Asofon

People don't know how good they have it. It's ironic that being on Lemmy is likely to speak volumes about one's level of luxury yet people here really, really don't like to be reminded that they are probably doing way better than most people in the world. Definitely unimaginably better than most people in the world in all history.

Yeah the top 1% sucks and capitalism has to be reigned in but there's a lot of people here who are only interested in wallowing in their self-pity with the occasional whimper about how Communism/Socialism/Anarchism etc. would be a totally better system if not for capitalism and if everyone just agreed to do it (and somehow they actually don't see the problem with the argument). They make these posts and then pat themselves on the back about what good activists they are and then return to bitching about things happening half-way across the world but never give a single thought to doing something in their local community (because that would require actually dealing with real humans).

It's kinda like the flip side of people who bitch about taxes not doing anything, while using infrastructure, probably in some level of safety, benefitting from public healthcare (if applicable) and schools etc. but because they're just used to it, they don't realize how big of a difference it makes. Most people on Lemmy have 0 concept of what it's actually like living in an oppressive and corrupt regime. They are addicted to misery because it gives them the reason to be inactive and permanentley outraged. They buy into all the doomscrolling (on their luxury devices, during their luxurious amount of free time) about how much things suck and of course, this just aids the capitalistic system because passive people seething at home about the injustices in the world are always better than active people on the streets trying to actually make a change happen.

What people would need to do: consciously practice gratitude (this gives you energy) over what they have and especially who they have in their life, find LOCAL opportunities to engage in activism and connect with people (opportunities to practice what you preach too).
What's easier to do: sit on your device, get angry about another injustice in the world, feel exhausted with "all the bad stuff in the world", don't do anything but post another meme that perpetuates the cycle.

Also, inb4 Mr. Gotcha meme. Yeah, go ahead, compare yourself to a serf who couldn't even imagine the level of comfort you're living in.

Yeah I'm inclined to agree with this if we define "evil" by destructive power at least (and always worth remembering that we merely have general agreements on what "evil" is, usually based on what is and isn't considered advantageous for human well-being. Absolute good and evil are religious myths.). But GK was also kinda interesting in that his conquests etc. were "honest". He wasn't trying to build some ideal society, he just lived in accordance to "Might Makes Right" and surprisingly indiscriminately applied that into his domain as well. Whatever one could claim for themselves, was theirs so long as they could defend it. Regardless of gender, religion, further cultural details etc.

I feel like he represents the logical conclusion of non-conservative right-wing ideals taken to the extreme. Individual power (however that manifests - raw strength, charisma) trumps everything else, so in a way, libertarian... but everything was of course to be absolutely subject to the Mongol Empire rule so, authoritarian.

If we go by ideology + destructiveness as a metric of "evil", probably Hitler.

Yes, I'm sure that all the people you have an agreement with agree with you.

oooor, they know that they can demand my (and every other admin’s) recall, and the fact that they haven’t proves they just trust us.

Of all the political people, you think it’s anarchists that would be loathe to call out bad power structures? Are you sure this is the argument you want to run with?

Again, effort. Why bother with yet another power tripping admin when they can just hop on to another instance (or ideally, save their energy to actually do something meaningful in real life). It's just a niche online forum run by neurodivergents.

You declare that by the fact that we have a red A next to our name, it gives us some massive boost in pushing our ideas through, even through democratic decision making, which if you knew anything about real-life anarchists, and particularly the neurodivergent sort we go to great lengths to attract, you’d know that people in position of undesired authority (even thouse imposed by the software) are given even more scrutiny than most.

Except that people have already chosen to get into your system. If they didn't desire your system, they wouldn't be in it. They have already chosen for you to have some authority.

You should try to be more charitable instead of superficially trying to gotcha people.

Who are you to tell me what to do?

indeed we self-organize around anarchist principles

You didn't tho. Despite who organized the vote etc. the post stands posted by an Admin, and the post is in clear violation of your own stated Code of Conduct.

We already do that. But we’re not going to avoid all democratic decision making until everyone is “enlightened” or some whatever shite you’re positing.

The "shite" was following prominent Anarchist thinkers (Bakunin, Chomsky) in making the point. I never argued for infinite theoretical education, I argued that critical thinking and awareness of power dynamics are necessary to prevent informal elites. Without tools to recognize bias, framing, and authority signals, "self-organization" becomes a tool for the charismatic or well-connected to dominate.

