2026-10-29 19:05 UTC
No, you are called to defend not only yourself, but others as well.
So the meek are dependent upon the benevolence and excess production of the strong.
Everyone is responsible both for their own and everyone else’s justice
This is assuming that “justice” is constant, objective, and binary, when it is none of those things.
This is also assuming the capacity exists for individuals. I could very easily choose to travel to Gaza or Ukraine right now, and I am sure I could find a way to join the Palestinians and Ukrainians in their respective fights. I am not doing that, because there are other things I want to do with my life. I could participate in some sort of community watch program if I wanted to, but I do not because I have other things I want to do with my life. We need to compel people with the threat of violence just to get them to participate in jury duty, and you expect them to suddenly dedicate their lives to defending everyone else? That is simply not how humans work.
If someone wants to fit into some “heroic police officer” or even “hero vigilante” role, they will likely be celebrated and supported as long as their actions are heroic, but if they take any bad actions they will be reprimanded and resisted; they chosen role will not be a justification or mitigation.
There are no objective lines between heroic or villainous actions. Heroes and villains are works of fiction. In reality, heroes and villains are determined by messaging, public relations, and marketing.
Drive through any town in America and count how many thin blue line signs you see. These people honestly believe that the police are heroes. A lot of people think “the troops” are heroes for murdering brown people in the middle east.
All actions should be for the collective good
The term “collective good” sounds really great in essays on political philosophies, but has been impossible to put into practice in the real world. There are some right now who believe that sacrificing our land, our water, our trees, our energy, and the work of human artisans to create AI is in favor of the “collective good”.
all of your questions, and every “gotcha” question for anarchists I’ve ever seen, has already been considered and answered in anarchist theory, sometime many, many times
I could have gone through your whole comment and continued, but it’s all the same stuff. These are not “gotcha” questions. They are the very real and obvious flaws that are the reasons that anarchism is not popular. This is not the first time I have sought out the answers to these questions myself. I suppose our difference here is that when I read anarchist theory, I find some ideas that I like but a lot of the solutions are incredibly optimistic, or are dependent upon a world in which everyone was born into an anarchist utopia.
And I don’t mean that as a particular dig at anarchy. I’m sure we could talk and agree at-length about the problems with authoritarianism of all kinds. Even my preferred system, social democracy, has some very clear and obvious flaws like protecting minorities and the state monopoly on violence. I’m in favor of elections for representative democracy in general, but electoralism has plenty of its own flaws and needs to be tempered with other forms of democracy.
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@bss03@infosec.pub 2026-10-29 23:01
So the meek are dependent upon the benevolence and excess production of the strong. Yes, society only has excess production to spend. This is true in any system.