Ideological debates rage on. But imagine an axis representing a state called “rules without rulers." A curve represents experiments living together through time, getting ever closer to the axis.
Have you read The Benedict Option in this connection? In some ways you'd hate it, but the central theme is all about trying to found a new sort of communities with less dependence on mainstream society.
Also, how about including Christian monasticism in your historical examples of anarch-ish case studies? Aren't they great examples of societies voluntarily organized and without coercive power?
Nathan! I'm so glad to see you here! I am also happy to see your writing on Substack, which I just discovered. I therefore woke up today and read about the Golden-Rule-run company and your natural-law corporation Shire example. I saw a LOT to appreciate in both of these articles. And I dare say I might reach out to republish something of yours soon if you'll permit me to.
In any case, I read all manner of things and love to appropriate the best ideas of different traditions. For example, notwithstanding what you refer to as the "jumble" of Jewish teaching -- and I admit Mosaic Law was something of a mess -- remember that Jesus was channeling 1000-2000 years of what Rabbi Hillel the Elder said, purportedly standing on one foot: "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow." Hillel was around about a century before Jesus.
The Golden Rule appears in virtually all traditions in some formulation.
In any case, please share with me any good resources about self-organizing Christian monasticism. I assume this is referred to in the Dreher book? I would also want to be sure such monasteries didn't ultimately depend on the heavy hand of Papa, indulgences, or other quasi-State means that might cause taxes and tithes to be conceptually or practically entangled.
How fun, great to hear from you! Yes, the Shire example of a natural law corporation is very related, isn't it? Definitely republish my posts, or excerpt or whatever, as you please. All content on my Substack is free to distribute at will.
On the Golden Rule/Hillel: Note that there's a difference between the negative "do NOT do unto others as you would NOT have them do unto you" and the positive "DO unto others as you WOULD have them do unto you." The latter is much more ethically ambitious. CS Lewis makes this point. And as far as I know, this audacious, positive form of the Golden Rule, clearly articulated and championed as the center of ethics, is an original achievement of Jesus of Nazareth. That's not a tenet of the Christian faith or anything but it seems to be true as far as I can tell.
On monasticism, I'd actually recommend my own article "The Economics of Monasticism" as a starting point. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TCPkOCBa8mXvtlbtsF0YHh4BaLEMde2S/view?usp=sharing Dreher's book is far more famous but I have a love/hate relationship with it: I like what he's trying to do but he's full of misguided alarmism and muddle-headed grievances and missteps. I wish some other writer would rewrite the book without Dreher's faults. Dreher tends to pick great topics and then kind of mangle them, and yet his books are still worth reading because he's so good at picking topics. Anyway... I think you'll see from my article why I think monasticism is rightly viewed as a spontaneous order. It wasn't imposed top-down in general, though there's certainly state interference sometimes.
Right on! More later. A quick note on the GR: I prefer the Hillel variation because it doesn't go too far. There are all sorts of things I'd like others to do unto me that they might not want me to do unto them. While both formulations are imperfect, the former sets moral boundaries while the latter risks making strange presumptions. But this is just a quibble.
Actually, I think it's a pretty important point, and your position is very reasonable! The negative form of the Golden Rule seems a good deal laxer and more attainable. Hillel's version seems to say to respect people's rights. Jesus's says to practice boundless self-sacrificing love.
And yet I think Hillel's version is not enough. We're all reduced to desperation sometimes and need help when we have nothing to offer in return. Practitioners of Hillel's Golden Rule won't hurt us but they'd feel no duty to help. We need practitioners of Jesus's Golden Rule to come to our rescue.
Also, in the last analysis, there's a lack of rigor in Hillel's Golden Rule. The line between action and inaction is ultimately kind of grey. There are so many times when you didn't explicitly promise, yet you created an expectation. How can you know? Ultimately, I think we need to not stop at Hillel's Golden Rule but embrace the challenge of Jesus's.
Your comment also points to what's sometimes called the Platinum Rule: do unto others *as they would have you do unto them.* I think that's also slightly off base, since it fails to adequately leverage our common humanity to help us understand how to treat each other, but that's another discussion. (The Platinum Rule isn't *far* wrong... but I think it's Jesus who formulated the crowning truth of ethics in the perfect way.)
See the fiscal charging method for vital services or goods that created the freedoms in New England colonies and had peace with the Algonquins for 50 years until the Puritan roundheads and Scot fighters arrived with it as immigration finance of 1-million outcompeting indentured servitude and slavery in a generation PAYEing for passage across the sea, tools, and a grubstake for a family for the first year.
