Tag: Anarchy

Anarchy, Definitions, and Parallels to Continuous Delivery

Anarchy, Definitions, and Parallels to Continuous Delivery

by and | God, Government, Leadership, People

We’ve talked about Anarchy before, in part how it’s an incomplete “plan” for a political system. Twitter is sort of a hub of conversation regarding Anarchism and Libertarianism, and there have been some increasingly interesting arguments there lately, with people making some of those same points and arguing about what Anarchists actually want as an ideal state.

You can see one example in this thread:

https://twitter.com/Wesley_Gest/status/1386402544591724547?s=20

The argument can mostly be summarized like this:

Nice little farm - 9GAG
L: Except I don’t want chickens, because I’m allergic to feathers…

The general perception of Anarchists is that they want cities to burn, that they just want to do damage for the sake of doing damage. Anarchists say, over and over, “no, will you just listen” but a lot of people seem to be terrified of a lack of control. And when Anarchists show up and say they don’t want to be controlled and they don’t think that control is the right answer, it’s massively triggering for those people. When people are terrified, they don’t really listen so good…

Ace is one of our favorites on Twitter.

We thought this was great, and important, (and Ace is really good with words in general), but…incomplete. It covers the interaction pieces, or what it looks like to behave as an Anarchist, but we think it’s important to talk about the fact that it starts with accepting something about yourself, and what that acceptance means for the world around you.

Anarchism, to us, is a consistency of feeling and related action:

  1. You do not agree that you yourself need to be controlled, and/or you do not accept others’ control of you.
  2. You have no desire to control others, finding that repugnant and morally wrong. As such, you do not use any kind of coercion (including manipulation) to dominate others to your will.
  3. You resist and speak out against systems of control applied to people by other people.

That’s…it. No fire-throwing, no building-looting, no Molotov-cocktail wielding manifestos. Anarchism is, instead, the confluence of “I don’t deserve to be controlled” and the Golden Rule.

Anarchism is the confluence of “I don’t deserve to be controlled” and the Golden Rule.

We think people who want to steal and burn and smash just like to hide behind “Anarchy” instead of admitting that they are hateful, or really angry, and want to break stuff. Which we get, really, but could you process your feels before acting please?

What An Anarchist Utopia Looks Like by kickassia - Meme Center

If there was no government law against rioting, would you go out and burn down your neighbor’s buildings and businesses? If there were no government laws against doing heroin, would you go out and do heroin? No? Neither would we. Anarchists are mostly against the government’s tremendously violent history, and we just want to make moral laws consistent with state laws: states shouldn’t have the power to harm, jail, and murder people “legally”. We find that to be immoral. Unfortunately, a sober viewing of history shows that that is what all states do.

This is why we are Anarchists.

Continuous Delivery

We talked about how Libertarianism has a lot of overlap, conceptually, with DevOps (link). While talking about this post, we made an additional connection between Anarchism and Continuous Delivery.

One of the things we discuss in our talks is that Continuous Delivery can just…happen when you get enough barriers, bumps, and blockades out of the way of software delivery. Basically, if you remove enough pain points and things in the way, continuous delivery will just happen because developers want to write code/solve problems/deliver on technical business objectives.

Comparatively, to Anarchist good – focus on the fact that someone controlling you is fundamentally wrong, and…if you’re consistent there, you will treat others the same way.

If you focus on the fact that someone controlling you is fundamentally wrong, and you behave consistently with that conclusion, you will treat others the same way.

Remove control and fear about software delivery -> Continuous Delivery.

Remove control and fear in personal interactions -> Anarchy.

