So you want to be an anarchist? But you can’t seem to find any ‘evidence’ that supports anarchy? No one is giving you the facts and figures that support the idea of voluntary society over the state? It seems like all you see and hear is rhetoric?
People don’t typically respond and react to cold hard facts and figures. They respond to ‘illustrations’ that help them envision what the facts and figures describe.
Take gravity for example. How many people know the mathematics and physics behind gravity?
I bet you don’t.
But, can you understand it? Can I explain it to you without giving you complex formulas you can’t make sense of? Can you then go on to do your own research to better understand it? Yes.
That is what illustrations or ‘narratives’ are for. To communicate complex ideas that require an enormous amount of knowledge and training to understand fully to someone who hasn’t knowledge or training or both.
If I were to descibe physical space as a sheet on which rests all matter, could you imagine that?
Then if I were to explain that the more matter there is on a point in the sheet, the more the sheet ‘bends’, could you envision it?
Then if I were to say that the more it bends, the greater its ability to trap other matter that comes to close, would you understand that?
That is an illustration of how gravity works. No numbers. No facts or figures. Just a simple illustration that most people can envision and understand.
That is why most anarchist discussion is ‘illustrative’. We are trying to help people understand the BASIC principles of anarchy and how it can and does work.
But there is another reason, at least, for me: because one of the core ‘tenants’ of anarchy is to QUESTION EVERYTHING and EVERYONE. Don’t take anyone’s word at face value, not even mine.
I will give you an illustrative, basic understanding of it. I will even help to clear up some unclear points of it. But, at the end of the day, you must go out and find the evidence, test the logic and come to your own conclusions.
You're going to have to do some of the thinking, some of the research yourself. I, and most others, are not paid to teach anyone anything about any of this. Everything I talk about, every bit of research I do, I do with my free time. That means that I don't have a lot of time to sit and formulate a lesson plan and then tutor those who have recently become interested in this 'philosophy'.
I would LOVE to be able to open an 'anarchist academy' and teach the basics and logic of anarchy and all of that. Maybe one day I will. But I can't do it right now.
I implore you, ask for the references that hold the evidence that may answer your questions.
Tolstoy. Rothbard. History. Psychology. Sociology. Sites dedicated to breaking down and 'teaching' the fundamentals of anarchy. Many, many other resources that are out there. Most have their own particular 'view' on anarchy such as capitalistic, communistic, et cetera. But at the end of the day, all of them are based on one fundamental belief that is evidenced in nearly every inch of history:
That an individualistic, voluntary society of pure freedom surely must be less destructive than a society based on coercion and violence through the state.
Throughout history, the worst atrocities were not committed by individuals, but by groups galvanized by institutions such as theocracies(Holy Roman Empire), monarchies, democracies, republics, et cetera. Institutionalized rule has led to more war, death, destruction, waste, inefficiency, scientific stagnation, et cetera, than any one, or 100 or even 1000 people could ever hope to accomplish.
At the very least, if there is no evidence for anything else in anarchy, there is nothing but evidence AGAINST the state and that leaves a single option if we wish to have a better society, no state, ie, anarchy, no rulers.