Be a Builder, not a Bullshit Sniper: Sharing Anarchy Effectively

Yesterday I was reading this Steemit post about "hard" vs "soft" anarchists by @sterlinluxan, the Psychologic-Anarchist, and it's supporting an already ongoing re-evaluation of how I approach the spread of voluntarism in society.

In a nutshell, Sterlin's categories of hard and soft anarchists have nothing to do with political leanings (left vs right) but rather how they approach anarchism and specifically the spread of it. As anyone with more than a day's exposure to the online anarchist communities can attest, the more common anarchists are the hard ones, sidelining or even shunning emotion (feelz) entirely, making arguments based on reason, logic, and rationality (realz). The soft anarchists don't forego logic or correctness, but neither do they eschew emotion, particularly empathy, as they spread anarchism. Sterlin's argument, and I agree, is that we need more soft anarchists to continue the spread of peaceful voluntary interaction, and de-indoctrination of the state.

The hard way

For years now I've been a principled voluntarist, but it wasn't until the beginning of 2016 that I reached out to online anarchist communities - mainly because so few people in my daily life shared my philosophy that I was looking for like-minded people to recharge with.

While I found a lot of support, shared and was inspired to some great ideas (and saw many dank memes), one thing troubled me. It was the in-crowd / out-crowd mentality of many people in the groups. While I think ostracism and shame can be powerful tools in the right circumstances and I've heard reports of people being "woke up" by abrasive comments on pro-state posts, I really started to get the feeling that for a lot of anarchists having flame wars with "statists" and doing facebook group comment raids was more about fun ad the rush than is was about really illuminating the path for people not familiar. Worse, most of us, yours truly included, were statists not all that long ago - so it wasn't that hard to see how the relentlessness of the comments might appear to the other side. You might get a few out of a thousand on the path, but most likely the rest will emotionally recoil, retrench in their certainty and pat themselves on the back when it's done. Then you may never get another shot at them, and they might go around telling everyone they know what a bunch of assholes all we voluntarists are. "Anarchist" is already a term with plenty of baggage, I want to minimize the inevitable negative backlash toward "Voluntarist".

Again I want to make it clear that I think aggressive tactics has their place and can be successful in the right circumstance, but my concern is that not enough of us are being as effective as we might be. I don't particularly care about being well liked - especially by strangers - and I know that's common among anarchists. So I'm not appealing to vanity or popularity here, just effectiveness.

As Aesop's Fable goes, the North Wind and the Sun were competing to see which of them could remove the cloak from a traveler. The wind blew and blew and blew, to try to tear the cloak away. But the traveler just clutched his cloak to him all the tighter.

Bullshit sniping

Reading Sterlin's article reminded me of an older Stefan Molyneux video in which he warned against being a "bullshit sniper". I was a very, very good bullshit sniper. If Simo Hayha, Carlos Hathcock, Chris Kyle and I were all on a range, and we were shooting at bullshit, I would win (of course, they are dead). Bullshit sniping is the ability to pick off and shoot down, with deadly precision, the fallacies, lies, inconsistencies, (i.e. bullshit) from other people's arguments. For some of us, it is an automatic and unconscious response. For me it was, and I have to be careful to short circuit that urge sometimes still. When you're with like-minded friends, it can make for lively debate, thoughtful fun discussion and even lead to some important resolutions. Here's the thing though: by and large -

It pisses people off.

Probably few to none of us came all the way to anarchy without encountering a few things that really rustled our jimmies, that we later came to understand and accept as true. However, I think we might also understand that there's a line, some people can tolerate being rubbed the wrong way more than others, and once you push people over into emotionally reactive, they don't really give a damn what you have to say anymore.

Building, not bulldozing

Right now in Brazil, tourists are pouring into the "New Rio", where months ago favelas, the famous slums, were bulldozed over to make room for the Olympic festivities. As I understand it, the people evicted from these homes had very little, and were not given an alternative, a new place to go. I can only imagine they are filled with resentment at being forced to leave. My best guess is that many of these people, if they don't end up worse off than they already were, will just rebuild in another location.

If structures can be used as a metaphor for people's belief systems, then these poor, rundown shantytowns I will use here as people's irrational beliefs. If we knock that shit down while people are still living in them, they are going to be understandably pissed. They won't listen when we say "But we already built this new place for you across town!" They may just rebuild, like the interruption didn't happen. Or worse, if you manage to demolish their belief for good and all, they may feel lost. They may fall into nihilism and depression. They won't care that you have a bright, shiny, good thing to offer because they no longer believe anything is good, right or true.

What we should strive for is to set an example and extend an invitation. By practicing (and preaching) voluntarism in our everyday lives, especially in our personal relationships, we will set examples - our mansions on the hill, if you will. Once we demonstrate what is possible and very real through voluntarism, we will circumvent one of the biggest emotional barriers: fear. We need to build our city and then invite people inside on the condition that they cannot bring their old structure in with them. But who would want to?

By showing, rather than telling, we may convince people to abandon their dilapidated hovels of belief of their own accord. Think about how freeing it would be for you on a personal level to not feel obligated to run around kicking over every rotting edifice of thought you encounter, knowing that so many of them will just be rebuilt and re-inhabited. By living our own values as much as possible, and extending compassion toward others, inviting them to share in our freedom, rather than berating them for not understanding freedom, we can be like the Sun in the fable and shine so brightly that we convince the traveler's to shed their cloaks of their own volition.

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