Rethinking Atheism and Anarchy
[From the book "God Wants You Dead" section 8.2]
8.2 Rethinking Atheism and Anarchy
Atheism and Anarchy are not really ideologies, in that they are not complex ideological organisms. Each of these words represents opposition to a particular type of complex collective idea-organism. They both claim that the Idea-organism they are fighting is not necessary in order for people to lead good lives. There should be one word for both of them, but there is not, mostly because Church and State are not generally recognized as being the same sort of “multi-celled” ideological organism we have described in this book.
Atheism is the idea that a collective religious construct is not necessary.
Anarchy is the idea that a collective political construct is not necessary.
“Individualist” is perhaps the closest word we have to describing the autonomous human, standing apart from any collective mindset. A strong sense of individualism leads us to conclude that no Higher Power has any right to control our minds.
Because both atheism and anarchy stand opposed to a number of large, popular, complex ideas there is a tendency to try to cast these (much simpler) ideas into the same mold; to make them into larger ideological constructs than they are, and to attach other ideas to them; In short, to turn them from simple ideas into complex idea-organisms.
Because of this, those who believe in the ideas of atheism and/or anarchy are often actually convinced to end up doing strangely contradictory things – like having strong faith in their Atheism – or forming Anarchist groups to fight the powers that be.
The typical atheist or anarchist seems to only see half of the concept involved in denying Higher Powers. The funny thing is that they each see different halves of the big picture. This is actually kind of useful, because all they need to do is borrow from each other to get the whole picture.
8.2.1 Atheist
Richard Dawkins is a famous, modern, self-proclaimed atheist. He is also the person who came up with the concept of memetics, but this does not seem to have saved him from going down a typical atheist path. He sees the pain and suffering that hosting religious ideologies has caused in the world, and it angers and saddens him. He sees the “myth” of God as the root cause of this suffering, and decides to fight it. This is a brave choice to make. However, he allows the ideological construct of God to define his fight against it, and misses any real opportunity to reduce the bad effects that the idea of God causes in the world. Here’s how:
Like most all Atheists, Dawkins obsesses over the issue of whether or not God exists. He applies his logic to the issue, and comes up with every reason you can imagine why you should not believe in any sort of Supreme Being who created the universe. He tells people that a belief that gives them great comfort is false. This, of course, causes these people mental pain, and makes them close their minds to Dawkins’ arguments. The more widely he manages to spread his message, the more he sets himself up as a visible opponent to faith, and this increased opposition to faith may actually help to strengthen the hold of religion on people’s minds. In the end, he may actually cause greater pain and suffering than if he had stood mute.
Since God, if he exists, does so outside our physical world, the question of existence will always be debatable. You can make your points about evolution all day, and all you are doing is winning an argument about where God has intervened in the world, not the argument of whether God actually exists or not. However, there is another class of argument, one that the average Anarchist embraces but the average Atheist seems to ignore – possibly because it is really a theological argument. That argument avoids the issue of God’s existence and instead argues the idea that man need not worship anyone or anything. It runs something like this:
Why should it be automatic that, just because a higher being created the universe, that you should worship him? OK, so you are told that GOD is bigger, more powerful, and more knowledgeable. But there are people right here on Earth that are bigger, stronger, faster, and smarter than you. You don’t automatically worship them. You don’t consider yourself to be obligated to do their bidding, and to serve their interests. Why should a god or GOD be any different?
Why would anyone ever assume that GOD would want you to do everything he said? It’s all supposed to be about free will right? GOD would want you to use that brain he put in your head. He would want you to make your own mistakes and learn from them. Maybe when you do bad things, it really does make the baby Jesus cry. But he is probably crying more about the people who always do what they are told without question. It is this blind obedience without thought that causes most of the horrible shit that happens in the world.
If GOD exists, he doesn’t want you to worship him. He is confident enough in his omnipotence not to need that kind of ego boost. He is certainly going to be pissed off if you don’t think for yourself and choose to have someone else tell you what to do. He gave you that brain and he wants you to use it! And if you are one of those people that have a need to tell other people what they can and cannot do, stop it! Don’t try to prevent other people from exercising the Free Will GOD gave them, he would want them to come to the right decisions because they figure it out for themselves, not because you prevented them from doing the things that you think are wrong. Find a better place to get your self-esteem from than controlling others.
