Quote:
Originally Posted by Freebase Dali
Well, I don't think we're incapable of living outside of a civilized construct. I mean, we created it to begin with. We had to have existed quite well outside it to have even arrived at that point.
But I do agree that we're currently socially/mentally dependent on civilization. But obviously I don't think that's a state of mind relevant to anything but our current way of life, which is pretty much completely dictated by the societies we've constructed.
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Physically, I'm sure we could still hunt, gather, make fire with sticks and all that great stuff, but I think it's impossible to take what we've become socially and mentally, and say to that "Let's go live off the land" and have anybody follow.
(And now follows a tangent not directly addressed to your post).
I'm always curious to know what anarchists actually imagine anarchy to be like. Do they imagine it to be abandoning our higher level of thinking, and returning to the basic animal instincts and processes? Is ingenuity not a human instinct then? How could we stagnate without losing the qualities that make us such a distinct species? Or are anarchists really just teenagers who want to be allowed to quit school and do drugs and vandalize **** all day?
The very fact that we have inventions and services in our society, from how I see it, renders anarchy implausible without reverting to animal behaviour and abandoning civilization. These services and items required to sustain our current society don't come out of thin air and can't be created by just anybody, so there is a need to make exchanges for goods and services, and already the barter system is social structure that anarchy aims to eliminate.
That's why anarchy seems so foolish to me. There's no way to de-evolve, and in our present state of species, we can't function without structure. I imagine that even if some event rendered humanity extinct save for a colony of people untouched by civilization, things would pan out the exact same way, because invention and curiosity is inherent in our species.