(I googled "Conan the Libertarian" but found only a "Conan the Librarian.")
Do I really want to get back into this argument yet again? No. But the argument is in Poul Anderson's text. I am not importing it. First, I will paraphrase a dialogue between two characters on p. 68.
Conan: If enough serfs cooperated, then they would be able to overthrow the state.
Otanis: But that would end civilization, the heritage of the ages, learning, art and refinement!
Conan: Civilization has much to offer but the price of having a state is too high.
So Conan thinks that it would be better if humanity had remained in the kind of primitive barbarism in which he grew up? I disagree with Conan because I value heritage, learning and art. However, slavery and serfdom are not good.
Could history have proceeded differently with less of the bad and more of the good? It might be difficult to imagine how. But, in any case, we are stuck with how history did happen. But that in turn gives me reason to hope that Conan's preference for a stateless society might be realized in future. This is one theory of how humanity not only has developed but also might continue to develop:
15 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I had to laugh at that "Conan the Librarian"! It's hard to imagine anyone less likely than Conan the Barbarian as a peaceful librarian.
I don't believe the State will somehow disappear. It's our "social tensions," our innate flaws, including our propensity for conflict and violence, that will continue to make the State a necessity. I disagree with Anderson's libertarian leanings here. And, in fact, as Stirling said elsewhere, PA came to reluctantly agree he was wrong.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
We do not have innate flaws. We do not have a propensity for conflict and violence. They happen in some conditions but not in others. There are many situations in which we are not violent. I have spelt out conditions in which a state will be increasingly unnecessary.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I fail to see how you can possibly say that when it's so empirically obvious that all human beings are flawed! And that possibility for violence and conflict is latent in all of us. Even toddlers in sandboxes quarreling over lollipops already know how to fight. Nor do I believe in the realism of your "conditions" making the State less necessary.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I fail to see how you can keep saying this. Of course the POSSIBILITY for violence and conflict is in all of us. So is the possibility of peace. These possibilities explain nothing. Conflicts happen not merely because they are possible. There is destruction and starvation in Gaza right now because the US funds and arms its watchdog state in the oil-rich Middle East, not because the people of that region innately hate each other, are still at the immature level of toddlers or are prone to conflict and violence in any set of conditions whatsoever.
If my neighbour is a Nazi/Zionist/white supremacist/black separatist who wants to chase me out because I am a Jew/Palestinian/black/white, then there is conflict. But, if he is just this guy who lives next door, then we can ignore each other or say "Hi," now and again. There is no conflict. Most people most of the time live in that last set of conditions and we need urgently to discuss and plan how to make those conditions universal, not to keep saying that conflict is with us forevermore. It will be if we think like that. Ending poverty and economic divisions will end causes of social alienation and conflict.
Paul.
Since commenting this morning, I have been to Preston and back.
I said in the post above that I did not want to get back into this argument again. But, at the same time, I have to say what I think about ideas and arguments in Poul Anderson's works.
Insert "They have lived peacefully together in the past," at the end of the first paragraph in the second last comment above.
Note that study of human remains indicates that in pre-State societies, the average way for an adult male to die was by violence. They didn't have enormous wars, but they didn't have any -peace- either.
I get that but, of course, any high technology stateless society will not have the old causes of violence.
Paul: High technology doesn't matter squat, because the causes of violence were personal, questions of relative status, not material goods. Access to material goods may have -caused- the evolution of status rivalries, but they exist independently of that because they're coded into our genes. We're all the descendants of status-seeking chiefs and their henchmen.
Well, it matters. The causes of violence in the past need not be causes of violence in the future. A society that has both the material means and the social organization to value and fully develop the potential of each of its members need not not be status-ridden. Any "status" that does exist need not motivate personal violence. We can have an ethos and culture where each individual is recognized and valued for what they do and they do not need to compete for attention or recognition.
Paul: except that status-seeking is, literally, in our genes. And rivalry for status (and females) provokes anger in human males.
Genetic status-seeking? Maybe. But we can still do something about it as not only conscious but also intelligent and self-reflective beings.
Kaor, Paul!
No, the best we can do is to somehow manage or cope with such innate drives, urges, passions. Not eliminate them. E.g., counting noses as a means of gaining power and office is better than shooting your way into power.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I didn't say eliminate. Not necessarily anyway. Individually, we can develop self-knowledge and understanding. Socially, if it is true that most people would become violent in extreme conditions and situations, then it is also true that we can avoid putting people into such conditions and situations and thus can prevent them from becoming violent.
Paul.
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