John Zube

Notes on panarchy and post-territorialism

(2006)

 



Note

For those who are still under the spell of territorial monopolistic states these notes introduce a refreshing change of perspective that is highly needed in order to overcome many fast deteriorating situations in social and personal life, all over in the world.

 


 

ANARCHISM: "... as opponents of any authority and any government." A wrong and exaggerated image of anarchism. If you examine the anarchist beliefs more closely, you will find that, apart from some dogmatists and purists among them, they are mainly opposed to authorities, governments, institutions and laws that are imposed upon them without their consent and that they would prefer their own alternative arrangements. This they do have in common with all dissenters, who are not necessarily anarchists in all respects. And this common liking for individual choices freely made rather than forced upon oneself, indicates a procedure and a framework for action which almost all somewhat rational and mature people could come to adopt for themselves. Most anarchists have their own and self-chosen authority figures or preferred prophets, whose writings and suggestions form their holy scripts. At least they demand individual or group secessionism from the present establishment and the choice to establish their ideal for themselves. Alas, they are not necessarily in favor, too, of individual secession from their own ideal societies and for free competition in the same territory by people with other anarchist or archist ideals, simply because they have not thought consistently about individual sovereignty, secessionism and associationism and voluntarism. Under such liberty all present governments would become reduced to merely exterritorially autonomous associations of volunteers and thus largely harmless towards others. Only territorially imposed governments and laws and jurisdictions are wrong, not individually chosen ones. Moreover, one should distinguish between impositions upon wrongdoers with victims and lawbreakers without victims and in both cases laws applied to wrongdoers and lawbreakers who are members of a community and do wrong or break the laws of that community against one of its members or against one of its taboos and those who invade the different and self-chosen spheres and relationships of the members of other personal law communities and offend against them. Aggressors who merely commit their offences against members or laws of their own communities can be left to the justice provisions of that community. But when they commit offences against the members and laws of other communities then they may have to be subjected to the authorities, laws and judgment of these communities. Only imposed authorities and governments are wrong, not individually chosen one. When tribal rules allow the beating of wives or husbands then that is right for them - until they individually secede from such conditions. But when members of such tribes beat up members of other tribes or exterritorially autonomous communities, in which such assaults are considered to be wrong, they must suffer the consequences. Suum cuique: To each his own. J. Z. 19.6.92, 6.1.93.

AUTHORITY & CONSENT: "Die Grenze der Autoritaet liegt dort wo die freiwillige Zustimmung aufhoert." - Jouvenal. (The limit of authority lies where voluntary consent ceases).

CIVILIZATION, DIFFERENT PEOPLE & DIVERSITY RATHER THAN CONFORMITY: "Commandment Number One of any truly civilized society is this: Let people be different." David Grayson. -
"Civilization is the encouragement of differences .... Force, violence, pressure, or compulsion with a view to conformity, is both uncivilized and undemocratic. - Mohandas Gandhi.

COMPROMISE, PRINCIPLES, CONSISTENCY ADAPTATION: "It is a very great mistake to imagine that mankind follow up practically any speculative principle, either of government or of freedom, as far as it will go in argument and logical illation. All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter. We balance inconveniences; we give and take; - we remit some rights that we may enjoy others ... Man acts from motives relative to his interests; and not on metaphysical speculations." - Quoted by John Morley, in On Compromise, 228.
It was largely lack of individual sovereignty which forced us into habitually accepting compromises in all too many spheres of our lives, preventing us from fully maturing in our individual abilities and lifestyles. Panarchistically, i.e. exterritorially, autonomously and voluntarily, we could avoid many to most compromises at our own expense and risk and begin to live in accordance with our more or less radical principles, among likeminded people, regardless of whatever principles our neighbours might exterritorially apply to themselves. J. Z. 7.1.93.

COMPROMISES & REAL POLITIK: "If, amid all these compromises which the circumstances of the times necessitate, or are thought to necessitate, there exist no true conceptions of better and worse in social organization - if nothing beyond the exigency of the moment is attended to, and the proximately best is habitually identified with the ultimately best, - there cannot be any true progress..." - Herbert Spencer in Postscript to The Man vs. the State, in Hutchinson Harris, The Doctrine of Personal Right, 390.

