On Fri, 07 Jun 2019, grarpamp wrote:

> Bernie was asked common philosophical moral NAP question line.
> Do you think individual has right to force another.
> Do you think individual can assign right they dont have.
> Do you think others have right to force others, to wit: gov.

these questions can be posed either by a malicious interviewer or by
an utter ignorant in matters of philosophy, whom is basically a
proponent of natural law in the sense Hobbes gives to the term - with
consequent disintegration of societal norms and ethics.

not an individual, but *society* (gesellschaft, as opposed to the
concept of gemeinschaft which confuses most individualists) can do all
the above. this is not to say that it is good or bad, but historically
humans have organised this way; then in every confrontation of power,
both evolution and numbers count - let go of the messianic notion of
an "hero".

anarco-individualism is naive and a waste of time. one consciousness
alone is just like a leaf of grass in the wind: it won't ever have a
collective grasp of where it comes from and where its going, just
defend itself constantly by anything that is "not me". OTOH the more
or less utopist and lowest common denominator of social-democrat,
anarcho-socialist or marxian thinking is that individual consciousness
does not count much: it is in fact a distortion of reality, and the
higher ground is reached by letting go of all notions of ego. What
counts is collective consciousness, class consciousness and so forth.

Of course I believe there is a balance to be established by these
"universalists" statements, which must be put in context: that is the
work of society and politics, informed and civil confrontation.

I'm not a "statist" BTW. But I do believe that is not through
individual affirmation of freedom that we'll improve our ways of
living: to the contary I believe that is by the creation of new
societies and institutions representing new forms of rationalities and
liberation that we can improve where we live, just like comrades in
Rojava are struggling to do.

Having been in the USA a couple of times, I do understand that the
situation is very different there: land is much more vast and wild
than in EU, many people are not used to live among each other (hence
religion still absolves a crucial function IMHO), density of living is
much lower, conditions of poverty and healthy living are disastrous,
let alone access to education, so I can understand that people have a
strong opposition to those who *should* (and in most cases *mean to*)
organise society in a better way.

however I believe over here in EU we do have a few recent improvements
and one of them is that of not pointing weapons at each other to claim
rights, but primarily debating how is possible to co-exist in peace
and work towards making solutions adopted by societal institutions, so
that they are enforced and nurtured. It took a lot of effort, it took
help from USA too (esp. in terms of muscle flexing during WWII) and it
took centuries of wars; finally right now we are in the single longest
period of peace for what is likely the continent with denser
population and concentration of different cultures.

greetings from Amsterdam, city of Spinoza, whom I believe intended
very different things when he talked about freedom.

ciao