• Prunebutt@slrpnk.net
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          5 months ago

          Betteridge talks about something fundamentally different. Read the essay, it’s really short.

          • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            I skimmed it. It’s bullshit. Reminds me of the “not technically a lie but essentially a lie” bullshit that the door-to-door “have you heard the Good News” religious bastards would try to sucker you in with when I was a kid in the South. A lot of “like us” type bullshit.

            If you’re stupid enough, you might think it makes sense. But it’s a fairytale.

            I’m not saying the author is stupid. I’m saying he’s maliciously pandering to stupid people.

            Let’s take a super quick example.

            If there’s a line to get on a crowded bus, do you wait your turn and refrain from elbowing your way past others even in the absence of police? If you answered “yes”

            I’ll try to get past my gag reflex at how condescending this is. But sure. Start with an eminently, universally reasonable position.

            The most basic anarchist principle is self-organization

            Still sounds fairly reasonable, but the intelligent among you might be thinking “hmm, sounds pretty reductive”

            Everyone believes they are capable of behaving reasonably themselves. If they think laws and police are necessary, it is only because they don’t believe that other people are. But if you think about it, don’t those people all feel exactly the same way about you?

            Now we’ve gone fully into “only really dumb people aren’t skeptical at this point” territory. I mean, first of all, in the interest of saving your mental health, it’s a decent idea to ignore any statement that starts with “but if you think about it”. However even going past that, you get to the premise: “I’m a good person, therefore everyone is a good person!” Which is…like…seven-year-old logic.

            Anarchists argue that almost all the anti-social behavior which makes us think it’s necessary to have armies, police, prisons, and governments to control our lives, is actually caused by the systematic inequalities and injustice

            This is the part where we go off the deep end. The author hopes you’re either not paying attention or are really stupid at this point.

            • 0xD@infosec.pub
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              5 months ago

              Yeah I was like “maybe I was wrong” but then I came to that part and just had to laugh.

              I would love to assume that everyone is benevolent - but they simply are not. It’s not like there aren’t sufficient examples of states without police or military power. They surely don’t correspond to this fantastical view.