COMPROMISES: "If the minority are to be uncompromising alike in seeking and realizing what they take for truth, why not the majority?" - John Morley, On Compromise, 242. - Quite right! Full exterritorial autonomy for both. Territorially full autonomy for both cannot be achieved. One of my boys said many years ago: Why should the 49 rule the 51, too, or the 51 rule the 49, too when the 49 could rule the 49 and the 51 could rule the 51, with both groups finally leaving each other alone? J. Z. 6.1.93.

CONSENT: "In the Treaties 'the body politic is an aggregate of consenting individuals." Remark on Locke quote in Hutchinson-Harris, The Doctrine of Personal Right, p. 84. A little more thought and precision in their writings and many political philosophers would have arrived at panarchism: "The bodies politic are aggregates of consenting individuals. They need not be confined to or possess a monopoly over a national territory. J. Z., 6.1.93.

CRIME & TERRITORIAL RULERS: Territorial rulers tend to fight like gangsters for what they consider to be their exclusive turf. And we are foolish enough to act as killers and as victims for them. Organized criminals do not as often involve innocent non-combatants and do not kill as many of them and of their own soldiers. J. Z. 15.6.92.

DEMOCRACY & OPPRESSION: "Demokratie verleiht jedem Menschen das Recht, sein eigener Unterdruecker zu sein." - Lowell. (Democracy grants every human being the right to be his own oppressor). Only to the extent that he is represented by a majority or ruling party or ruler. It does not permit individuals to choose their own form of oppression or liberation, independent of the votes of others. It does not allow exterritorial autonomy for dissenting minorities or experimental freedom in the political, economic and social sphere. To that extent Lowell's statement is clearly wrong. The individual is only allowed to participate in voting for his own oppression or liberation. He is not given individual consumer sovereignty for "public" services. J. Z. 8.7.92, 6.1.93.

DEMOCRACY & PANARCHY: "Die demokratische Methode verlangt, dass Einzelwesen wie auch Voelkern gleiche Gelegenheiten gegeben werden soll, ihre Moeglichkeiten zu entfalten." - Julian Sorell Huxley. (The democratic method demands that individuals as well as peoples are given equal opportunities to develop their potential). That applies at most to the Scandinavian concept of democracy as a system which truly safeguards the rights of minorities. Not that ever any Scandinavian country has so far realized this ideal or could have, on the territorial model. It applies better to the panarchistic method. However, opportunities and rights cannot be given but they can be claimed realized and utilized, with some and unequal efforts and abilities. Not happiness should or could be granted to anyone but the pursuit of it and its enjoyment. J. Z. 6.1.93.

DEMOCRACY: "Sie ist die anspruchsvollste und eben damit gefaehrdetste aller politischen Ordnungsformern, naemlich jene, die bestaendig aus dem freien Kraeftespiel gleichberechtigter Personen erwaechst. - Guardini. (It is the most demanding and thereby the most endangered of all political forms of order, namely one which grows from the free play of all the energies or all persons with equal rights). A panarchist would rather say: Panarchies are the least demanding (for dissenters) and most demanding (for consenting members) and thus the least endangered and least endangering of all political forms of order. They can continually and freely grow, utilizing the creative energies of all their voluntary members, who will tend to have equal rights internally, regardless of their differences and of at least the possibility of some internally despotic panarchies being established by some for a while for themselves. Democracies would rather disfranchise all dissenters and enfranchise only fluctuating and more or less ignorant, prejudiced and misled majorities and their temporary leaders. J. Z. 6.1.93.

DEMONSTRATE, TOO, DO NOT ONLY TRY TO PERSUADE: Persuade or demonstrate rather than enforce. J. Z. 12.6.92, 6.1.93. "According to the doctrine of liberty, we are to devote ourselves to prevention, as the surest and most wholesome mode of extirpation. Persuade; argue; cherish virtuous example; bring up the young in habits of right opinion and right motive; shape your social arrangements so as to stimulate the best part of character." - John Morley, On Compromise. But do not confine yourself to teaching and demonstrating "virtue" only. Allow failures and vices to be practised and demonstrated freely among volunteers. They also do have their lessons to teach and no pupil should be deprived of them or should be expected to comprehend the better alternatives sufficiently without these bad examples. We learn and tend to learn as much or more from our mistakes and those of others than from our successes and those of others. J. Z. 6.1.93.

