Skip to main content

Am I An Anarchist

Today was awesome because I got to spend a couple of hours with Tyler and we waxed philosophical. I explained to him my evolving thoughts and he called me an Anarchist. I'd never been called an anarchist before and since I wasn't entirely sure what one was, I couldn't argue. So just now I read about anarchists in Wikipedia and I realize that I can't really be considered an anarchist as anarchy is a political philosophy and right now I could care less about politics. But I did find this paragraph insightful. It's speaking about the ideologies of the William Goodwin--the Father of Modern-Day Anarchism:

His aversion to the imposition of a rules-based society led him to denounce as a manifestation of the people's "mental enslavement" the foundations of law, property rights and even the institution of marriage. He considered the basic foundations of society as constraining the natural development of individuals to use their powers of reasoning to arrive at a mutually beneficial method of social organisation. In each case, government and its institutions are shown to constrain the development of our capacity to live wholly in accordance with the full and free exercise of private judgement.

That paragraph explains how I feel about organized religions. Particularly the lines about "mental enslavement." I feel governments and religious institutions do impede the development of man. Constrain, in fact, is the perfect description. I find it insulting that people think the human race would devolve into riotous, murderous living if there were no religious underpinnings.

 So while I have no desire to label myself as an anarchist, I do desire to study some of their philosophical works. I really think I'm more of a libertarian--or perhaps an open-sourced, abundant communitarian.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Holy Treason

I don’t know if you’re like me or not, but I was born into the one and only “true” religion of God. I spent my entire life studying and living the principles and teachings of my faith. I knew the doctrine, and I believed it to be true. Until I didn’t. The road to the unraveling of my faith is a rather long one—definitely another article for another day--but suffice it to say, I began studying other religions and realized that all of them contained beautiful truths. I felt as uplifted and inspired while reading their scriptures as I did reading mine. I understood why some referred to religion as a “faith culture” for I was now aware that had I been born and raised in a different religion, I’d have believed that religious tradition to be true. I came to see religions as merely vehicles leading us back to God. Surely God didn’t care whether his children drove jalopies or Jaguars so long as they were moving along the superhighway back to Him. Or could it be her? Or perhaps there wasn’t ju...
2 comments
Read more

Relationships

I've been thinking a bit about relationships. I'm seeing them differently than I've ever seen them before. First, I realize that relationships are created in our minds. What we think about our relationships defines them. If I think my daughter is ungrateful, I will see ingratitude in all her actions. If I tell myself my coworker is annoying, I will find him extremely so.  And so it goes. What we think about others creates how we relate to them. So why not think happy, positive, loving thoughts about the people we relate with? We absolutely have the power to create amazing relationships by changing the way we think about our relations. Second, I've been thinking about the importance of loving the people in our life for who they are, not for what we need them to be. People need freedom to be who they want to be. If you love someone, you don't try to change them. That isn't love. Love is accepting someone for who they are and where they are right now. Love know...
Post a Comment
Read more

Reinforcements and Revelations

Today was full of fun reinforcements and revelations. I belong to a private Facebook group of former Mormons and there is always interesting information being shared. I enjoy reading the experiences of other members and I find comfort in knowing I'm not alone. This weekend several members of the community shared posts about an email they have received from the church asking them to complete a survey on why they left the church. Here is what one member shared: Did anyone else receive a survey by email today from the church? I guess I’m still on their mass email list. Normally I would have just deleted it, but it said if I filled it out I would get a $10 Amazon gift card, so I decided to hurry and complete it. 😂 😜 It had some general factual questions, but then it asked some deep hard questions. Basically, it is trying to figure out who and why people are leaving the church and what they can do to prevent it from happening even more.  They are trying to see if t...
2 comments
Read more