DreamerofDays t1_j0zno7h wrote
Reply to comment by ValyrianJedi in Anarchism at the End of the World: A defence of the instinct that won’t go away by Sventipluk
> and half of the arguments seem to be based on redefining words
I would add to this a slavish dedication to purity of concept, both broadly philosophically, but more specifically, linguistically.
> And yet life is anarchic, and all good things within it; including you.
> Nature is anarchic
This is, indeed, an idea that won’t go away— an appeal to nature divorced from knowledge of it.
It’s an argument that’s been used probably as long as we’ve been making arguments. It’s been used to prop up authority, anarchism, domination, freedom, creationism… you name it, we’ve cited “Nature” as our example and our proof.
“Nature”, which so often seems to exclude us or the things we make.(the word therein defined as just being “anything non-human”).
Nature is not your rhetorical monkey(mine neither, for that matter). It is rigid systems to your randomness, randomness to your rigid systems.
It is symptomatic of the author’s overall method here— craning back from their conclusion, anarchy is THE right state of being— to justify it through cherry-picked examples and fatuous pontification.
To be fair, this isn’t the first time I’ve felt this way running into anarchistic argumentation. I don’t know if that speaks to bias on my part, a commonality of those arguments, or both.
trainface_ t1_j0zq2lw wrote
Nature is the blue-footed booby, watching impassively as the larger of her two chicks slowly fights with the smaller for solitude in her shadow.
And she remains so, as the smaller--now just outside her shadow--slowly dies of exposure baking under the hot sun. struggling, and calling for help.
Avemetatarsalia t1_j1032dh wrote
In many areas of modern intellectual thought, the concept of nature has shifted from the old victorian framework of 'red in tooth and claw' to 'nigh-perfect, beautifully optimized clockwork masterpiece of creation that is the ideal state of all things.'
The irony of course is that this newer perception of nature can exist in great part because we as westerners are so shielded from its full fury. We often interact with it in very controlled settings, Toiling away in a suburban garden; taking a pleasant hike through a local park with upkept nature trails and no predators bigger than the occasional skittish coyote; gawking at exotic beasts at the zoo behind the safety of glass and concrete. Every so often we get an unwelcome reminder when a tornado rips through a town or a mountain lion decides to snack on some pets, but otherwise we really don't deal with it in the way our ancestors (or even a sizeable chunk of the world population living in poor rural areas) did/do.
Anyone who actually deeply studies and/or works with nature (myself included) is very aware that nature is absolutely beautiful and incredibly complex, but also devilishly brutal and uncaring in equal measure.
PostponeIdiocracy t1_j1107f1 wrote
People who appeal to nature should be shown the top 10 from r/natureismetal
libretumente t1_j0zynzh wrote
Profound
trainface_ t1_j11oobx wrote
Lol. But it is true. It is the reason the great gay fruit flies debate of the early 2000's felt so stupid, but was spoken about so seriously.
What do I care how fruit flies fuck?
Maybe the world of evolution and animal behavior is not the best place from which to rely for an ethical north star.
tcl33 t1_j0zzj1q wrote
And according to the author’s definition of anarchy as the absence of domination. But nature is nothing BUT domination—strength having its way with weakness. This article is a synthesis of delusion and word salad.
jeffroddit t1_j11ljw2 wrote
>nature is nothing BUT domination—strength having its way with weakness.
lol, did somebody drink too much redbull and listen to too much black metal today?
tcl33 t1_j11mi9z wrote
No, I’ve just seen nature shows.
jeffroddit t1_j121yof wrote
You've never seen a nature show about clownfish and sea anemones? Mycorrhizas, nitrogen fixing bacteria, or pollinators? No cleaner fish, probiotics, or even just a coral reef?
tcl33 t1_j129ter wrote
Ok. Saying nature is nothing BUT strength dominating weakness is slightly hyperbolic. But only slightly. My retort to the author survives.
jeffroddit t1_j12oey7 wrote
And my examples were similarly exaggerated examples of symbiosis. But have you ever been in nature? What is trying to dominate you on even a semi regular basis?
I yelled at a bear once in 4 decades. Does that even count? Yes I carry spray and/or boomsticks for the .01% of the time you might really need to exert some power, but that's pretty much my point. Actual conflict is rare and brief. Think of bunnies. Do they occasionally get disappeared and decapitated by death on wings? Yup, 2 seconds of terror out of 86,000 seconds in their final day. Do they get spooked and run like bunnies from any imagined threat? Sure. And they still spend 99% of their lives asleep or hippity hopping along eating from nature's bounty.
tcl33 t1_j1467ge wrote
Brutal inter-species dominance hierarchies pervade the natural world. E.g., the food chain. And brutal intra-species competition for resources and mates determines who eats, and who fucks.
The fact that I happen to be a human at the top of the food chain just makes me an exception that proves the rule. I dominate most of the rest of the natural world.
But even I don't dominate all of it. Bacteria are constantly attempting to dominate me and my fellow humans. And sometimes they win.
The author said that an anarchism without domination is natural. It is not.
jeffroddit t1_j14vhwg wrote
I can see over a dozen animal species and hundreds of non-animal species at this very second. Guess how much brutality I see?
But by all means, keep anthropomorphizing nature and pretending you are better than people who do it slightly differently than you do.
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