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RE: Star-Spangled Bullpoop
It's not stupid loyalty and groupthink, it's instinct. During our evolution a person needed their groups acceptance to survive, and other groups were a potential threat. We've basically evolved to think of ourselves in groups. That's why we have patriotism, and why people will have rivalries with football teams, and why Texas wants to Texit... They are a group, and everyone else is a dangerous outsider.
Not saying it's good or bad, but let's accept it for what it is rather than insulting people for not being in the anarchist club. Because at that point you're no different.
Larken was actually putting it politely in this article. All of these "patriots" have been indoctrinated to do the actions they are doing and they don't even know the history behind them. Has nothing to do with instinct. I'm not aware of any children that come out of the womb and instinctively start praising flags. It takes daily indoctrination in a government day care for that one.
Humans instinctively do things everyone else around them is doing.
Spent the last half hour looking for a video I saw yesterday, but can't find it so I'll describe it quick because it's exactly what we're talking about:
There's a bunch of people sitting in a doctor's office, and the door opens. When it does everyone stands up except for an asian woman. This repeats several times, until she starts to notice and look around. Finally, she stands up too.
She wasn't indoctrinated, she observed the crowd and instinctively tried to fit in. No one taught her to stand when a door opened, but everyone around her did it so she instinctively joined in.
At the very least, its currently necisary and I'd argue its more than that but clearly currently necisary is the laziest argument you can make for government. If I had the power to say the name of a country, and snap my fingers and by doing so I made every governmental institution in that country go poof I could reduce mos, countries to bloody chaos. A few, the ones with the strongest sense of community might rebuild government before the place burned down completely but I wouldn't count on it. @larkenrose certainly knows this is true. If I snapped my fingers and got rid of the government in his home country while he was in the capital city with his family, and I gave him warning, he'd leave the city because he knows that without government enough of us will try and fill the power vaccume that there'll be a lot of rape and gunplay and theft. Government keeps those who are most violent in line. These anarchists just get off arguing theory.
Well, you gotta start somewhere! ;)
Seriously though I it's the laziest argument you could make. I think it's actually the most salient one. Anarchy is impossible, and while you state "currently" the reality is the things that make it impossible aren't changing any time soon.
I've actually realized recently that anarchism is an attempt to fight the symptom rather than the actual problem. The problem isn't government, it's people who desire power and want to or are willing to harm others for their own gain. Get rid of those, and government becomes irrelevant, as no one in government would pass tyrannical laws anyway.