DISARMAMENT & PANARCHISM: "Nations do not seek armaments as they seek wealth or food or health. They consider armaments as a burden and a nuisance; which they accept merely as a necessary evil. It follows that the only way to disarm would be to remove the cause which makes the evil and nuisance of armaments necessary." - Salvador de Madariaga, The Blowing Up of the Parthenon, p. 71. - Disarm all States of their territorial powers and with them their arms and armies will disappear. J. Z. 1.7.92.

DIVERSITY: "Different people. Different ways." - quoted by F. M. Busby in The Proud Enemy, p. 97.

EXPERIMENTATION & CREATIVITY: "...progress towards the heaven we all desire arises from the leaven within each of us, and not from aggressive control .... Society is deprived of the invaluable advantage of voluntary contemporaneous experiment upon man himself..." S. Hutchinson Harris, The Doctrine of Personal Right, p. 328.

EXPERIMENTATION, SUCCESS & ARGUMENTS: "Erfolg ersetzt alle Argumente." - Graff. (Success makes all arguments superfluous). Failures as well as successes of free experiments among volunteers could replace most of our arguments and fights about political, economic and social ideas and ideologies and systems. J. Z. 8.7.92, 6.1.93.

FORCE & PERSUASION: "The substitution of force for persuasion, among its other disadvantages, has this further drawback, from our present point of view, that it lessens the conscience of a society and breeds hypocrisy. You have not converted a man, because you have silenced him." - John Morley, On Compromise, 246. - Force might be used merely to uphold the right of individuals to secede and to defend them and their exterritorially autonomous communities. This means that force can also be rightfully used to establish and maintain conditions which are essentially based only on the powers of attractive examples and persuasion and the deterrent power of bad examples and flawed theories. J. Z. 6.1.93.

FREE GOVERNMENT & TERRITORIALISM: A free government is a contradiction in terms, if applied to territorial governments. All territorial governments are organizing oppression and exploitation and deception on a massive scale. Only the degrees of their criminal activities vary. Some have less dissenters and more consenting victims than others. J. Z. 29.5.91.

FREEDOM & CHOICE, ALTERNATIVES, MEN & THINGS: "What is freedom? Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for yourself the alternatives of choice. Without the possibility of choice a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing." - Archibald MacLeish.

FREEDOM & SELF-IMPROVEMENT: "Freedom to him was very much a do-it-yourself project - a process of improving society by means of self-improvement. Set an example that others may chose to follow." FEE: The Philosophy of Freedom, on Leonard E. Read. J. Z. 6.1.93.

FREEDOM OF ACTION: "The people need freedom - full freedom to act." - Volin. - Should the freedom to act, autonomously and in an exterritorial way, be denied to volunteers among the people? And if individual people and volunteer groups of the people have achieved that framework for freedom of action, must they then, all of them and within that general framework, and within the particular framework of different exterritorially autonomous volunteer communities, subscribe to the greatest imaginable freedom of action for all their voluntary members or should they remain at liberty to impose their own preferred restrictions upon themselves? E.g. free love relationships are rightful as a matter of individual choice but hardly as imposed duties for all who, to some or the other extent, disagree with them. J. Z. 19.6.92, 6.1.93.

HOME AS CASTLE: "Those comfortable padded lunatic asylums which are known euphemistically as the stately homes of England." - Virginia Woolf. - Well, with an effort each can opt out of them and with persistent effort establish and maintain his own preferred alternative. Or one can simply hire alternative accommodation from others. A free housing and accommodation market would offer many choices. And so would a free market for political, social and economic institutions, principles and systems and package deals of them. One does not have to blow up the old accommodation - which satisfies at least some, in order to build on the same spot and for all others and at huge costs and sacrifices, another castle, which will also have its garrets, cellars and dungeons or other places for fruitless arguments with relatives staff. To each his own castle, home or flat. Let all private madnesses, luxury expenses and lunatic actions be confined to them. J. Z., 9.7.92, 6.1.93.

HUMANITY: Panarchism would humanize man. J. Z. 9.7.92. Territorial States robotize or kill him. J. Z. 6.1.93.

INDIVIDUAL SOVEREIGNTY: "Really, I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he; and therefore truly, Sir, I think it is clear, that every man that is to live under a government ought first, by his own consent, to put himself under that government, and I do believe that the poorest man in England is not at all bound to that government that he has not had a voice to put himself under." - Captain Rainborough in the Putney Debates of the New Model Army, quoted by Firth. Alas, most have interpreted this only as the right to vote for one or the other party candidate or independent representative. J. Z., 6.1.93.

