Darx-
If I got my wish what would I do? Well, it depends on what I felt like I wanted to do. The idea that we can just snap our fingers and tomorrow we can have an Anarchistic society is just not plausible. We as a species are far too caught up in childish thoughts and ideas and it would all descend into chaos. But why would it? Because some people will feel the need to control and rule over other people. The blood shed that occurs when governments fall are from rival groups of people that wish to dominate the general public, and to deepen their own pockets. Plus I never said it would be easy, you need to change the paradigms of today's society. Need to unplug people from the madison ave. induced coma of consumerism, need to show people that democracy is not something that occurs every 4 years. That supposed democracy of the political is not enough. We live in a Republic not a democracy. The system itself is the problem. Anarchy does not mean chaos and no rules, it does not mean rule of the strongest like some twisted form of Darwinism. It means the co-operation of humanity to better the lot in life of all humanity. It means an organized and ordered life determined at the bottom, by the people who must live under those conditions. It means mutual aid, that by helping my neighbor I am helping myself.
Please do not just parrot back all the propaganda about Anarchy not working, that the human race would simply stop working and people would be just sit around flinging poop at each other, until someone with a gun came around to take over. It does not mean that suddenly everyday people like me and you would go on some sort of killing spree because it is not longer against the law. I don't keep myself from killing people just because there is a law against it. Laws are pointless, the good people do not need them and the bad ones don't follow them. I am not saying that we should not do anything about people who do kill or assault or molest others. I am just saying that the general idea that without laws we will all descend into some dark age murder and rape festival is a little far fetched. Anarchy does not mean no rules, it means no government, no RULERS, not no rules. It means that my freedom as a human being on this planet is only as expansive as the freedom you possess and the freedom that everyone else possesses. It means that I do not wish to be ruled , nor do I wish to rule. I will paraphrase Edward Abbey here, Anarchism is not some romantic ideal, it is the hard headed realization after 5000 years of human history that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to politicians, kings, priests, generals, or county commissioners. That hierarchical forms of society are not beneficial to the human species. that only through non-hierarchical, non-coercive decentralized forms of society, based on the federation of voluntary associations can humanity truly be free. No, it wont happen over night, it wont happen in our lifetime, or even the lifetime of our children, but should we not strive toward that goal. Should that not be the target at which we aim?
I know it is hard to imagine a world not based on authority and hierarchy, we haven't had an example of it since the Spanish Civil War in the thirties.
I do know many corrections officers, and have been through several prisons in the course of my career, and yes there are definitely some very mean people held within those walls. There should not be prisons however and a lot of those people have been turned into monsters because of the conditions that they have experienced. I deal with people that have been in prison, some that have been in prison for some pretty violent things, and the majority of them come from poor backgrounds, from single parent households where education is not a priority, there is a whole host of reasons. It always pisses me off when I hear politicians say they are tough on crime. Being tough on crime in today's society means more prisons, more police, more advanced technologies to intrude into peoples lives, more laws with longer terms of prison. They are treating the symptoms not the causes, and the treatment just makes more criminals and worsens the crimes. It is all about justifying positions of authority and making money. It is always more profitable to treat a disease than it is to cure it. Prisons are not about rehabilitation, they are about simply removing undesirables from the public eye, about punishment and creating more monsters by treating them as sub-humans. Prisons are like the university of criminal action. If you truly want to prevent crime, to be hard on crime, educate the people, work to remove poverty, make sure that the children are raised by a village not by a single mom who never complete much more than an elementary education, has seven or eight kids so that she can be a leech on society, and has no time to truly raise those kids and lets the likes of television and pop culture do it for her. The answers are not in more prisons, more authority. We have seen where that leads. Why is it that over half of young black men in this country have criminal records and will have spent at least sometime in jail or prison? Is it because they are lawless heathens? Why do we have more people in prison today per capita than any other first world country?
Skar-
Thanks for providing a different point of view. I agree that as accurate a picture of the enemy as possible is the best way to fight that enemy. I also agree that when someone is trying to kill you it is a natural response to direct hatred that way. I don't think that there is an overt organized campaign to dehumanize the enemy, I think it is ingrained very well into the system, like the man behind the curtain. It may not be as necessary for the soldier on the ground as it once was with the advent of better ways to kill people from greater distances. I do believe that it is required though for the population at large and when you draw your soldiers from that field there is some subconscious strand floating around that brain. Did you ever see that MASH episode with the bomber pilot who finally sees the consequences of his actions while at the 4077? One of my favorites.
I would be interested to hear your thoughts on your boot camp experiences, if you are willing to discuss them. If you feel it may have changed the way you think in anyway, not in an overt brainwashing sense of course. Don't think they are putting people through some Clockwork Orange experiments or anything like that. What about being immersed in the military culture itself? I know this is far afield, but I am curious. I believe people's experiences color their perceptions and that to truly understand something we need to learn to remove the blinders that those experiences have placed over our eyes. That is the historian in me I guess.
Gorgon-
I think we are trying to argue the same thing. I agree that it was the role they were trying to fulfill that made them act that way. That the actions of the guards were that of the role the guards thought they must play. It was the position, not the power that corrupted. They were only role-playing, yet the experiment got out of hand in under a week. What about the actual guards in actual prisons.