Anarchist Jokes

 

God Words, and Love

We’ll leave you with this, that Josh posted:

The Case for Christian Libertarianism and Anarchy

The Case for Christian Libertarianism and Anarchy

by and | Community, God, Government, Religion

We first had the idea for this blog a while ago, when Laine was trying to find the right words to describe her political leanings. Libertarian isn’t quite right. Anarchist is more accurate, but Anarchy as a whole seems like…a description of the problem more than a fully fleshed out societal plan. The fact is, what we both believe takes pieces from Libertarianism and Anarchy – but mostly, it coincides with the core tenet of Christianity. Since we first thought of doing this blog, we’ve learned thanks to our Libertarian community that actually…the overlap of Christians and Anarchists (and presumably Libertarians) is a common pattern.

Some Definitions, because Context

Libertarianism (see also the other posts we’ve written on the topic):

Libertarianism (from French: libertaire, “libertarian”; from Latin: libertas, “freedom”) is a political philosophy and movement that upholds liberty as a core principle. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, emphasizing free association, freedom of choice, individualism and voluntary association. (Wikipedia)

Libertarians also typically believe that the only time force against another person is warranted is if that person is violating the Non-Aggression Principle (or the “NAP”).

The non-aggression principle (NAP), also called the non-aggression axiom, is a concept in which “aggression”, defined as initiating or threatening any forceful interference with either an individual or their property, is inherently wrong.

Anarchy:

Anarchy is the state of a society being freely constituted without authorities or a governing body. It may also refer to a society or group of people that entirely rejects a set hierarchy. (Wikipedia)

The Core Tenet of Christianity

We’ve talked about The Jesus Cheat before, but the very very condensed arc of the Bible, Christianity’s origin story if you will, goes something like:

  1. God gave people a lot of rules they had to follow in order to be in a relationship with him…
  2. …they were terrible at it.
  3. God got pissed, because is it really that hard to keep your commitments, you guys?
  4. He tried again, with different people…
  5. …they were also terrible at it.
  6. Eventually, he sent Jesus, who was both 100% human and also 100% God (Yeah, that math tho…) to live as a person, among people, and be a sort of…proxy for all of the ways that people screw up and are broken and hide from each other and also God. Jesus was a proxy for this pain (or, if you will, sin) for all people, past present and future, because…God magic, basically? (there’s a reason we very lovingly call it a cheat…)
  7. Jesus died under the weight of all of that pain, including the worst pain of all which is complete separation from God. This served to allow God to (we think) freely give remaining in relationship with people even if they screwed up over and over and over. It also broke, or forgave, any obligation that people had to God and made the relationship purely choice-based.

Basically, God saved people from their own broken, and found a way to stay by pre-forgiving them forever. We get this pre-forgiveness and utter acceptance from God as long as we do one thing (instead of a long list of things) – and that one thing is, depending on who you ask, believing in the Jesus Cheat or just…trying to have a relationship with God – making the relationship “purely choice-based.” Said differently, the only requirement to be fully accepted by God is to choose to be in a relationship with him. Human choice was the only checkbox that God maintained, which would indicate that human choice matters a lot. To God.

…there are nuances of course, and several lifetimes of study and understanding possible regarding Christianity. Maybe in a month or a year or a decade, we’ll be like, no, that was dumb, it’s actually this other thing. But for now, that’s the best understanding we’ve got, and it’s done a LOT to inform our political beliefs.

Libertarianism and Anarchy and Christianity, oh my!

So, we’ve got…

  • Libertarianism: people deserve to be free
  • Anarchy: no human system is the boss of me
  • Christianity: God is the only boss of me, and he appears to have actively preserved my right to choose

As you can see, there’s overlap there… God thinks we deserve to be free to choose, and if we choose a relationship with him, that relationship trumps all other relationships such that we are not subject to the “rule” of…anyone. That means that people do not deserve, or even need, to be controlled, because God’s got this even if sometimes people do awful things. As Josh is fond of saying, karma always comes. If God doesn’t want to control us, then people definitely don’t get to.

Radical Choice-ist

If God worked that hard to preserve human choice, then…so should we. If we don’t try to control other people, and we don’t accept that we deserve to be controlled, then all of our interactions become rife with choice and personal freedom. As long as we aren’t violating the NAP, we have the inherent right to live our lives as we see fit.

Meta