INDIVIDUALISM OF FOLLIN & THE HERD INSTINCT: "Individualism, what M. Follin describes as the great lesson of Individualism, under Natural Order does not seek to wrench from the heard those who have the herd instinct. It only desires to free from the pressure and the imitative ways of the gregarious herd those who have the mentality of men. Let each individual fulfill the duty of being himself. In this way each will find in his life a hundred opportunities of being superior to everyone." - S. Hutchinson Harris, The Doctrine of Personal Right, 373. Both seem to have overlooked here the division of labour and free exchange benefits of voluntary and exterritorially autonomous associationism. All efforts at complete self-sufficiency or economic autarchy would tend to limit our development potential all too much. Panarchies would offer a wide scope to individualist aspirations. And obviously peaceful secessionists from all of them, merely doing their own retreatists and more or less primitive things, would tend to be left alone by them.

LAW AND LIBERTY: "...to a way of looking at society, which makes the replacement of law by liberty a condition of reaching the higher stages of social development." - John Morley, On Compromise, 250. - Replace uniform and territorial law, imposed also upon dissenters, by personal and individually chosen laws, via individual secessionism and associationism and the basis of exterritorial autonomy. J. Z. 6.1.93.

LAWS AND EVOLUTION: “But human nature does not change with the speed of Acts of Parliament, and, as in the wider field of nature, society is composed of individuals in various stages of evolution.” - S. Hutchinson Harris, The Doctrine of Personal Right, 387. - Some enlightened individuals and minorities, at least, tend to change and advance faster than territorial laws usually do. And they should be free to practise their advances among themselves. And whether any groups advanced, learned nothing from their mistakes or even regressed, they should never be granted any legislative powers over others than themselves. Men are not to be set up as beasts of prey or as sacrificial victims for others. J. Z.6.1.93.

LIBERTY AND PERSUASION: "Those who cling to the tenets of liberty limit the action of the majority, as of the minority strictly to persuasion. Those who dislike liberty, insist that earnestness of conviction justifies either a majority or a minority in using not persuasion only, but force.” - John Morley, On Compromise, 214. - The actions of the majority, as of the minorities, towards dissenters in the same territories, should be limited to persuasion, unless the liberty to act in accordance with their beliefs, among themselves, is forcefully denied to them by people who are not members of their volunteer groups. Then rightful and forceful resistance and liberation efforts are justified and would be facilitated through the program of exterritorial autonomy for all volunteer groups. Internally, and towards consenting victims, both might apply more than persuasion to uphold their systems among themselves, as long as their members remain free to secede from them. And both, majorities and minority groups, once they have obtained freedom of action and experimentation for their self-responsible actions, should try to persuade outsiders mainly only by their examples and demonstrations and by sufficiently recording and publishing their experiences, which under developed retrieval facilities and freedom of information would then be at the disposal of everybody upon demand and payment of the costs involved. But the continuing missionary attempts to persuade outsiders to adopt the lifestyles and social, political and economic system which one prefers for oneself, should be largely given up as a waste of time and energy. Only when one is forced to live only under territorial systems does one have no better way than persuasion to attempt to change the opinions and actions of the ruling majority or minority. - J. Z. 12.6.92, 7.1.93.

MAXIMOV, G.P.: "...decentralization, dispersal & final elimination of authority and its replacement by autonomous and independent organizational units." - quoted by Paul Avrich in The Anarchists of the Russian Revolution, p. 103. - Unfortunately, most anarchists envision such autonomous organizational units only for anarchists, not for the various archists, too. Consequently, they become enemies of voluntary and tolerant archists, rather than comrades in arms. One could argue that such archists do not as yet exist and that would be largely true. However, it would be much easier to come to an agreement with archists on that basis than to fully convert them to choose anarchism, too within the suggested framework of exterritorial autonomy. To convert all people to one form of anarchism is like attempting to convert all of them to the faith of one church of sects. Religious liberty was and is much easier to attain and has a structure similar to that suggested by panarchism. J. Z. 6.1.93.

