- I'm fascinated by ideas that belong in the adjacent possible. What is the adjacent possible? It is something that is impossible from where we stand now, but would be possible if walked all the way to the edge of the possible. What are some examples? - Well, in the past, most democracies thought it would be impossible to have universal suffrage. It just seemed ridiculous to give certain groups the vote, such as women. If you look at the history of America, it's quite interesting how in order for women to get the vote, first they had to free the slaves. Once the slaves were free, and only when the slaves were free, was it possible to think about giving women the vote. - Why am I compelled to think about anarchism? - Polarisation of politics. Endless debates between the left and the right. Maybe both sides are wrong? - Systemic injustice within our strongest, most formal institutions, such as courts, police, government welfare services, environmental bodies. - The inability to introduce new terms into the debate. Neoliberalism has a stranglehold on what can or cannot be discussed. It is an agenda-setting ideology. - The biggest obstacle is perception. Even though I see the merits of anarchism, I am still beset by the same doubts that everyone else has, which is that a world of anarchism is a world overrun by gansters like Duterte, who will simply rule over others by violence. - But perception is not always truth. I believe the world is round only because this fact has been drummed into me since I was a child, and is supported by a whole apparatus of reasons that have accumulated over centuries. Without that apparatus, if someone told me the world was round, it could not possibly have a chance against my perception that it is actually flat. - I don't believe anarchism can be a reality tomorrow. It may not even be a reality in a hundred years. Why then do I waste my time thinking about it? Because, as Martin Luther King says, there is a moral arc to the universe, and it is very long. In order for us to know what we should be doing today, or tomorrow, we need to have a vision of what we would like things to be five hundred years from now. The reason that religion is thriving today is because it is the only ideology that offers a far-reaching vision into the future, so far-reaching that it describes what happens after the apocalypse. There are no competing visions. The vision of capitalism is bleak. We know it in our bones. The idea of our entire lives run by the marketplace can only lead to alienation and despair. - I feel a trepidation about giving this talk, because it seems an uphill battle to mount a defense for anarchism. This is what most people think of when they hear the word "anarchism" - Show images of Mad Max, the Unabomber, and the Congo civil war. - The unfortunate thing about these images is that they make us feel visceral fear. We believe that only superhumanly tough characters could survive in such a state of constant warfare. Thomas Hobbes famously said in his 17th century political treatise Leviathan, life without government would be "nasty, brutish and short". - However, these deep-seated emotional fears are not helpful. They are driven by images and movies that we play in our heads. One of the more important things we can do right this moment is to break free of these images through rational argument. This is because things have shifted in the world, and we live in a time when the more dangerous attitude is to be too respectful and fearful of authority. - The only thing I can hope to accomplish in these 20 mins is to make a case that perfectly reasonable people, of which I count myself, see merit in anarchism, at least as a lens through which to view current reality. Even if we don't agree with it as a political philosophy, we can still appreciate it for the questions it asks. - Let me begin by admitting to an assumption I have that the 2 biggest threats to us right now are the threat of nuclear war, and catastrophic climate change. And let me point out that in the case of nuclear war, it is governments who pose the greatest danger. And regarding climate change, it is governments who stand most in the way of making progress to reduce our carbon emissions, through their complete obeisance to fossil fuel companies and a rigged monetary system. As we saw in the Clear Water case, when protesters tried to stop a new oil pipeline from being built over native land, it was government forces who forced the issue. No other group or authority could have done this in the wide open with full media coverage. That is because governments, no matter how much we decry their defects, do possess some moral authority which we implicitly grant them. - [https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/08/french-environment-minister-nicolas-hulot-resigns-180828185854611.html](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/08/french-environment-minister-nicolas-hulot-resigns-180828185854611.html) - When I say that governments are in a different moral category, I mean that we allow them to do things that we wouldn't allow other institutions or organizations to do. - Some questions that I must address - People are going to resort to violence when resources are scarce - Carol and Marvin Ember report "Resource Unpredictability, Mistrust and War" shows that societies go to war because they fear each other, not directly because of resource scarcity - In a state of anarchy, eventually one group will exercise its will to power and come to dominate the others - In a democracy, governments at least have to pay lip service to accountability. This would not exist in a state of anarchy. - Examples of anarchism in practice - Use of direct language that embraces the personal viewpoint, does not use bureaucratic evasion, and respects the audience (see Zinssler On Writing Well) - Tim Berners Lee designing the World Wide Web