Anarchy - definition and explanation.

Anarchy. Just say the word, and you find yourself thinking of motorcycle gangs, outlaws, a Mad-Max scenario where the strong take what they want from the weak. But is this really so? In order to understand Anarchy, we have to get a definition of Anarchy that works.
The gurus at Dictionary.com define Anarchy as:

1. state of society without government or law.
2. political and social disorder due to the absence of governmental control:
3. anarchism (def 1).
4. lack of obedience to an authority; insubordination:
5. confusion and disorder: Intellectual and moral anarchy followed his loss of faith.
   Synonyms: lawlessness, disruption, turmoil.

The very same dictionary shows the entomology of the word to be: 1530-40; (< Middle French anarchie or Medieval Latin anarchia) < Greek, anarchía lawlessness, literally, lack of a leader, equivalent to ánarch(os) leaderless ( an- an-1+ arch(ós) leader + -os adj. suffix) + -ia -y3

I'm going to start by working through this point by point.

1. State of society without government or law.

This is blatantly untrue, even when man is without government, he's not without law. However, instead of following corporate law, or man made law, man in a state of Anarchy follows Natural Law. Natural law states that the only ways one can survive are a) all alone, or b) in a group. If this confuses you, think of the bear vs the Wolf Pack. The bear lives alone most of the year and the wolf pack is a group environment where the alpha is in charge and the rest follow.

1. political and social disorder due to the absence of governmental control:

I think that this is partially true, as in a true anarchy, there is no political party in charge, but I don't think that just because you don't have a political class that you will have social disorder. If anything, anarchists tend to follow natural law. The strong protect the weak, they exile people who go against their sensibilities, and they are more accepting of slight differences than other groups are. In an Anarchist society, people don't care what you do as long as you can bring something to the group.
Anarchists have a strong sense of justice and they have a set of what some people would think of as undefined rules. Anarchists have a leader, usually a someone with charisma, or someone who has strong leadership skills.
If you have watched Sons of Anarchy, the club had a leader, a council, and was strongly motivated by making money off of gun running. They hung out in a garage and participated in “runs” that gathered money to donate to charity. They had a territory that they watched over, and so on and so on. Justice tended to be served out by “beat downs” or in extreme cases by “Dispatching” or “taking care” of the problem. Usually that meant death at the hands of one of the club.

4 Lack of obedience to an authority; insubordination

Refer to item 2 above. If anything Anarchists obey natural law and they don't believe in insubordination as each person is an individual and when they group up, the person with the greatest skills becomes the leader, until he is challenged and beaten by another member of the group.

5 confusion and disorder: Intellectual and moral anarchy followed his loss of faith.

In my opinion, this is just stupid. Just because a person refuses to follow a de facto or fiat government and their set of man made laws, doesn't lead to confusion or disorder. (see above) Nor does it lead to intellectual or moral decay and why it should be followed by a loss of faith. If anything, freedom from overly constrained laws would lead to an increase of faith, it would just be personal faith.

I'm going to be honest, most people have lost faith in government, in politics, and in fiat currency.
I think that people would be far happier if oppressive government were to go away. The only people, I guess, that wouldn't be happy are those who are professional victims. Without an oppressive government, they wouldn't be able to force their views on everyone else.

Now that we have that out of the way, my definition of anarchy is as follows:

A person who lives according to natural law, not being held to man made law. A person who lives free and is bound only by his word and his own ethics.

Am I an anarchist? To an extent yes. I don't believe that anyone living or working in Washington D.C. Has any right to tell me what to do, nor do they have any right force me to live according to their rules. To a lesser extent, I don't even believe that the Governor and State Legislature have any right to tell me what to do or how to live my life.
The city council where I live only has the right to suggest as to how I live my life, and as long as what I do doesn't bring any harm to anyone else, they don't have any right to bother me or pass any further laws.
Do I break the laws? No, because I am a responsible person. I don't drive any faster than I need to, I don't threaten other people, and I don't get into anyone's business, unless they are causing harm to another person in my community.

Just because someone's an anarchist doesn't mean that they are evil, it just means that they believe in individualism and do what they do because they are driven to do so.