NETTLAU ON FREEDOM AND RIGHT, PERMISSIONS AND CONCIENCE, REASON AND WILL, SOCIETY AND CONSENT: "Freiheit ist das absolute Recht aller erwachsenen* Maenner und Frauen, fuer ihre Handlungen keine andere Bewilligung zu suchen als die ihres eigenen Gewissens und ihrer eigenen Vernunft, nur durch ihren eigenen Willen in ihren Handlungen bestimmt zu werden, und folglich nur verantwortlich zu sein zunaechst sich selbst gegenueber, dann der Gesellschaft der sie angehoeren, aber nur insoweit, als sie ihre freie Zustimmung dazu geben, ihr anzugehoeren. - Max Nettlau. (“Freedom is the absolute right of all adult* men and women not to have to seek any other permission for their actions than those of their own conscience and their own reasoning, to be determined in their actions only by their own will and thus to be responsible primarily to oneself, then to the society to which they belong, but this only insofar as they gave their free consent to belong to it.” - Max Nettlau. Nettlau was one of the few anarchists who read, comprehended and even reviewed de Puydt article on panarchy.
(*) Even children should already enjoy some liberties, in accordance with their growing abilities.

ORGANIC CHANGE: "To disdain anything short of an organic change in thought or institution is infatuation. To be willing to make such changes too frequently, even when they are possible, is foolhardiness." - John Morley, On Compromise, 229. - Exterritorial, autonomous and individual and voluntary change is organic and natural change. J. Z. 26.6.89.

PAN-ANARCHISM: "Pan-anarchism proclaims universal statelessness, cosmic anarchy, anarchy everywhere." - Pan-Anarchist Manifesto, in Paul Avrich, The Anarchists in the Russian Revolution, page 50. - That is exactly what is wrong with most anarchist credos. Such an aim would be rightful only if all people, everywhere and at all times were anarchists. Towards the vast majority of people, who are archists, it is merely a provocation, if not a declaration of war. An aim like: Anarchism for anarchists and archism for archists would not similarly provoke those who disagree with the anarchists. On the contrary, it could appeal to many dissenting minority groups among them and could lead to common liberation efforts with them, even, lastly, to the liberation of establishment people from all their dissenters. J. Z. 19.6.92, 6.1.93.

PARTIES: Under individual secessionism and minority autonomy, exterritorially practised by volunteers in panarchies, not only would the present territorial States split up into communities ruled by the existing parties, but each of the major parties would split up into several autonomous communities of volunteers, for the greater satisfaction of their members and voters and the displeasure only of their current leaders. Consumer sovereignty towards party politics, too! J. Z. 14.6.92, 6.1.93.

POLITICS AND TERRITORIALISM: "...an almost* insoluble tangle of desires, ambitions, motivations - hopes, fears, loves - terrible, unyielding hatreds... monstrous dealings between man and man** and between nation and nation **... to atomic war." - Allen Drury, The Promise of Joy, 436. (*) For territorial organizations it is insoluble. (**) Leaders rather than men. Individuals and the people as a whole are systematically and explicitly excluded and disfranchised from important decision making. J. Z. 15.6.92. The voluntaristic aspects of panarchies and their exterritorial autonomies would allow all these differences to sort them out and reduce them by corresponding self-responsibilities to either disappear finally and in the process already becoming harmless to outsiders. J. Z. 6.1.93.

POLITICS TERRITORIAL, AN ART? Politics, to what extent is it an art or rather artless? "In politics we have an art." - John Morley, On Compromise, 229. - To the extent that territorial politics is not based on hard and fast rules and clear knowledge of sound facts and techniques, it is a mere art, not a science, indeed. And modern territorial politics, like modern art, is rather muddled, confused and confusing and to a large extent it is even intended to be so. Otherwise, politicians could hardly look as well after themselves under the pretence of looking after us. To the extent that it is basically monopolistic, coercive, interventionist and hierarchical, i.e. despotic, it does not deserve the name of an art. And why should the whole population of a territory forced to follow for some years only the art school of the temporarily ruling politicians, when all dissenting "art groups" could freely practise their diverse schools of the art of politics among themselves, exterritorially and autonomously, under personal laws? - J. Z. 12.6.92, 7.1.93.

PROGRESS AND SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST: "Under natural order false assumptions meet their deserts, and there is room for future ones to prevail. No man can know for certain in advance which will prove true in practice and which false in a future environment, and it is here that the survival of the fittest is beneficent." - S. Hutchinson Harris, The Doctrine of Personal Right, 385. - Failed panarchies will not survive but their members will - as members of successful panarchies. J. Z. 54.7.92.

