Anarchy.
I first heard this word – anarchy – when I was very young. I had only just been back in the states for about a year since returning from Naples, Italy, coming back and finding myself with my family, in a hotel until we found legitimate housing. My brother and I had grown accustomed to running around the hotel, now finding ourselves speaking with two strangers, both in their mid 20s. They had drawn the “Anarchy A” on a window. We were curious, asking them what it stood for, what it meant. I had been treated unfairly in a number of different ways by many people up to that point, and hearing of this idea, this concept – freedom – sounded awfully nice. At that time, however, I had no idea that some things just made no sense, even if they sound like they could.
I had come to find, when I was living in New York, that anarchy doesn’t really make sense. I had looked the term over and it had one real clear theme: individuality. I always thought it was strange that an idea like this was deeply rooted in working against authority, for the sake of freedom. This was interesting to me, as I had wondered to myself, “How can anarchy work if there can be no actual leaders?” I resorted to thinking on derivatives. The word looked and sounded anti-government and anti-authority. A lot of the English language looks to derivatives to breathe life into words that currently exist. “An” of “anarchy”, to me, was derivative of “anti”, and “-archy” holding relations with terms like “monarchy”. “Word-forming element meaning ‘rule,’ from Latin –archia, from Greek –arkhia ‘rule,’ from arkhos ‘leader, chief, ruler,’ from arkhe ‘beginning, origin, first place'” (see Dictionary.com “- archy” for source.)
This is little more than an opinion piece on my part, for it doesn’t take long to see that the term anarchy is self defeating.
I’ve looked this over enough times and had come to the conclusion that anarchy cannot exist feasibly. This is only one half the coin, my friend, for now that we’ve looked over the English language, we must now only merely take an intensified gander at social language.
Social Justice.
Some would say that social justice is anarchistic in nature. Look at how a number of members in the social justice crowd treat others with opposing opinions. They are not friends with those who exist outside of their exact train of thought.
You see it with religious groups as well. “They are not representative of us.” “They are not one of us.” “They believe in X, while I believe in Y, and that’s a problem for us if we are to keep moving forward.”
There’s never an outlier, exactly. How can a movement work, survive, thrive, if the movement rapidly deteriorates before reaching the castle walls for the sake of siege? It doesn’t work, because it doesn’t allow itself to. Now look at anarchy: it is almost entirely possible to fall apart, if even one person disagrees with another on skinheads in their group or community. You might be able to draw a parallel here, but I won’t tell you to do that. It’s much better to point in a direction and hint at something that might be over there, in the proverbial tall grass.
Even with feminism, a movement that takes to clashing against the social expectations of each person, clashing with societal norms, feminists don’t believe other feminists are feminists because the other feminists aren’t as good a feminist as the original feminist that bitched about other feminists not being as good a feminist as the original feminist that started this nonsense of how one feminist is more feminist than the other feminist(s).
When observing chaos and order, you must understand that they cannot exist without one another, but they cannot exist within each other, either. Anarchists aren’t much different from feminists in this way, because anarchists and feminists, both groups are easy to dismiss members within their group by simply establishing if someone isn’t exactly with the majority in a number of ways, and even worse than that, the person thinking on dismissing others as not being right there with the group doesn’t speak or think for the group as a whole exactly, and that only further drives a wedge between like-minded individuals. No one person is the same as others that exist within their group – which is to be expected – and because of this, you have to expect dissent and dwindling numbers.
If I were to say to you that I believe in X, Y, and Z, I will likely have people disagree with me on some things. That’s the problem with anarchy, in my personal opinion. It’s not to say that I wish things were fixed and can’t be swayed to work a little different from time to time, but the term itself prohibits even a group of people from actually gathering because even having a leader of a three-person group goes against the very heart of the term itself. Anarchy cannot truly exist because a prime directive must always be established first and foremost, a goal, an aim. If anarchy is anti-rule, simply put, it can’t exist, even at a drawing board level.
Politics.
Now, obviously, politics and anarchy are almost one side of the same coin, which is rather hilarious.
Politics are as much a war as they are a struggle to establish a specified flavor of peace. With this current election, you’ll see some Democrats are not voting for the Democratic nominee, and the same goes with the Republican side of things. You’ll have whole families consider a relative of theirs dead to their family because they aren’t voting for the same as their family. Friends cut ties over this, as well. Everyone has a precious opinion that they want acknowledged, understood, and accepted, when it quite simply isn’t that easy, or feasible. No single person (complete with all their natural-born senses) is safe from this.
And why is that? Dissent is something we must all accept if we are to live longer as a people, and because of this, things get heated between all parties in attendance. I used to work a sales job, going door to door, trying to land a sale, and one thing I was told was “The 3 things you never talk to customers about are sports, religion, and politics.” It’s quite obvious why this is a problem to start on, talking with people about, but the most important thing to remember is the reason why. This culture is too much about disagreement. Because of this, it’s important to gauge the level of reception you’d receive from each and every person, wherever you go.
In essence, anarchy is not feasible in any sense of the word. But of course, this is just an opinion, backed by 26 years of taking in the scenery, and how ugly it all looks. Brown is not a very good color when speaking of the lawn.
* Christian Oddera is 26 years old, with a love for having a free mind. He dabbles in video blogs and the occasional opinion piece. He is always looking to have people thinking differently, if even for just a moment.
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