the software industry. From the discussion I mention in the OP I am wondering whether those who fall into the category of non-autistic-friends-of-anarchism represent a group we should consciously seek out.

I am well aware of the danger of corruption. In our business we do operate a temporary kind of decision making hierarchy in the form of an on-boarding process that runs over more than five years. The on-boarding process is designed to incrementally build up and validate mutual trust before allowing new team members to make decisions that significantly affect others.

An interesting example of unconventional organisation in the large: Gypsy/Roma culture has successfully survived for many centuries, embedded in host cultures that are typically quite hostile. The Roma culture is a culture that emphasises and consciously maintains the difference between Roma and the host culture via a series of rituals that are specifically designed for that purpose. Roma culture also employs explicit techniques that are very effective at preventing corruption of Roma culture by external "authorities" from host cultures that attempt to assimilate the Roma. Amongst other things the Roma culture uses an approach of non-violence in terms of interacting with host cultures. In many cases non-violence ensures that the impact of potential conflict between Roma culture and the legal system of surrounding host cultures remains contained.



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22 Sep 2014, 6:57 pm

I see a non-hierarchical society as an ideal. But I unfortunately don't see it as a workable order at least in the state of social evolution we are currently in. When we see power vacuums occur during the collapse of social orders such as during wars or, civil unrest or natural disasters - we almost always see a period of chaos followed by a period of tyranny. We do not see the development of non hierarchical society. If we were to look at history when attempts have been made to establish anarchist societies such as during the Spanish Social Revolution of 1936 which occurred during the Spanish Civil War or the during the period of the Paris Commune of 1871 - both of the experiments in something resembling non-hierarchical direct democracy collapsed in less than a year when they were faced with an external force. There are those who argue that those experiments were very successful. But what cannot be argued is that they were not able to effectively resist an existential enemy. Whether hierarchy can be overcome in time - one cannot say. But I don't see that as plausible in our current world as we know it.


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