PROGRESS, CHANGE AND DEVELOPMENT TAKEN TIME AND MORE OR LESS TIME FOR DIFFERENT PEOPLE AND THEIR VOLUNTARY GROUPINGS: "We know how long it takes before a species of plant or animal disappears in face of a better adapted species. Ideas and customs, beliefs and institutions, have always lingered just as long in face of their successors, and the competition is not less keen nor less prolonged, because it is for one or other inevitably destined to be hopeless." - John Morley, On Compromises, p. 235. - Territorial monopolization of change and its enforcement upon dissenters, or the forceful preservation of the status quo, make progress slow or even stop or reverse it. Thus all self-concerned actions should become voluntary actions. Only then will all-over progress proceed as rapidly as possible and with the least costs. J. Z. 12.6.92, 7.1.93.

PROGRESS: " ... if, indeed, humanity is making any 'progress' at all, then it has come, and always comes, at great expense." - Neil Potman, Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk, p. 110. - Since people have different notions of what constitutes progress and what not, general progress will advance fastest when each is free to follow his own notions at his own expense and risk. Panarchism would facilitate that. To tie all down to the progress notions shared by orthodox scientists, over-aged and semi-senile rulers, ideological madmen or all too disinterested and prejudiced and misinformed majorities will indeed rarely and only slowly achieve any progress and at the cost of numerous crimes and mistakes, payable in blood, loss of liberty and rights and widespread and prolonged impoverishment. By why try to advance only in such a crazy way? In technology and natural sciences we have long ago adopted free experimentation among volunteers, instead. Now, at last, we should adopt this approach for the so-called social sciences. They will advance to become real social sciences on the basis of free experimentation among volunteers, which requires their exterritorial autonomy. J. Z. 2.7.92, 6.1.93.

REASON, POLITICS, PARTIES AND PANARCHISM: "Reason devoted to politics fights for its own dethronement." Benjamin R. Tucker, in his Catalogue, p. 102. - Unless it introduces individual secession and exterritorial autonomy for volunteers. J. Z. 29.4.91. - All dogmatic statements are conditional and all to often based upon unchecked and false premises. Tucker's statement does apply to territorial politics and political "reasons" and "realities". J. Z. 6.1.93.

RECOGNITION AND NON-RECOGNITION FOR GOVERNMENTS BY GOVERNMENTS OR THE PEOPLE: Non recognition for any military or other dictatorial government, by any government and people which have some cause to call themselves democratic. At the same time, full recognition by both for all aspirations to establish exterritorially autonomous volunteer societies or governments. J. Z. 15.6.92, 6.1.93.

RECONCILIATION: Enforced territorial divisions are the main obstacles to reconciliation. J. Z. 13.6.92. They enforced either the subjugation of the remaining minorities or their deportation or voluntary exile from their homelands and that is rarely satisfactory for all of them. J. Z. 13.6.92, 6.1.93.

SECURITY AND AUTONOMY: In territorial association and, consequently, under the despotic votes of others in the same territory or organized and armed and lied to by other territorial regimes, more or less despotically, each must fear the other, like a wild beast of prey. Citizens among themselves and the citizens of different nations are now organized and motivate as mutual plunder-bunds, by their notions of exclusive, uniform and territorial, by their belief in zero sum games and collective responsibility. "Montesquieu was more helpful more than a century ago when he said that Liberty is that tranquil spirit in the citizen which arises out of the feeling each man has of being safe; and in order to have that feeling of safety, the government must be such that no citizen need fear another citizen." - S. Hutchinson Harris, The Doctrine of Personal Right, 384. Montesquieu and most of his followers and even S.H.H. were largely unaware that only exterritorially autonomous governments of volunteers can provide such a service. - And even they might have to be kept in check by ideal local volunteer militias for the protection of individual rights, nationally and internationally federated. J. Z. 6.1.93.

SELF-SACRIFICE, COMPROMISES, INDIVIDUALISM: "Our main text has been that men should refuse to sacrifice their opinions and ways of living (in the self-regarding sphere) out of regard to the status quo, or the prejudices of others. And this, as a matter of course, excludes the right of forcing or wishing any one else to make such a sacrifice to us." - John Morley, On Compromise, 250.