Now it seems odd to say that this is an Atheist argument, since it starts by saying “OK, let’s suppose there is a GOD” and this is a statement that the ‘faithful’ Atheist can not easily allow himself to make. However, no being, no matter how powerful, is really a god unless people worship him. If they do not then he is just another sentient creature who is bigger, tougher, smarter or whatever. Atheism means not having gods, it does not mean believing that there is no creature in (or outside of) the universe that is more powerful than any or all human beings.
If you have faith in yourself, in your right to choose your own actions, and make your own mistakes, then you can allow for the possibility of a more powerful being, maybe even a creator of the universe, and still be an atheist.
So we would suggest that atheists everywhere stop trying to prove there is no supreme being, and start asking people to look at the consequences of handing their choices over to other people’s versions of what that supreme being wants us to do. Ask people to question why a supreme being would ever want them to do anything to increase his, her, or its glory.
Any ideas that say that a supreme being needs a human to do anything for it are the product of either unscrupulous individuals taking advantage of faith, or an ideological organism with its own agenda.
8.2.2 Anarchist
Timothy McVeigh was a recent, infamous, self-proclaimed Anarchist. As you probably know, he was involved in the bombing of a United States Federal building in Oklahoma City, on April 19th, 1995, and was ultimately executed for his crimes on June 11th, 2001.
If someone tries to tell you why McVeigh did this, you may find yourself arguing that he was a monster or a madman, and being unable to even accept the possibility that there were “reasons” for what he did. However, the ideas in your head that prevent you from opening your mind to McVeigh’s reasons… are the same types of ideas that made it possible for him to do something so monstrous.
McVeigh had his reasons. He saw the pain and suffering in the world caused by clashes between central authority and people with different ideas about how to live their lives. Specifically, he was aware of the events of August 1992 at Ruby Ridge where a family was killed by US Marshals and FBI agents on their own property. He also had in mind the events of April 19th, 1993, in Waco Texas, where, after a 51 day siege, 76 people were killed by ATF agents burning their homes. These events bothered him greatly. He saw The State as the source of the death of innocent people, and he decided to fight it. This was a brave choice to make. However, he allowed the ideological construct of The State to define his fight against it, and missed any real opportunity to reduce the bad effects that the idea of The State causes in the world. Instead he brought more death to innocent individuals – these deaths by his own hand.
Like most all Anarchists, McVeigh was obsessed with the idea of Freedom. He believed that The State should not be able to control his actions through the threat of violence. He may well have tried talking about this over the years, telling people that the beliefs that make them feel safe are false, and that the State offers no safety, only control.
But most people will not understand such a message, or are frightened by it. In the end he decided to retaliate against state violence, perhaps hoping that his retaliation might mitigate violence by The State in the future. Of course, his own violent actions only served to increase people’s sense of danger, and strengthen their feeling of need for The State’s protection.
McVeigh’s own concept of The State allowed him to see other people as evil parts of an evil State, rather than fellow individuals, just because they worked in a government building. He probably did not even understand that other people would see his actions in terms of the individual deaths he caused and not as an act of revenge against The State for the killings at Ruby Ridge and at Waco. Violent actions will never weaken a Collective that exists, for a large part, to give people a sense of safety. Rather, such actions will strengthen that ideological organism.
There is, however, another way to go about things, if one wants to expand personal liberty. It is a method that atheists are very familiar with, even if it is unknown to anarchists. Rather than fighting with violence, or even trying to make people feel that they don’t need the protection The State offers, instead we can challenge the actual existence of The State icon. The argument for this runs something like this:
What is the Nation State? Is it a set of lines drawn on a map? Why should we feel loyalty to some cartographer’s scribbling? We are all individual people, responsible for our own actions. Those that believe that acting on behalf of a piece of Geography automatically makes their actions correct are simply delusional. No one should have greater rights than anyone else, and no one claiming to represent a piece of Geography should ever even be taken seriously.
