In a comment to my previous post, evilref made a good point:

Although laws attempt to codify some of the things we do or don't do in polite society, there are many instances of unacceptable behaviour that are not codified in law.

That's very true. I wouldn't want to attempt to codify all bad behavior as laws, and conversely it annoys me when people assume that if something isn't illegal, then it must be okay to do. Most bad behaviour can be rationalised by normal social interaction: act like a dickhead and you'll find that don't want to be your friend.

But thinking this made me realise that I need to clarify my position slightly.

Firstly, when I talk about "punishment" I'm referring to formal punishment that involves the person being punished being deprived of some of their rights for a particular period. If their community puts them in gaol then they are being deprived of the right to liberty. If their community decrees that they can't visit a particular place (the community's pub, say) then they are being deprived for their right to free movement. If their community expells them from their community, then they are being depreprived of their right to access to their home and perhaps family. If their community "fines" them by taking away some of their possesions, then you can argue that's depriving them of their right of control and ownership of things they created.

(I know that some people say that all property is theft, and I agree that ownership of things like land is not intrinsic, but I think most people will agree that if someone spends an entire summer growing some food then that food should belong to them, and it's not okay for someone to just walk up and deprive them of it).

So here's the deal:

If someone acts like a dickhead and annoys me and, as a result, I decide to not be their friend and have nothing to do with them, I'm not depreving them of any rights as they had no intrinsic right for me to be their friend. I'm just choosing not to do something that I don't have to do.

But when it comes to actual formal punishment that deprives someone of their rights, that should only be done in response to them knowingly depriving someone else of their rights. This punishment might be to prevent them from repeating the rights violation (i.e. say they're not allowed to go near their neighbours house after they beat him up), it might be to deter future rights violations, or it might simply be in fair and equal retribution.

So I think it would be wrong for a community to mete out a loss-or-rights punishment to a non-rights-depriving offense that more merited a "don't want to be your friend" response.

But equally, when someone is depriving someone of their rights, and refusing to stop, even when the victim withdraws friendship, at some point they are going to have to have their rights forcibly curtailed.

It might be something trivial like them keeping everyone awake by playing loud music (taking away other people's right to peace, quiet and a good night's sleep), and the only way to stop them is by taking their stereo away.

Something long-term like that could be handled by a series of warnings followed by action, although to me that's less an anarchy and more an ASBOcracy.

But it doesn't work when an offence is bad enough (a violent assault say) that simply saying if you do that again we'll punish you doesn't seem enough.

Oh, and to those who suggested it I've ordered "The Dispossessed". I think I actually read it years ago when I was a kid, but I can hardly remember it and I'm looking forward to reading it again.

Tags: anarchy

I went to a talk at London Vegans yesterday with a title that was something like “Beyond Veganism: Social Ecology and the Triumph of Hope”. It was given by a vegan anarchist, and social ecology is apparently a flavour of anarchism.

Now I'm not a anarchist, though no fan of capitalism nor the unitary nation-state either, but I was still interested in the talk as I'm very interested in how human societies could be organised. If nothing else, I always feel the urge to write SF novels about them. But this talk left me feeling that questions had been unanswered, and I'm wondering now if this was entirely a problem with the talk, or possibly a limitation of the answer. (Obviously, I'm defining this in terms of what I would consider a valid answer).

There's a popular and oft-stated principle that a good talk can be broken down into three stages:

1) Tell 'em what you're going to say.

2) Say it.

3) Tell 'em what you just said.

But this talk felt like it ended at the end of stage one. He explained what the word “anarchy” actually means (a system where there are no rulers) and that it didn't mean chaos and disorder as often mistakenly thought. He then explained a little about the originators of social ecology, and what social ecology was designed to achieve: a system in which people work together in mutual respect, sharing and support, which he felt would naturally imply veganism (because he believes that it is today's heirarchical society that puts animals at the bottom of the heap as objects to be exploited).

Then he finished and asked for questions, just at the point where I was expecting him to explain just how a society organised according to the principles of social ecology would achieve this. At this point I literally had no idea how such a society might be structured or work. If you'd asked me to write an SF short story in a world organised as he would like it I wouldn't have been able to, because I had no idea what that world would be like, other than it would be quite nice and no-one would be getting shafted.

So I asked a question that I thought was a good one: relevant to veganism (this was supposed to be a talk involving veganism after all), and boiling down a large question to a small specific one.

( Read more... )

Tags: anarchy, london vegans