STATE, STATISM, SUBORDINATION: "...the State is a separate entity placed above the nation which may give orders to the nation." - Bluntschli, Staatsrecht, quoted in S. Hutchinson Harris, The Doctrine of Personal Right, 182. Compare that with Mary Chisholm's remark: "Nothing but what is voluntary deserves the name national." Let those in favor of B.'s definition separate themselves out or let us separate ourselves from them, so that they can proceed to subordinate themselves as much as they like, exterritorially, to others, their beloved great leaders and prophets, politicians, generals, jailers and bureaucrats. J. Z., 3.7.92, 6.1.93.

SUCCESS: "Es gibt nur einen Erfolg: auf deine Weise leben zu koennen." - Morley. (There is only one form of success: To be free to live in one's own way.) To that extent all have been unsuccessful so far, unless they set their targets very low and near and never tried to even imagine their own full human and individual potential. J. Z. 6.1.93.

TERRITORIAL POLITICS: Territorial and coercive and monopolistic politics simply does not and cannot provide all the rightful options that we do need to achieve freedom, peace, justice, security, prosperity and general progress. J. Z. 14.6.92, 6.1.93.

TERRITORIALISM, COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY, THE NUCLEAR THREAT AND TYRANNICIDE: Territorialism leads people, even intellectuals so much astray, that they come to mix up rulers and ruled so much that they come out in favor of the political construction, maintenance, control and use of ABC mass murder devices rather than Saturday Specials in the hands of citizens and their use in tyrannicide. They would rather engage in another world war or nuclear war than conduct or induce tyrannicide, an almost bloodless revolution, military insurrection or putsch or liberation war. - J. Z. 15.6.92, 6.1.93.

TERRITORIALISM, GOVERNMENTS: Territorial governments limit our options and opportunities, rights and liberties, our earnings, wealth and personal growth - instead of expanding them, which they promise to do but cannot do by their very nature. The only thing that excuses them to some extent is that as territorial, monopolistic, coercive and hierarchical governments they cannot help doing so, even with the best intentions. But we are not excused if we accept them any longer and we tend to become punished for this in more and more totalitarian ways of coercively getting our lives interfered with and mis-run from the top. Alas, the innocent few among us are likewise punished. J. Z. 14.6.92, 6.1.93.

TERRITORIALISM, TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY, NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY AND DISARMAMENT: "It is, therefore, I submit, unreasonable to expect nations to disarm; for nations are armed because everyone of them keeps for herself the right to decide what is to be done and to enforce her decisions to the limits of her power. How could they agree on the merely instrumental when they cannot agree on the essentials that keep them asunder and armed?" Salvador de Madariaga, The Blowing up of the Parthenon, 73. - Firstly, nations are now not free to decide upon such questions. Only their top rulers are, and their advisors. And they all too much agree upon significant aspects, like compulsory membership in States and their territorial rule and this keeps them at loggerheads with each other, because nations and States are not made up of identical robots. The fingerprints, their irises, their genetic code is different for each individuals - and so are their ideas, beliefs and knowledge. It was always absurd to try to force them to live in territorial uniformity, to force them into a common boiler, subject them to the same additives and spices and to block the safety valve of individual secession and competing exterritorially autonomous protective communities and stoke under them the fires that are inevitable when territorial nations are organized as armed camps, ready for war at any time, internally and externally, a threat to many of their own subjects and to those of other national territories. If we herded them to the same sport, church service, opera or concert, love-in or drug-in, march or demonstration, dance or excursion, forced them to wear the same clothing and eat the same meal, we could likewise achieve civil wars and national wars about these or at least supposedly stable dictatorships in these spheres. It is an absurd notion and a criminal and warmongering and despotic and idiotic practice! J. Z. 1.7.92, 6.1.93.

TERRITORIALISM, WRONG AND SELF-DEFEATING: Territorial aims, ways and means are wrong and self-defeating. But they are compulsorily kept alive by compulsory mis-education, compulsory membership and compulsory taxes and other monopoly powers., for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. Territorial peace settlements and territorial autonomy are contradictions in terms. At best they provide a temporary armistice. J. Z. 15.6.92, 6.1.93.

TERRITORIALISM: Territorial institutions and aims, restraints and incentives, do not work well and cannot work well. But they can achieve death and destruction on massive scales. J. Z. 15.6.92.

