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Old 01-01-2011, 05:03 PM   #96 (permalink)
Guybrush
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If you go by the definition that anarchy means no government, then animal communities that do not govern themselves with a government must be anarchies. But we're mammals and if you look at social mammals like other apes, wolves, elephant seals, giraffes, then you'll see that social hierarchies are common. A pack of chimps or wolves may be led by an alpha male or female and if you do something wrong, you may get ostracized from the community. This behaviour is largely coded for by their genes and animals behave according to their place in the hierarchy instinctively.

How common this is is not really the point. The point is that this is also part of our evolutionary past. Society and culture are not exclusively products of ideas that only exists in our thoughts. They are part expressions of our nature and biology as social mammals. This is just yet another level to debate against anarchy from. We have an instinct for cooperation and that's part of what's made our species so phenomenally successful. Put jokingly, if we wipe the civilized slate clean and start fresh and watch societies build from scratch, perhaps less social animals like tigers could form stable anarchies, but I believe humans wouldn't. Our willingness for cooperation would eventually lead to the formation of some sort of government.

This point was meant as a rebuttal to the notion that anarchy is more "natural" than to be ruled by a government, but in a world inhabited by billions of people, is that really true?
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