The Google Hangout from yesterday was quite interesting. It’s already been uploaded to YouTube:
Especially the relationship between capitalism and anarchism is one that is worth exploring in more detail: How, if at all, could capitalism coexist with anarchism? This relationship might be enlightened by the following book:
My own relation to anarchism has been in flux for a long time. I’ve read a bit about anarchism, but not as much as I would like to have read. For example, I have little familiarity with the works of the “classical” anarchist writers.
What’s not totally clear to me is how anarchism relates to direct democracy. One certainly could imagine a rather totalitarian and intolerant form of direct democracy that would be quite detached from anarchism. On the other hand, one might conceive of a non-democratic, yet highly consensual, form of decision making that is deepy compatible with anarchism.
And there’s an interesting personal observation, or rather interpretation, of anarchsim in action: Counter-intuitively anarchism, in my opinion, depends on very strong leadership skills! Why? Because you need people who bring forth initiatives and guide the discourse about topics. In anarchism, leaders do not have the luxury of being able to use formal positions of rulership. They have to convince through their natural skills. Anarchism without strong leaders dedicated both to the anarchist ideals and their community will quickly break apart or transform into something else.
So, anarchism seems to be a form of societal order that is dependent on people being highly skilled and determined to uphold ideals in the face or great internal (disagreement within the community, or even oneself) and external stressors (external systems and factions that threaten to destroy anarchist communities). In that sense, anarchism would naturally be compatible with many ideals of transhumanism, because only with mentally and spiritually enhanced (trans-/post-)humans anarchsim can persist within our highly complex and globalized world.
Well, these are my own thoughts, at least. Please disagree with me or enlighten me, if you think I am wrong somewhere.
P.S.: The following science fiction novel was mentioned multiple times during the video conference. It sounded quite fascinating, so I really want to read it sooner or later: