Ask an Anarchist

[AvalancheMaster]

What do you think of people who are crazy?
Should they be imprisoned in asylum? They´re innocents, and deciding the life of another person is against anarchism. But they are danger for society.

Sorry for writing again, Traitorfish, I just want to note how blatantly ignorant the statement "crazy people are a danger for society" is.

Dude, read some Psychology 101 literature before you ever make this statement again. Sincerely, a guy with a mild anxiety disorder, who has friends in way worse conditions than mine.

 

[Hojsimpson]

Sorry for writing again, Traitorfish, I just want to note how blatantly ignorant the statement "crazy people are a danger for society" is.

Dude, read some Psychology 101 literature before you ever make this statement again. Sincerely, a guy with a mild anxiety disorder, who has friends in way worse conditions than mine.

I´ve heard of people with mental disorders without cure who tried to kill others.
That´s want I tried to say. They´re innocents, is not their fault if they kill someone.

 

[AvalancheMaster]

I´ve heard of people with mental disorders without cure who tried to kill others.
That´s want I tried to say. They´re innocents, is not their fault if they kill someone.

Please, do specify this then. An extremely small fraction of all mental disorders can lead to aggression, and a really small fraction of people who suffer from those disorders are aggressive because of them.

 

[Traitorfish]

I´ve heard of people with mental disorders without cure who tried to kill others.
That´s want I tried to say. They´re innocents, is not their fault if they kill someone.

I don't think I've ever heard of a person who was undergoing effective treatment killing somebody. Which I suppose would be my answer: that the "need" for violence against people with serious mental illnesses is a product of a society's indifference or incompetence, and I don't imagine that would be a serious problem for an anarchist society.

 

[Hojsimpson]

Please, do specify this then. An extremely small fraction of all mental disorders can lead to aggression, and a really small fraction of people who suffer from those disorders are aggressive because of them.

Sorry, I didn´t know so much english.

 

[Borachio]

There are indeed a small number of people who are considered criminally insane and violent.

And an anarchist society wouldn't necessarily mean that there weren't any at all.

I'm not sure how this is an important issue for anarchism generally?

Are you suggesting that it fundamentally undermines the concept of anarchism itself?

 

[AvalancheMaster]

To the extent that it's possible to generalise about two enormously diverse categories, positively. Anarchists will of course make all the usual qualifications about the deficiencies of liberal feminism, bourgeois feminism, etc., along more or less the same lines as Marxists. (A lot of anarchist thought on gender is, as in a lot of regards, Marxist thought given a black paint job. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, mind you.)

Often anarchists will make some appeal to "anarcha-feminism", which variously seems to mean "anarchism done by feminists" or "feminism done by anarchists", depending on who's talking. (I suppose the ideal would be "anarcha-feminism done by anarcha-feminists", but in practice the conceptual distinctions are never really overcome.) Third wave feminism, which tends to explicitly emphasise the multitude of oppression in contemporary society, tends to fit particularly well with this outlook, because it naturally encourages engagement between different tendencies of radical thought.

I'm asking because political correctness is one of the central concepts of feminism, yet I find it at odds with anarchism.

 

[Traitorfish]

I disagree that political correctness is one of the central concepts of feminism. I don't think that "political correctness" is a meaningful term in the first place.

 

[Hojsimpson]

There are indeed a small number of people who are considered criminally insane and violent.

And an anarchist society wouldn't necessarily mean that there weren't any at all.

I'm not sure how this is an important issue for anarchism generally?

Are you suggesting that it fundamentally undermines the concept of anarchism itself?

There are illness that society plays a key role in but others are associated with regions or functions of the brain so there will be.

I´m not suggesting that it undermines the concept of anarchism. Just asked what will do with them if they won´t be cured.

 

[Takhisis]

I don't think I've ever heard of a person who was undergoing effective treatment killing somebody. Which I suppose would be my answer: that the "need" for violence against people with serious mental illnesses is a product of a society's indifference or incompetence, and I don't imagine that would be a serious problem for an anarchist society.

