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Arsim's avatar

This is a great series. I agree with you our world has become to complex to fully self govern. More important is what anarchist principles can we implement into our modern world to make life better.

More power to local governments and cities is also what Nassim Taleb is advocating for in Antifragile or Skin in the game. I don’t remember which.

What is your opinion on direct democracy?

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Bryce Tolpen's avatar

Shame could work, but I don't think we could build a community with shame. Shame is a byproduct of having one's identity anchored in the Other--quite an ask in our longstanding individualistic culture. Vine Deloria, Jr. points out that indigenous cultures on Turtle Island, which he describes as shame-based, addressed crime quite effectively without stocks, jails, or any punishment. In such a culture, we'd blush with shame whether the offense were ours or another's. Deloria also points out that indigenous thought is flexible and resilient, not about repristenating the continent by pretending that the last 500 years never happened.

I'm fascinated by that 150-person figure. The historian Lewis Mumford points out that a New England township would split in two if it got too large for self-government. Jefferson, late in life, pointed to the New England township's size and civic life as arguments for his "little republics" of no more than 100 citizens who would do all civic work directly. These republics (beginning in Virginia) would relate federally to larger regions via representatives. Hannah Arendt, whom I sometimes think is an anarchist (she celebrates "isonomy," Athens's self-understanding in which no one ruled), supports Jefferson's idea in her book On Revolution. Arendt calls small groups of "no rule" the institution that is missing from the American Constitution. Without such "institutions," she believed, the spirit of a revolution cannot be maintained.

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