Lost Art Press

Man of War

Posted on by Lost Art Press

Steven Pinker was a 15-year-old anarchist. He didn’t think people needed a police force to keep the peace. Governments caused the very problems they were supposed to solve.

Besides, it was 1969, said Dr. Pinker, who is now a 57-year-old psychologist at Harvard. “If you weren’t an anarchist,” he said, “you couldn’t get a date.”

— The New York Times, “Human Nature’s Pathologist,” Nov. 28, 2011

20 thoughts on “Man of War”

  2. Gustav Landauer- “The State is a condition, a certain
    relationship between human beings; a mode of human
    behaviour, we destroy it by contracting other
    relationships, by behaving differently.” From:Eugene
    Lunn-Prophet of Community. 1973. originally from
    Beginnen:Aufsatze uber Sozialismus. Ed. Martin
    Buber.Koln:Marean-Block Verlag,1916 Also in:Buber,
    Paths in Utopia

  3. Anarchy is a sexy word, but I think what you are really after, Chris, is Distributism. Check it out if you haven’t. It’s the closest we have to a system that would make society more like Hobbiton and less like the board room of Morgan Stanley.

  4. “He didn’t think people needed a police force to keep the peace. ” Tell him to come down to Mexico and give us some ideas… people are a strange bunch…

  5. I read the NYT article; very interesting. The article implies that not only evolution but also the rise of states has contributed to the worldwide decline in violence. If so, then doesn’t Pinker help make the case against anarchy?

    1. Amos,

      Gold Star for Robot Boy!

      It is an interesting story, and is an argument for an ordered society. Anarchy (a lawless society) is unrealistic until Cyberdyne Systems comes to be. Anarchism (a resistance to order), on the other hand, is necessary. For me, at least.

      1. Only in an ordered society can one have the time to wonder what it would be like without order. Other wise the person with the biggest gun or the most fanatics wins.
        I ponder these things while the glue drys.
        Usually disorder wins. I just spent hours looking for a tool that my wife felt was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
        Tomorrow I will grout.

      2. To anyone interested in the subject of orderly societies, I might suggest that this was in fact the fundamental theme of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, brought to full fruition by Ludwig von Mises and his protege FA Hayek in his work on the emergent order of free societies, and the inherent disorder and repression of centralized states. Personally I find Hayek to be the most persuasive of all the econo/social theorists.

  6. What I’m trying to figure out is why more people haven’t bought up Luddism after the release of your book. Part of Neo-Luddite, Theodore Kaczynski’s Manifesto, Industrial Society and Its Future, reads like it’s a quote you’d put up on your website or book. For how many over lapping ideas there are I’m surprised there hasn’t been more discussion

    “”The industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in ‘advanced’ countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilled, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world.”

    1. For a more nuanced understanding of the cultural impacts of early industrialization in Great Britain read Rebels Against the Future by Kirkpatrick Sale. The industrialists/capitalists broke up the old cottage system where the weavers wove cloth at home and could be with their families and homestead. The factory system brought them into a factory from dark to dark. The quality of life and local economies were shattered.

  7. Chris:

    Your last few posts have set me to thinking that I read something very similar as a young man. It finally hit me. Your recent writing is reminiscent of Ed Abbey at his finest (crankiest). This is a wonderful thing.

    “Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.” – Ed Abbey

  8. Don’t paint with too broad a brush. I have to say that we might not be so sanguine about an ungoverned, pre-industrial society if we had to live in one. And I don’t mean for a 2 week African safari or a couple of turns behind the plow at a historical reenactment farm. The horrors of 19th century factory conditions are always pointed to as evidence, but pre-industrial shops could be just as gruelling, just as dehumanizing. Lots of joiners and cabinetmakers were fired when they could no longer see well and wound up mucking out stalls for gin money. And there are millions of people who had fruitful, interesting lives working in factories building things that mattered, doing work they were proud of.

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