What a marvelous conversation you have sparked and hosted here =)
The word Anarchy has long been poisoned by false flag attacks, and for that and various reasons I prefer Autarchy. Not no rule, but self rule.
The fact is that we are all Autarchs. Faced with life we decide how to govern ourselves, and this is why we can be held to account for our decisions should we err. Were we in truth ruled by others, who have actual authority for our acts, they would also hold responsibility for them.
What we see instead is that we are accountable, we are responsible, and therefore we are the authors of our sovereignty. In actual fact, we are Autarchs.
Happy to be afforded the opportunity to again enjoy the delicious fruits of the delightful garden that is your mind!
You are indeed a wordsmith @[-]
valued-customer. I fancied that Demo-cracy was self-rule, but I was wrong. Demos refers to the common people and not the self. Autos refers to the individual. Unfortuantely, in common usage autocracy means dictatorship. I guess the psychopaths have hijacked this word for themselves, the bastards! There doesn't seem to be a really good word for self-rule. By design or just something that's never been in the lexicon? Hmmm. Autonomy seems to work, but it's not personal enough. Anyway, it appears we anarchists need a new word. Let's all work on that.
I expect if autocracy is (and it is) used to denote tyranny, we should instead substitute the word tyrocracy for autocracy, and get our word back!
Odd that anarcrocy isn't a word.
It is now. You just coined it. "rule without authority" I like it. Anarcracy. Lends an air of order to the word anarchy which is wrongly defined as chaos and other derogatory terms.
It's interesting that words drift from their original meaning. The word "gay" has done that in my lifetime. "Outrageous" is another one. The conspiracy theorist (another derogatory connotation) in me wonders if these political words aren't purposely pushed negative, the way that the word "civilization" is pushed positive. I have a hard time thinking of civilization (which is citification) as a positive attribute. All civilizations are hierarchical with slaves at the bottom and pathological elites at the top maintained by a powerful, punitive control structure. What's good about that?
You have provoked many thoughts in me, with few words. This is a sign of clear thinking, and skillful writing.
I do believe that there are whole companies that are paid to do PR for words, both to promote them, and to saddle them with unsavory connotations. 'The' Company, for one. There has in fact been a long PR campaign to taint the word conspiracy with exactly such a burden, despite that fact that most criminal convictions for non-violent crimes, and many violent crimes, involve conspiracies. Think of insider trading and gang wars.
I long ago realized that we are very much self flattering, and that our very Latin appelation, Homo sapiens, is the rankest flattery. How many of the people you know do you consider deserving of being called wise? I have preferred the name H. domesticus, as I reckon that well describes our present evolutionary and social state, but the cynical rebel in me has settled on H. vulgaris.
While I recognize vulgaris means 'common' in Latin, I like that it means vulgar, which seems to be the trait most common to us.
As to hierarchical society, it is highly intraspecifically competitive (and I believe interspecifically as well, as I suspect it is why H. neanderthalensis remains but snippets of our DNA). In war, a ruling class that can allocate resources to mobs of screaming savages is likely to be better able to prosecute successful attacks than egalitarian barbarians who each gain and apply their own wealth in war. History is replete with examples of this: the Romans and Picts, US Cavalry and Apaches...
However, this is only true for war. In cooperative situations, it is the egalitarians that (IMHO) best attain higher quality of life outcomes.
Note I do not segue off into 'isms' capital or social, as I reckon every society is a blend of both, and they aren't opposites, but complement each other.
So, Master/Slave societies best war, and for we survivors, or at least our genes, that is good. Not so much for my kids, as I hope war might soon be obsolete. Along with war, I shall hope oppression vanishes into history as well.
Thank you, that's my calling. Nice to be noticed.
You are so right @ valued-customer. I can't remember the author or the book he wrote, but he was such a person who worked for the government as a PR wordsmith. He's the guy responsible for morphing "global warming" into "climate change." The reason he gave was that people sitting around in Minnesota when it's 30 below might think that global warming wasn't such a bad idea.
You and I must have the same Muse. In 2007 I wrote a light-hearted book, The Slacker's Guide to the Good Life. After the crash of 2008 I changed the name to The Slacker's Guide to the Great Remission. I refer to Homo Sapiens Sapiens (long name) and say it should be Homo estupidicus estupido. I also talk about Homo domesicus, the city-dweller and his evolution to Slacker: Homo feralis. It's the hundredth monkey thing!
Egalitarians wage guerilla war. They are the hardest of all to defeat. Yes, Indians eventually got smashed, mostly due to inferior technology, but it might have not been so if they hadn't been virtually eradicated by germ warfare beforehand. Afghanis have never been conquered.
As Jay Ward, the producer of the 1960's TV show Fractured Flickers once said, "The only ism for me is plagiarism." ;-) All the others are simply economic models.
🍊🍋🍇🍓🍍 LIKEWISE, @valued-customer. :-) P.S. Love 'autarch'!