TERRITORIALISM: Territorialism is all too compromising to allow justice and good sense to prevail. It forces the wise to bear the wrongs and damages from the irresponsible actions of fools and power-mad people. J. Z. 12.6.92, 7.1.93.

TOLERANCE AND DEMOCRACY: "Demokratie ist das auf den Bereich der Politic ausgedehnte Prinzip der Toleranz." ("Democracy is the principle of tolerance extended to the sphere of politics.") Source unknown. Democracy only tolerates some limited liberties and rights, and some freedom of action, not the full range. I wish it were but our democracies have a long way to go. And non-democrats are entitled to their wanted degrees of restrictionism, too. Panarchies or exterritorial autonomy for all kinds of democrats and non-democrats in all their peaceful or self-responsible activities, represent the principle of tolerance much more fully. J. Z. 6.1.93.

TOLERANCE & SENSE OF INFALLIBILITY: “Next, even a belief in one's own infallibility does not necessarily lead to intolerance. For it may be said that though no man in his senses would claim to be incapable of error, yet in every given case he is quite sure that he is not in error, and therefore this assurance in particular is tantamount by process of cumulation to a sense of infallibility in general. Now, even if this were so, it would not of necessity either produce or justify intolerance. The certainty of truth of your own opinions is independent of any special idea as to the means by which others may best be brought to share them.” - John Morley, On Compromise, 245/6. - But belief that solutions must be practised territorially does lead to intolerance. J. Z. 12.6.92.

TOLERANCE FOR FREEDOM OF ACTION: “The most consistent real liberals, and certainly current libertarians, saw clearly that moral consistency demanded toleration not just for thoughts and beliefs - the most intimate function of all human conscience - but also for action in accord with thought. Tolerance for the latter without equal tolerance for the former was rightly seen to be a sham of the highest order.” - Walter E. Grinder, An Introduction to Libertarian Thought, p.4.

TYRANNY, REBELLION AND TERRITORIALISM: “Today's rebel is tomorrow's tyrant.” - Will and Ariel Durant. - Territorialism alone would already assure that - at least for the periods of elective despotism. J. Z. 9.7.92, 6.2.94.

UNITY: “The union is only perfect when all the uniters are isolated.” - Emerson. I would rather say: When all the uniters have the option to isolate themselves or to unite with others. J. Z. 29.4.91, 6.1.93.

VOTING: Even an honest election is dishonest in many of its representative pretensions until a "count me out!" vote can be validly cast for constitutions, laws, jurisdictions, policing and penal services, and their whole package deals, in favor of those institutions and laws which dissenting groups prefer for themselves. J. Z. 29.4.90, 6.1.93.

VOTING: The suffrage of the people (universal suffrage, the equal right to vote) becomes all to often and extensively the road to their self-inflicted suffering. If only volunteers and their contributions were involved, then it would be quite a different matter. They would have to shed their own blood and liberties and capital and incomes. Dissenters would then be free to act otherwise. Incentives to learning from one's own mistakes and those of others and to benefit from the own correct actions would be maximized. All such aspects are so self-evident to me and still so widely considered as being out of question, if considered at all. J. Z. 29.4.91, 6.1.93.

WAYS OF LIVING, FORCE & COERCION: “Every act of coercion directed against an opinion or a way of living is in so far calculated to lessen the quantity of conscience in the society where such acts are practised. Of course, where ways of living interfere with the lawful rights of others, where they are not strictly self-regarding in all their details, it is necessary to force the dissenters, however strong may be their conscientious sentiment.” - John Morley, On Compromise, 239. - Ways of living should be extended to embrace autonomous exterritorial experiments of a political, economic and social kind or "States within States" and yet exterritorially separated. And for all rational and adult people the test of self-regard would largely be determined by their voluntary membership. If they sacrificed, tortured, incarcerated or sexually assaulted e.g. children or denied them medical aid then other societies could and should rightfully and forcefully interfere with such actions in such societies. Children are not mere property, which parents or societies can use and abuse as they please. They need guardians and if their natural or present guardians fail them, then other and better guardians are needed for them. Under the old Athenian constitution anyone could make himself the guardian of a child - but only to the extent of upholding that child's rights. In doubtful cases international courts would have to decide. J. Z. 7.1.93.

 


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