There are some people for whom the only effective 'treatment' is to isolate them from the rest of the world. They're rare cases, but they do exist.

 

[Traitorfish]

No doubt. But it's not clear to me why this requires the sort of institutions which Hojsimpsons seems to getting at.

 

[Takhisis]

Well, let's ask a question of the Anarchist then: how would such people be dealt with in an anarchist society?

 

[Traitorfish]

Couldn't tell you. I haven't even the most basic psychological or psychiatric training, so I'm not qualified to make any suggestions.

 

[Hojsimpson]

No doubt. But it's not clear to me why this requires the sort of institutions which Hojsimpsons seems to getting at.

Simple. I need to learn more english. Sorry.

 

[AvalancheMaster]

Simple. I need to learn more english. Sorry.

If that is the case, you have my apology. I am too ill-tempered, it seems.

 

[Traitorfish]

Simple. I need to learn more english. Sorry.

No need to be so hard on yourself! I understand what you're saying, or well enough that any misunderstanding is my own fault, I just disagree with your assumption that the current, authoritarian mode of psychiatric treatment represents any sort of objective rationality.

 

[Hygro]

Couldn't tell you. I haven't even the most basic psychological or psychiatric training, so I'm not qualified to make any suggestions.

No need to be so hard on yourself! I understand what you're saying, or well enough that any misunderstanding is my own fault, I just disagree with your assumption that the current, authoritarian mode of psychiatric treatment represents any sort of objective rationality.

It felt like a cop out when I read it before. Now with the second quote it really feels like cop out. When pressed to expand on how to deal with social-psychiatric conflict you say you haven't any ideas because you lack judgment in the field, but when someone does present psychiatry in a way that threatens anarchism, you judge it as lacking objective rationality (and as authoritarian, which you may or may not mean ideologically).

You can argue the politicization of psychiatric treatment and its potential for abuse and such, but we the folks trying to understand anarchism are often interested precisely in these types of questions: for example how does anarchy handle pathologically violent people who refuse help from their violent pathology?

It's precisely these questions that matter because from these questions is precisely why most people don't want or reject out of principle things like anarchy.

 

[Traitorfish]

The problem here, I think, is the recurring misapprehension that I'm offering up some sort of blueprint for a new society. I'm not. I wouldn't even know how to begin justifying a project like that, let alone enacting it. I mean, this is "Ask an Anarchist"; people making figuring out how to run their lives for themselves is really the whole point of the thing, y'know?

So if people come to this thread looking for explanations of how an anarchist society would work, or why they should support one, I don't have an answer for them. All I can do is give my opinions to the extent that I've found it necessary to formulate any, and if that turns out to be insufficient, well, that's something you can draw your own conclusions about.

 

[timtofly]

It would seem to me, that just because there is a lack of central authority, does not mean that compassion and caring also get thrown out. There is still education and enlightenment and advancement in the sciences. There would still be institutions run to help alleviate the burden for care on such individuals. The people running these institutions would be just as committed to thriving under an anarchy as any other person living in such a society.

TF is not copping out, but it seems to me that the questions are bordering on strawmen arguments. The point of inquiry is how to handle people who cannot handle themselves and still maintain "anarchy". If abuse occurs in any form of governmental structure it is not because that government fails, but those people running such institutions circumventing such guidelines. Most people seem to think the government is there to safeguard people, but that breaks down when such governmental forces are circumvented.

It is the people who run those institutions that are responsible to live up to the expectations of the form of government they are under. Anarchy still relies on people trusting each other to uphold the understood values agreed upon. There are ways of keeping people to task without violence even in such a society and if those are circumvented then that society fails. It would seem in the best interest of every one to keep up with such agreements to keep society running smoothly without issue.

 

[Gary Childress]

A questions to any and all anarchists in this thread: What are your personal views on religion? Do you think there is a God, an "afterlife"? Are you more agnostic? Or do you see religion as playing a kind of placebo effect on the masses, giving them a false sense that justice will prevail in the end and so forth, sort of along the lines of Marx's comment that it is the "opium of the masses"?