You can jump up and down all you want about how we “abandoned the ideals of anarchism”, but the mere dint of the matter that actual anarchists choose to voluntarily continue associating with us (and not raise a shitstorm), rather than the armchair theorist with the most superficial understanding of the theory (like you), is all the proof we need we’re going in the right direction.

Unsurprisingly, the people who choose to associate with you agree with you. Have you considered that perhaps anarchists who don't agree with you simply don't feel that it's worth the effort to try to challenge your power structures? Judging by the way you respond to me, it would be futile as anyone who disagrees with you isn't a true anarchist.

I wanna reply to this one more time (if you still care to read) because I've thought about this whole exchange a bit and realized that in lacking the spirit of charitability, I missed that from the perspective of db0 admins, it's likely that they think that because of Anarchist egalitarian ideals, representing the situation in any way they want - even extreme bias - is fine. Because from the principle of egalitarianism, they also do not have any particular responsibility to present the case "objectively".

However, it still completely fails to follow the Anarchist Code of Conduct, falling into decidedly "Unacceptable" behavior and definitely not heeding the invitation for rational discourse, which propaganda, by definition, is not. In the case of the original post on db0, it may have indeed been a human error, but after it's been pointed out and unacknowledged, I'd say it has become an explicit rejection.

Of course from my perspective it also runs into the ideal world problem inherent in Anarchism. The fact is that the posts in the community appear in a certain order (a hierarchy, if you will), and thanks to cognitive biases, what people see first is what will impact their thinking. Add to that the subtle but still existent authority signal, ironically, the red A (for Admin) next to the username. Considering the low stakes situation, there isn't much pressure to think about the matter deeply either, so it's just likely the first and loudest person wins in any case. Which gets to the larger problem in Anarchism where the Charismatic will become the new authority. An informal hierarchy, but a hierarchy none the less.

From The Tyranny of Structurelessness by Jo Freeman:

And as a contemplation, to answer your original question, @ageedizzle@piefed.ca: if we accept the way the db0 admins are running their instance as a form of Anarchism (rejecting the Code of Conduct), we are already living in an Anarchist society. This is what it looks like, taken to its logical conclusion. People will exercise their freedom to do what they want, by any means necessary, as the fact is that ultimately, nobody is inherently more valuable than another. There is no superior power inherent in reality to keep people in a hierarchy, we may only impose human-experience created hierarchies. And imposing hierarchy is by definition, an exercise of authority - the question is how intentional it is. Anarchy leads to unintentional, implicitly imposed hierarchies, which is what we have and which we actively try to remedy with intentional, explicitly imposed hierarchies, so that the seemingly arbitrary advantages of the charismatic or the strong do not function as an unchecked, default mandate for authority within the community. And in order to impose explicit hierarchies, those who want to do so need to have enough Charisma (however that manifests) to impose their implicit authority on others :^)

@db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com @Deceptichum@quokk.au @Takapapatapaka@tarte.nuage-libre.fr

You think the red A stands for Anarchism?

Also you're clearly not reading what I wrote so, not much point in replying further. I already covered the points you attempt to make.

Holding belief that people are rational and able to follow logic :')

You're purposefully sidestepping the extreme bias with which you presented the case, which is something you need to account for considering the privilege you have of establishing the leading argument (creating the thread and the vote in the first place) - If you were to actually follow Anarchist ideals.

You "pulled out some choice morsels" from modlogs to illustrate your point. By selecting which data the community sees, you are using your technical power to dictate the level of information available to voters - exactly the "disparity of education" Bakunin warned about. You argue that obedience to anarchist principles is enough. But anarchism is not a set of rules to be obeyed; it is a method of self-organization. You cannot have "self-organization" if the "self" does not have the tools (education/critical thinking) to organize. By claiming education isn't necessary, the you're essentially saying: "You don't need to understand the system, you just need to do what "WE" ("the authority that's totes not an authority") call "mutual aid" and vote the way we set up the ballot." This is Vanguardism, not Anarchism.

Also, in the spirit of mutual aid, would it not be in your best interest to try your best to educate the people in your community and empower them to think for themselves?

