some folks who know me well have lately been saying to me that i'm a "theoretical" anarchist, or that i'm an anarchist because of the philosophical leverage or point of view it yields. well, there's something to this. as i urged in against the state, anarchism performs the function in political philosophy that skepticism performs in epistemology; it presses people to justify their fundamental assumptions.
but they're also gently saying i'm a hypocrite, because i pay taxes and use roads, for example, and because i do not take up arms against the state. not that the accusation of hypocrisy is entirely unwarranted, but let me respond briefly. there are things i actually want to do in this world - like teach, and write books, and raise kids. i don't hate the world, even with the state in it, and i will point out that i reject the idea that the state makes everything about our lives together possible: all kinds of things happen outside or in spite of it, and all kinds of things it does are things i think might be done in some form without it. i oppose the state, but there are other things i want to do besides merely constantly oppose it; on a good day i want to be able to ignore it, and i live in such circumstances that i often can, and i take advantage of these circumstances and try to appreciate them. what i'm interested in primarily is doing what i want, and i pay taxes so i won't have to enter into some nightmare hassle with the authorities.
i went through a period as an actual revolutionary of sorts; but then i sort of realized that that would condemn me to a personal history consumed by rage and unproductive activity. (well a lot of folks who were revolutionaries in 1973 realized it wasn't going to work out.) and also i realized that i can comfortably be part of no movement, that i'm temperamentally unsuited to solidarity. one way i continue to realize this; anarchists don't think i'm an anarchist. libertarians don't think i'm a libertarian. even tiny fringe splinters of the ideological spectrum extrude me, until i'm a movement of one. not exactly your effective revolutionary front!
in this and in many other senses (though not all!) i am an individualist. (not all: i do not endorse greed or think that human beings are naturally only self-seeking, e.g.) (not all: i think human individuals exist only in and as relation: to each other but also to non-human things.)
my life included an extreme anti-authority rebellion, expressed with regard to my parents and my schools. i still have that, and it takes the form of what you might call epistemic perversity; it is extremely important to me, evidently, to reject the consensus of the people around me; i constantly really feel reverse peer-pressure, i might say. i've had to learn to compromise with this, because mere rejectionism doesn't really lead you to truth either. i make an effort to listen and try to find a consensus plausible. but i never am perfectly clear on the extent to which i believe what i believe for anti-social reasons. on the other hand, i also think that real insights are available here; if i am proud of anything, it's that i often see things from a different angle than other people, and see things they don't or can't. obviously, i also have my blind spots. but on the other hand, i do immediately detect the authoritarian elements in any discourse, practice, or policy (including the benevolent, good-hearted ones), and work to expose them.
non-anarchists often tease me about being an anarchist; they assume this means that i'm a libertine, and that i can't stand any rules or principles. they think i'm a hypocrite for wearing clothes or writing syllabi with grading standards, or in admiring or practicing or demanding monogamy or sobriety or industriousness or, um, punctuality (cs: the punctual anarchist). but here i'm just going to say that that's wrong. it's coercion i reject, not rules or principles or self-discipline. you can't play chess without rules; the rules are the game. emerson said that "Wild liberty develops iron conscience. Want of liberty, by strengthening law and decorum, stupefies conscience." my desire is to live by rules i impose on myself, and by rules we make together in social activities, or in play. my idea is that rules imposed by coercion make people worse, make conscience and self-discipline and cooperation apparently unnecessary. my ex-wife regards me as puritanical. well, i am puritanical, in proportion as i am always about to tumble into vice. but being that and expressing it or even expecting it of others is not itself incompatible with my anarchism. (that's why i no longer believe a lot of what i wrote in obscenity, anarchy, reality, much to the disappointment of a few fans of that approach.)
so anyway, it is a complex position/life, and complexly related to the various things people - both those who account themselves anarchists and those who don't - mean by 'anarchism.' but there it is.
