In the interest of Freedom or Anarchy

So in response to frequent requests by my friends Peter, Jeff, Ian, and Chip (girls don't read my blog because girls are all better than us and have things to do that don't involve computers, strange mysterious things beyond the comprehension of mortal/dork men) I have allowed any and all to comment on this site. Actually, I thought I had already done that, but apparently my ability to influence technologly remains at something close to the monkey-slapping-icon phase. As I prefer. I'm still not convinced that we aren't all hurtling to our doom with Bill Gates at the helm of our....earth. Which doesn't have a helm. Horrible when a metaphor spins off the gyre and the center cannot hold.

Which is a double paraphrase.

The first is from "The Second Coming" by Yeats, a poet I recommend whenever you haven't had enough symbolist imagery in your life (the full poem is included for your pleasure at the end of the post, with the original line breaks as best as I could transpose: Mea Culpa) and "V for Vendetta" a graphic novel by Alan Moore about a fictional totalitarian England and the anarchist who restores the world through chaos. It's an interesting idea, basically centering on the concept that anarchy is not strictly chaos (true) and that totalitarian regimes can only be foiled with violence.

My problem with anarchy is, essentially, that it places its faith in people. Anarchy is technically a system of government without government, in some ways the purest form of democracy or communism, for that matter. But basically it is a society without a governing authority, and most frequently a utopian ideal that leads to chaos, one reason the two seem so inseperable in modern usage. History shows, time and again, that people by themselves are not to be trusted; people are sheep, and without a shepherd they tend to wander into whatever danger presents itself. Or eat each other. Not that sheep do, but humans would.

I digress.

The difficulty that the novel points out perfectly is that sheep are too complacent when they have a shepherd. People accept orders and, as long as the trains run on time, are more than willing to allow their fellow man to be gassed. Anarchy, in my mind, is the direct predecessor to Totalitarianism, in that it creates a sense of insecurity. People will sacrfice anything to order, as we are beginning to see in the United States. A slow erosion of liberties will bleed the Republic dry until eventually, we too will go the way of Athens, Rome, or Germany. And I think there we have the crux of the matter, and where the novel shows itself to be truly a work of literature, and not merely entertainment. Freedom is not a luxury. Without freedom and liberty, rule is meaningless and justice simply a shelter to feckless thugs. The very thing we cannot sacrifice is our activity, that bit of the divine spark that allows us the force of choice, the very nature of our humanity focused into the single defining syllable that every child learns by the age of two.

No.

But that involvement and activity requires law (this from a guy who on more than one occasion during college woke up to find road signs or traffic cones in his room with his own smudgy fingerprints on them). That's my problem with anarchy. In the end, Rousseau was right. Without a social compact of some kind, we all starve. And eat each other.
Seriously, cannibalism is problem. I mean it.

As for violence, I have to admit that part worries me more often than not. Practically, the record of non-violent victory is a little thin. Yes, Martin Luther King, jr. Yes, Ghandi. Be the change you want to see in the world all you want, but that kid in Tiennamen square bought it under that tank. As did Martin and Mahatma. Oh and that Jesus guy. Washington got to wear his laurels, as did Ho Chi Minh.

I guess it comes down to a question of resolve. I'm not convinced that violence is not the easy way out, the glorious death and the quick return. It's attractive and deceptive, in that there's no reason to assume that the leaders will play Cincinnatus, and we'll all end up with a republic instead of tyrrany. Non-violence is a long term solution, and one I'm not sure that I have the stomach for. I'm not sure I can bear the necessary clubbings, kidnappings, torture, setbacks, failures, and martyrs. I'm not sure that if the day came and tyranny truly did descend again if I wouldn't head for the hills with some good friends and a good store of rifles (and the equipment for a still--can't have a good redneck revolution without a still). I don't know if I'd have the heart to make the real change, that says that violence, in and of itself, is dangerous.

One can hope.

So read Allan Moore (even if he is English) and Yeats (even if he is Irish).
And, dear readers, tell some women about this site. I promise I'll post something funny about feminism soon enough.

Ave atque Vale

The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight; somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?