The Algonquins thought it up and told the merchant-adventurers in 1617: Percentage As You Earn %PAYEment Finance and %AYE Finansurance of Humane Investments (HI).
Also All competitive judicial, medical, subscription defense services were PAYEd for and was used by 792 investor owned privately armed warships called privateers to capture over 3,100 Brit vessels in the Revolutionary War to defend these practical freedoms for all who used it.
It is a Volitional Science key to moving past mini-archism to a voliety.
That Tolkien epigram fascinates me - where does it come from...? In his legendarium, Tolkien (as with his good friend C.S. Lewis) showed a great willingness to embrace monarchy, at the very least symbolically. To hear him admit an interest in anarchy is really quite unexpected! (If I had more time, I'd like to discuss your suggestion that Scotland under the clans was 'anarchy-adjacent', but this shall have to wait!)
Wow, that's absurd! But 'rage against the machine' travels well right now... for good reason. In the unlikely event you see anything at Stranger Worlds you'd like to republish, I'd be delighted to ride with your posse again. 😋 Some of next month's pieces might come close to Underthrow's mission... see what you think, anyway. Stay wonderful!
I had wondered about the Tolkein quote too. Based on Max’s comments, I visited your substack and saw lots of interesting articles, and have marked it as something I want to return to when I have more time.
That's great - thanks for letting me know. I've always been an eclectic writer, and the media landscape is not terrible friendly to this (they expect people to have a single focus, 'deep but not wide', as one PR guru told me)... While Stranger Worlds *does* have a single focus (our principles for life), that topic is also broad enough that I end up covering a wildly disparate territory. 😁
"Asymptotic anarchism". Love it! That neatly expresses my own view and I'm going to steal it. Thanks!
Have you read The Benedict Option in this connection? In some ways you'd hate it, but the central theme is all about trying to found a new sort of communities with less dependence on mainstream society.
Also, how about including Christian monasticism in your historical examples of anarch-ish case studies? Aren't they great examples of societies voluntarily organized and without coercive power?
Nathan! I'm so glad to see you here! I am also happy to see your writing on Substack, which I just discovered. I therefore woke up today and read about the Golden-Rule-run company and your natural-law corporation Shire example. I saw a LOT to appreciate in both of these articles. And I dare say I might reach out to republish something of yours soon if you'll permit me to.
In any case, I read all manner of things and love to appropriate the best ideas of different traditions. For example, notwithstanding what you refer to as the "jumble" of Jewish teaching -- and I admit Mosaic Law was something of a mess -- remember that Jesus was channeling 1000-2000 years of what Rabbi Hillel the Elder said, purportedly standing on one foot: "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow." Hillel was around about a century before Jesus.
The Golden Rule appears in virtually all traditions in some formulation.
In any case, please share with me any good resources about self-organizing Christian monasticism. I assume this is referred to in the Dreher book? I would also want to be sure such monasteries didn't ultimately depend on the heavy hand of Papa, indulgences, or other quasi-State means that might cause taxes and tithes to be conceptually or practically entangled.
How fun, great to hear from you! Yes, the Shire example of a natural law corporation is very related, isn't it? Definitely republish my posts, or excerpt or whatever, as you please. All content on my Substack is free to distribute at will.
On the Golden Rule/Hillel: Note that there's a difference between the negative "do NOT do unto others as you would NOT have them do unto you" and the positive "DO unto others as you WOULD have them do unto you." The latter is much more ethically ambitious. CS Lewis makes this point. And as far as I know, this audacious, positive form of the Golden Rule, clearly articulated and championed as the center of ethics, is an original achievement of Jesus of Nazareth. That's not a tenet of the Christian faith or anything but it seems to be true as far as I can tell.
On monasticism, I'd actually recommend my own article "The Economics of Monasticism" as a starting point. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TCPkOCBa8mXvtlbtsF0YHh4BaLEMde2S/view?usp=sharing Dreher's book is far more famous but I have a love/hate relationship with it: I like what he's trying to do but he's full of misguided alarmism and muddle-headed grievances and missteps. I wish some other writer would rewrite the book without Dreher's faults. Dreher tends to pick great topics and then kind of mangle them, and yet his books are still worth reading because he's so good at picking topics. Anyway... I think you'll see from my article why I think monasticism is rightly viewed as a spontaneous order. It wasn't imposed top-down in general, though there's certainly state interference sometimes.
