Fight or Flight?

From time to time I see various anarchists extolling the virtues of fleeing the U.S.’s evil empire for greener pastures. Others, including myself, have chosen to stick around and see what we can accomplish from inside the belly of the beast. So which is better? Fight or flight?

Right off the bat let me say that I don’t think that, morally speaking, either is superior. If, by analogy, you lived in a rough neighborhood, and had the chance to get out, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with leaving. At the same time, you certainly don’t have any moral obligation to leave. To stay, and try to get rid of the elements making it a rough neighborhood, is just as virtuous (albeit probably more hazardous to your health). So it really comes down to a question of practicality.

This conundrum is a little like the question of when you should tolerate authoritarian garbage for the sake of self-preservation, and when should you resist. On the one hand, keeping your head down and trying not to make waves can reduce the chance of you getting into trouble, at least in the short term. On the other hand, if everyone quietly and passively cooperates with their oppressors, then things invariably get worse. For example...

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

And there is the “catch twenty-two”: if you do resist the leviathan, you quickly make problems for yourself. But if you don’t, and no one else does either, then you slowly make the same problems for yourself. The same could be said of those who flee tyrannical regimes: it’s perfectly moral to do so, and it may very well spare you from a hefty dose of abuse and injustice, but it doesn’t actually make the abuse and injustice go away. In fact, in one sense it rewards and enriches and empowers the thugs to surrender to them whatever wealth or property they acquire via threats and violence. But sometimes that is still the best choice someone has.

And this principle applies regardless of scale. For example, I highly encourage anyone living in the Peoples Republic of New Jersey to abandon that authoritarian cesspool as soon as possible. But of course, if anyone there who still gives a damn about freedom (yes, there are a few) leaves, the cesspool will only get worse. The smallest scale would be if some street gang of violent thugs invaded your home, and you had to decide whether to try to fight them off, or to escape and abandon your home. Again, neither choice is immoral, and if staying and fighting would just get you killed, then staying would be rather silly, unless your goal is righteous martyrdom. However, as with other scales, it’s still true that if everyone just abandons and relinquishes whatever property and territory the violent thugs try to take, and never fights back—well, the end result is violent thugs owning most of the world (which pretty much describes our current situation).

But the scenario of home invaders brings up a fairly obvious idea, which is that, if you have to vacate your home, then you should see if you can go gather enough people to come back with you later to reclaim it, by force if necessary. And that applies to other scales as well. Freedom—whether you’re talking about freedom in a smaller geographic location or freedom for everyone on Earth—is largely a numbers game.

If only a handful of people actually want real freedom, then their options are drastically limited. In short, either they put up with being subjugated and abused, or they try to find some place to hide where they can live as freely as possible, until the control freaks notice them there and come after them. On the other hand, if even a significant minority of the population believes in the concepts of voluntaryism and self-ownership, then there is no force on Earth that will keep them subjugated for long. Generally speaking, the smaller a minority is that wants freedom, the worse an idea it is to fight. And even if fleeing or hiding creates only temporary and relative freedom, and only for some people, it might be long enough that that “temporary” freedom continues for your entire lifetime—a lifetime which may be a lot longer if you're not picking fights with power-happy psychopaths. On the other hand...

“If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.” - Thomas Paine

Either way there are pros and cons, potential risks and benefits. But whatever happens in this or that country, in this or that year, the ultimate solution is entirely about beliefs. When enough minds are freed from the superstition of “authority,” then one way or another, they will find a way for their bodies to be freed as well. The battle that matters far more than any other is the battle of ideas. And thankfully, in this age of information, it’s possible for good people to physical flee and also philosophically fight at the same time. With the internet, one’s physical location is pretty much irrelevant to his ability to try to change the minds of others. It’s not like a slave escaping a plantation, who has to just bid all the other slaves farewell and good luck. Now the “slave” can flee, and continue to talk to the other “slaves” about fleeing, or resisting, or at least starting to question their situation.

It is true that ultimately, unless someone knows some magic trick for removing all malice and violence from human nature, even if (or when) most of the world becomes voluntaryist, humanity will still need good people who are able and willing to use defensive force, to protect against would-be aggressors. Even if, for example, your entire neighborhood is shocked and offended about a few thugs stealing your home, that won’t help you much if none of those shocked, offended people are willing to do anything to reclaim your home for you. Obviously there is nothing wrong about trying to escape and avoid aggressors, but if everyone always runs from danger and conflict, then the world becomes an aggressor’s paradise.

There can be a fine line between someone being brave and righteous, and someone just being stubborn, stupid, pugnacious and bullheaded. As for myself, for now I choose to be stubborn, stupid, pugnacious and bullheaded. I’m not yet ready to abandon the place that has always been my home, to surrender it to the thugs and parasites of the world. At some point that may very well change. But in the end, I’m not finished until either I’m worm food, or until the cult of statism is dead and buried, so that no one has to relinquish their home to tyrants and thieves ever again.

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