The Abridged Ajani

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In case you were wondering (heh the homonym), I did not make a spelling mistake in my post title - “Wandering” is really what I meant.

Why? My slightly-Romanticized ideal of the Chinese ???? (xiaòaòjianghú) makes it so. This phrase is one which is not exactly in common-use in the world of today, with connotations of a careless wandering about the Central Plains (or the world). Chinese martial arts novels classically depict the hero at the end, after his saving of the world, walking off mentioning this phrase as his next objective and walking off into the horizon, disappearing into the mountains and rivers and never to be seen again - the abandonment of the world and entering a state of carelessness and a deep, spiritual journey.

It’s links to anarchy?

My first exposure to the notion of “voting with your feet”, or “perpetual travelling“, “past tax-payer” etc. introduced me to the possibility of anarchists amongst us - by this I do not mean people who believe in anarchism as a social state, but rather people who have already attained citizenship of an anarchist state (if there is such a thing). Perhaps you will get my point better if I were to illustrate that by “democrat” I do not mean people who believe in democracy e.g. Aung San Suu Kyi, but people already living in one e.g. any random Swiss, maybe.

Although I will confess a certain resonance with anarchist ideals myself (But what ideals? I can’t even define ‘anarchy’ properly myself, do such ideals really exist in the metaphysical realm even, gee?), I really have a problem with its precise definition; schools-of-thought; implementation; stability etc. In effect, my current cognition seems to point to anarchy as at best, an un-creatable utopia and a castle in the air, and at its worse, completely illogical nonsense, though it may also be because of myself not holding enough analysis and understanding yet to truly realise anarchism as a perfect system of existence.

In any case, I drew the link between the wandering heroes of Chinese novels and perpetual travellers (PTs) today. Both to a certain extent appeal to the Romantic and Existentialist self in me, being just being and being what they being. (Lexical ambiguity!) In fact, both are similar as wanderers, and my assumption here is that the PT is not a PT, just so to avoid taxes because they are selfish, rather than individualist. (Subtle difference there…)

My stereotype of the PT is one who goes around the world, curious about all of Earth and it’s people, living each day to the fullest (not necessarily busiest though). Not necessarily anarchist, the PT is nevertheless compatible with anarchist ideals. There is nearly nobody to answer to (except where you really break a serious law, duh), you live for your own. Unrestricted by geographical boundaries and only restricted by the size of our globe, the PT embodies the “vote with your feet” philosophy within him - you don’t like it here, you move to somewhere else. Then if there is nowhere on Earth that can satisfy the curiosity of the PT, then the world he shall call his home. For the average individual, by virtue of his minimal involvement with any authority e.g. because of his lack of crime, the life of the PT should resemble the life of the anarchist in terms of the lack-of political will imposed upon himself.

In practice, I see that virtually no country I know of allows the free movement of any individual without a valid citizenship in any valid country into their borders- in short, if you are stateless, you are about stuck where you are unless you have a special reason for being so. If a stateless individual is afforded the luxury of free movement though, he could very much be a true anarchist. Pseudoanarchy is technically existent in our world, if you are a PT - but that does not guarantee the effectiveness of anarchy on a full-scale. The way I see it, is that PTs are “world citizens” unconscious of or unbothered with their pseudoanarchist state of being. It’s almost like a possible alternative lifestyle to follow for anarchists to put idea into action, albeit limited since they might still need to pay some taxes, belong to some state etc.

To my knowledge, anarchy movements today seem to want the entire world anarchistic, to really make the effect felt - like duh, if 99% of the world belongs to some sentiment of government, how would an anarchist theorist decide if his belief is indeed successful? Perhaps the anarchist amongst the non-anarchists feels peace only because the latter are still bound by laws and authority, otherwise if anarchy was global, maybe all hell would have broken loose.

Empirical evidence for anarchism’s success is scarce, notwithstanding the lack of really-anarchist states throughout history, discounting civil war. My only knowledge of it’s academically-documented success is in Somalia, where anarchy has actually raised the standard of living. (I do think Wikipedia is nice - but if you really want to be critical, don’t count on it and don’t discount my book cred because of my using of it. :)) Now, in response to the criticism that it’s just civil war instead of anarchism, picture this - if the government sucks and war has actually made life better, what the heck is really bad about it? Ignoring the lives lost for a little war, if the war is against the state, without a state, where is the war? The only complication here, though, is probably the reason too why anarchists propose worldwide anarchism - how would an anarchist state not entice it’s non-anarchist neighbours to eat itself up? So ignoring the greed of Ethopia too, anarchy here is empirically workable. But I will confess that that’s too many things I assume and isolate, though the end-statement is that we should not give up on anarchism as a subject-of-thought because it could be what would advance humankind further down our existence.

Why Democracy? Why Communism? Why Anarchism? Why [insert political philosophy here]? Ultimately it’s about affirming humanity itself - we should remember this as our fundamental ethos, rather than thinking democratic ideals like the rule of society as a priori - if anarchism can potentially, by the rule of the individual, bring us happiness, I see no reason why we should reject it based on democratic ideals right away e.g. Anarchism destroys the society! (Anarchism would in fact either make it not compulsory, a non-issue, or allow it to spontaneously recreated, rather than destroying it totally.) Anarchism deserves as much attention by political thinkers and anyone else as does democratic thinking; socialist thinking; royalist thinking or even communist thinking. It is a valid political school-of-thought to study, despite its definition.

The funny thing anyway, is that I found my own country topping the list of countries good for this “vote with your feet” business.

Full, complete anarchism (not just the PT stuff) overnight will radically change the way we think and perceive and live through alot of things even if it is ideal, that means the rise of spontaneous order and perfect satisfaction. It will be a new social order and will give rise to generations of future mankind who will see our democracy now as something tyrannical even - maybe we will have very-original philosophical movements and ideas when we transit to such a foreign existence. Exciting! I must emphasize again though, anarchism remains as a gigantic thought experiment in my head currently, so don’t mark me out as an anarchist just yet. Officially I declare no political affiliation except for the standard upholding of democracy.

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