Right on! More later. A quick note on the GR: I prefer the Hillel variation because it doesn't go too far. There are all sorts of things I'd like others to do unto me that they might not want me to do unto them. While both formulations are imperfect, the former sets moral boundaries while the latter risks making strange presumptions. But this is just a quibble.
Actually, I think it's a pretty important point, and your position is very reasonable! The negative form of the Golden Rule seems a good deal laxer and more attainable. Hillel's version seems to say to respect people's rights. Jesus's says to practice boundless self-sacrificing love.
And yet I think Hillel's version is not enough. We're all reduced to desperation sometimes and need help when we have nothing to offer in return. Practitioners of Hillel's Golden Rule won't hurt us but they'd feel no duty to help. We need practitioners of Jesus's Golden Rule to come to our rescue.
Also, in the last analysis, there's a lack of rigor in Hillel's Golden Rule. The line between action and inaction is ultimately kind of grey. There are so many times when you didn't explicitly promise, yet you created an expectation. How can you know? Ultimately, I think we need to not stop at Hillel's Golden Rule but embrace the challenge of Jesus's.
More on this in my unpublished book chapter on the ethics of Jesus: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15jlzx5HxlKlDd9H5pxjQnUGmZiPB5BkI9QJ5wap3b1o/edit :)
Your comment also points to what's sometimes called the Platinum Rule: do unto others *as they would have you do unto them.* I think that's also slightly off base, since it fails to adequately leverage our common humanity to help us understand how to treat each other, but that's another discussion. (The Platinum Rule isn't *far* wrong... but I think it's Jesus who formulated the crowning truth of ethics in the perfect way.)
See the fiscal charging method for vital services or goods that created the freedoms in New England colonies and had peace with the Algonquins for 50 years until the Puritan roundheads and Scot fighters arrived with it as immigration finance of 1-million outcompeting indentured servitude and slavery in a generation PAYEing for passage across the sea, tools, and a grubstake for a family for the first year.
The Algonquins thought it up and told the merchant-adventurers in 1617: Percentage As You Earn %PAYEment Finance and %AYE Finansurance of Humane Investments (HI).
See PAYEhome.org/tool-kit
And
https://docs.google.com/file/d/1hhwvzPhALZ7YWnYnp81doq9DaNW05aBY/edit?usp=docslist_api&filetype=mspresentation
Also All competitive judicial, medical, subscription defense services were PAYEd for and was used by 792 investor owned privately armed warships called privateers to capture over 3,100 Brit vessels in the Revolutionary War to defend these practical freedoms for all who used it.
It is a Volitional Science key to moving past mini-archism to a voliety.
We at Deep Green Futures, Inc. DeepGreenFutures.com
the FreedomTVnetworks.com
New Island Creation Consortium NICCOnauts
and Pahvant Water And Land Development Consortium PahvantWALDC.com are about to build Environmental Prototype Intentional Communities (EPIC)s with it.
If you’d like to go beyond talking and be an actionary, say hello on those websites.
That Tolkien epigram fascinates me - where does it come from...? In his legendarium, Tolkien (as with his good friend C.S. Lewis) showed a great willingness to embrace monarchy, at the very least symbolically. To hear him admit an interest in anarchy is really quite unexpected! (If I had more time, I'd like to discuss your suggestion that Scotland under the clans was 'anarchy-adjacent', but this shall have to wait!)
As I understand it, Tolkein wrote letters to his son, who was conscripted to serve in the RAF during the Second Great War. Here's one source: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/j-r-r-tolkien-from-a-letter-to-christopher-tolkien
Much obliged!
By the way, my friend, you have the second top-viewed article on this site! You absolute badass. I hope you'll let me publish you again :)
Wow, that's absurd! But 'rage against the machine' travels well right now... for good reason. In the unlikely event you see anything at Stranger Worlds you'd like to republish, I'd be delighted to ride with your posse again. 😋 Some of next month's pieces might come close to Underthrow's mission... see what you think, anyway. Stay wonderful!
But the Shire! Surely the Shire as an imaginative depiction of practical anarchy is a great asset to the anarcho-capitalist cause!
Chris,
I had wondered about the Tolkein quote too. Based on Max’s comments, I visited your substack and saw lots of interesting articles, and have marked it as something I want to return to when I have more time.
That's great - thanks for letting me know. I've always been an eclectic writer, and the media landscape is not terrible friendly to this (they expect people to have a single focus, 'deep but not wide', as one PR guru told me)... While Stranger Worlds *does* have a single focus (our principles for life), that topic is also broad enough that I end up covering a wildly disparate territory. 😁