And again, you are free to do as you please but then represent yourself accurately. You're merely demonstrating that you like the vibe of Anarchism but as per my initial point, Anarchism lacks functional power. As a result, you abandoned the Anarchist ideals in order to gain functionality.

It seems to me you just dislike how the vote went and are deciding that everyone who voted against the way you want, is too stupid. I.e. you’re an elitist.

I haven't said a single word about what I thought the result of the vote should have been. I have no inherent problem with the way you conducted the vote either, or what the outcome was, when stripped from the pretense of Anarchism. You are free to run your instance as you like, and people in it are free to interact with it however they want. I'm merely using it as an example of the point I've been making: Anarchism needs people to cooperate, yet lacks functional power to make cooperation to happen and so, people such as yourself will use some type of coercion (authority) to force cooperation the way they (the authority) wants.

To @Deceptichum@quokk.au:

While Orwell was a democratic socialist who fought with anarchists (the POUM and CNT/FAI) in Spain, Animal Farm is a critique of how a revolutionary vanguard (the pigs) uses their monopoly on information and language to gradually assume the same powers as the former masters.

The pigs didn't just use force; they changed the "Seven Commandments" (the rules) and controlled the narrative to ensure the other animals "voted" or agreed with their direction. When an admin says, "We asked for a vote," but provides a biased framework for that vote, they are acting as the "pigs" who manage the "farm" while claiming everyone is equal.

You don't have to be enlightened centrists, you are quite free to have whatever opinions you like. However, given your position as the organizing body of an anarchist community, the question is: why should your opinion carry more weight? Is your opinion more equal than that of others?

"The abolition of authority means, the abolition of the monopoly of force and of influence; it means the abolition of that state of affairs for which social power, that is the combined forces of society, is made into the instrument of thought, the will and interests of a small number of individuals, who by means of the total social power, suppress, for their personal advantage and for their own ideas the freedom of the individual" -Errico Malatesta, Anarchy

You have certain power and you specifically used that power to impose your own ideas on others.

that person doesn’t understand anarchism whatsoever and uses that failed understanding to claim it doesn’t work.

"Instead all that happens in the world is done by people; and government qua government, contributes nothing of its own apart from the tendency to convert everything into a monopoly for the benefit of a particular party or class, as well as offering resistance to every initiative which comes from outside its own clique. " -Errico Malatesta, Anarchy

The anarchist code of conduct says that it's "unacceptable to ... degrade, insult etc. another person/group because of their... acceptance of any unfavorable or disfavorable group, whether this group is political, economic, social, or cultural.". Further you failed to provide grounds for rational discourse, another anarchist ideal.

For Anarchism to work, there needs to be consensus, and an Anarchist community needs to do it's utmost to ensure that all people in the community have roughly the same level of education both in terms of knowledge and ability for critical thinking. Without these, informed consent is impossible. While I appreciate that you as a Lemmy admin can't make sure that everyone goes to school, you still could've done your best to give people the tools to think about the matter from the level of education they have. Instead, you presented the vote from the level of information and opinions you have - driving for the result you wanted.

"It is natural that he who knows more will dominate him who knows less. And were this disparity of education and education and learning the only one to exist between two classes, would not all the others swiftly follow until the world of men itself in its present circumstances, that is, until it was again divided into a mass of slaves and a tiny number of rulers, the former labouring away as they do today, to the advantage of the latter"

"It is very often the case that a highly intelligent worker is obliged to hold his tongue when confronted by a learned fool who defeats him, not by dint of intellect (of which he has none) but by dint of his education" -Michael Bakunin, Integral Education

"In other words: educate them the “right way” — to be obediently passive and accept their fate as right and just, conforming to the New Spirit of the Age. Keep their perspectives narrow, their understanding limited, discourage free and independent thought, instill docility and obedience to keep them from the Masters’ throats." -Noam Chomsky, The Common Good

My main goal is to get you and people to a nuanced take on anarchy, notably that it does not fail inevitably on its own, but is very likely to fail because of capitalism, and is likely to fail on its own if you want (but not inevitably, that’s the absolute i’m trying to fight here).

As I've said multiple times in different words, Anarchism would work beautifully in ideal, perfect conditions.