Anarchy!!!

I have this new friend that I met through some other friends, as happens at times. He's this nice peace-loving kind of guy, a vegan animal-lover who wears his childhood dog's ID tag on a long chain around his neck, which I find endearing. He's also a philosopher and an anarchist.

This makes me laugh. Not that he's a philosopher, and not necessarily that he's an anarchist, but the term "anarchy" has connotations for me that are amusing. I think specifically about a childhood friend of mine, Amy, who, along with her brother were adopted and then the mother died. My assumption was that her childhood was not idyllic, but not through any fault of her father, who looked to me to be about the most mild-mannered fella a kid would want to have around. His only problem was that he was perhaps a bit too permissive, and maybe there was a pervy uncle or something in the picture, or she could have just made some "bad decisions," but at any rate, around the age of thirteen or fourteen, when everyone is all fucked up by their awkward bodies and hormones, Amy took a wrong turn down the expressway of life. This was right around the time of the advent of grunge music, and Amy started smoking, wearing the same flannel day after day, shaved the bottom hemisphere of her skull and wore the rest up in a ponytail, and skipped school. Oh yes, my dear readers, I'm sure she started participating in sexual intercourse with older boys and possibly even smoking that wacky tabaccy. This is, of course, a sad state of affairs, and the last time I saw her was over twelve years ago and she was pregnant and playing pool in a smoky coffee shop. I have no idea if she's still alive.

This is, of course, no good, and nothing about the story I've told you is funny. Amy is, however, a major player in why I think anarchism is funny. She would write the anarchy symbol all over the place: you know the one, the capitol "A" with a circle around it. On her notebooks, in the bathrooms, on her locker, on her hands. I've also seen it on t-shirts, and the font is cliche-- jagged edges, usually in red. It's a symbol that screams, "I am an anti-establishment badass!! This anarchy symbol shows you how hardcore I am!"

I have to laugh. After several conversations, I feel like I have a basic grasp of what anarchism is, and there is absolutely nothing "badass" about it. My roommate said it best: anarchism is best defined when you don't realize that it's happening. Case in point: in a functional household, adult members of the household work together to solve problems. If there's an issue, they come to mutually acceptable solutions to running said household and getting along with each other. This is anarchism. Anarchists don't like "the state" (I like to think of it as "The Man," simply because I want to keep that moniker alive and kicking) because The Man imposes rules on the people rather than allowing the people to form their own rules. You might say, "We elect those people who make the rules, idiot, so if we don't like them, that's our problem, not the problem of The Man." Well, yeah, but as we all know, politicians often either are corrupt or are easily corruptible because they are, in fact, human, and what about the 50% of Americans who didn't vote for Bush but are still subject to his administration's shenanigans? You might say, okay, simpleton, but we all agree to live in this country and will abide by its rules, so if you don't like it, go somewhere else (which is ridiculous: no one else wants us!!), and I don't entirely disagree with that. The fact is, though, that the anarchists aren't fond of The Man and think we can best solve our problems by ourselves. Power to the people!! (Or whatever.)

Anyway, the point is, anarchism isn't badass. It happens around us, in our homes, every day, which might make the angsty teenagers feel like it's actually a little lame. The problem of the name still exists for me, though. Travis suggests that I call it "Libertarian-socialism," but again, there's the problem with label connotations with libertarians (I know this isn't all libertarians, but I always think about gun-toting hick uber-Republicans, and socialists are awesome, but tacking libertarianism to it seems wierdo). He then suggested that I go with what Peter Marin (sp?), co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, calls it, which was something ridiculous like "Peopleism" or some such silliness that I could never take seriously.

So I'm looking for a new name for anarchism so I can stop tittering about it and start taking it seriously as a philosophy. Perhaps we should go with humanist psychology...that seems a bit anarchistic. We could call it Rogerianism (from Carl Rogers, daddy of humanist psychology). Or maybe we could call it Symbiosis-ism. Insect-ism? Bugs are very small and are the majority of organisms, and without them we'd all be dead... I don't know, I can see the parallels. Anyway, if anyone has any good ideas for alternate labels, let me know, because I just can't seem to get past the branding of "anarchism."