This is not to say that people shouldn’t make rules about how they interact. However, if these rules are to be enforced with violence, they should always reflect the actual feeling that, on average, individual members of the group would be motivated to use violence to enforce the given rule. In addition, anyone enforcing behavior on behalf of others should be able to point to specific victims of the prohibited action, who would themselves have been willing to use violence if they were so equipped.
The injured party should never be a mythical entity like The State or Society. Nothing should be declared a crime unless it is done so to defend real victims against what they could reasonably define as harm worthy of using violence to prevent. Also, the size of “the group” for whom laws are made, should always be as small as possible to keep things individual and personal, in contrast to having a hierarchy of laws that are enforced downward from the level of a mythical Nation State.
It may seem odd to say that this is an anarchistic argument, as we have just allowed justification for a system of laws. However, the claim can be made that we are all just individuals living in anarchy right now, that some people choose freely to believe in The State, and these believers fear that violation of The State’s rules – by anyone – puts them in danger.
If people believe that your actions are a threat to them, then they are simply acting in self defense when they try to stop you. If there is a set of rules that they believe should be enforced, and these rules are very important to their own happiness, then how can any good anarchist suggest that they should not be allowed to act accordingly?
However, the authority for enforcement of such rules does not arise from the land we stand on, or from a symbol like a flag, or from some mythic concept of national identity. It arises from the values of specific individual human beings. If everyone fully appreciated that fact, it would be all that any real anarchist could ever ask for.
When you start believing in the authority of a geographic jurisdiction, and lend credence to “the law of the land,” you elevate these things to the status of Higher Powers. Once this happens, laws that individuals would never otherwise choose to have enforced with violence are imposed upon everyone. The myth of the Higher Power makes people think that this is all OK – or at least to accept it all without thinking about it very much.
It is possible to allow people to choose their own laws in small groups. It is possible to dismiss the idea that anyone can ever be acting on behalf of The State or any other icon. It is possible for rules to be enforced only on the behalf of specific individuals. There is no need to believe in The State.
Provided you recognize that everyone has the right to believe in a different system of rules, and realize that no system of rules stems from any higher authority than individual thought, you can go ahead and believe that some limited system of rules is a good thing, and still be an anarchist.
We would suggest that Anarchists everywhere stop fighting The State with bombs and guns, or even with words about how terrible The State is, and come to understand that The State that they oppose is just a fictional construct. Instead, try to teach people that it is evil to believe in the existence of The State – that patriotic loyalty to a flag, a set of lines on a map, or to anyone claiming to be a voice for such imaginary symbols, is the root of most of the violence in the world.
8.2.3 Individualist
We would also suggest that all atheists be anarchists and that all anarchists be atheists and that everyone should be both. But be both in a non-combative way that stresses Individual free will over collective thinking. That is, everyone should be an individualist and also respect everyone else’s individualism.
Feel free to believe in a supreme being, and to respect the sets of rules that other people expect you to live by in their company. Just don’t believe in Higher Powers. An actual existing supreme being need not be conceptually superior to you, and a human being claiming to represent some icon is definitely not.
Feel free to impose rules of conduct on others, and allow them to impose rules on you; just don’t lend greater authority to a set of rules when it comes from someone claiming to represent a larger group of people. The only people who count, in determining what is and is not acceptable behavior, are those who are actually currently being affected by the behavior in question.
And everyone else should mind their own damn business.
8.2.4 Heroes and Villains
For the record, we have a great deal of respect for the work of Richard Dawkins, and a great deal of contempt for the actions of Timothy McVeigh. However, you will notice reading above that we criticize Dawkins, and cast nobility on McVeigh.
Being able to do this is what being a free thinker is all about. If you are not able to see the occasional truth among the lies of the people you hate, and the trace of evil mixed in with the good of those you love, then you are not thinking past the labels and icons.
Only when you allow yourself to both pity the weakness of your heroes and admire the strength of your villains, will you be seeing the world clearly in terms of individual ideas, rather than through the fog of illogic that is the life’s breath of collective idea-organisms.
You don’t know anything aright until you have favorably considered its opposite.
