"Grow Up!"

Every now and then I see a statist saying something like, “Yeah, I used to be an anarchist, but then I grew up.” They really believe that the way to be a responsible, rational adult is to bow down to a parasitical ruling class, and ask it to manage their lives, and the lives of everyone else. What a drastically perverted view of reality that is.

Of the people I see saying that, few if any were ever anarchists for any philosophical or moral reason. To them, being an “anarchist” probably meant being a short-sighted, inconsiderate, obnoxious punk who did whatever he felt like in the moment, without regard to anyone else’s person or property. No, smoking in the boy’s room doesn’t make you an anarchist. Neither does randomly breaking other people’s stuff.

At this point I must confess—with a heavy dose of embarrassment—that in school I was very quiet, well-behaved and obedient. I had been trained, the way an animal is trained, to view obedience to authority as a virtue, and disobedience as a sin. And so I thought that the disobedient and disruptive kids were bad, and that I, in comparison, was good.

But authoritarian indoctrination has another unfortunate side effect: even those who, for whatever reason, feel a burning desire to rebel—to disobey and resist those who attempt to control them—also start to believe that they are bad for doing so. Then they start to take pride in being anti-social, destructive, criminal, etc. And so what may start as a perfectly righteous and positive yearning for freedom gets warped into frustration, anger and hatred, precisely because society teaches rebellious teenagers that their rebelliousness is inherently immoral. They “learn” that they are bad, and then they act like it.

Meanwhile, misguided obedient goodie-good me was taking pride in good grades, the approval of “authority” figures, etc. (Of course, good grades aren’t inherently bad, but judging one’s own worth and goodness by whether one pleases one’s controllers is not a good or healthy thing.) I was a well-trained dog, not like those “bad dogs” in the class.

Fast forward a few decades, and a rather depressing irony shows up. Now so many of the “trouble-makers” in school are well-trained, patriotic, compliant, conforming subjects. And I’m a freaking anarchist with a criminal record (for having not paid tribute to the politicians).

Sadly, a whole lot of teenage “rebels” eventually have the spirit trained out of them, and then view being an obedient subject as being mature. Often their rebelliousness consisted of little more than doing whatever “authority” told them not to do, which is just a different, twisted way of letting someone else control you. Like a recently captured animal, they angrily snarled for a while, but then, after a while, were successfully trained to view a life of subservient captivity as not only acceptable, but as proper, responsible and superior.

Having never had a coherent philosophical understanding, but just having an instinctive reflex against being tamed and subjugated, they are eventually psychologically bludgeoned into being good “law-abiding taxpayers,” who faithfully give obedience and tribute to their political masters, and even talk about how they are proud to do so.

And then, as a pathetic display of Stockholm Syndrome, they go online and talk down to (in their eyes) those silly, immature trouble-makers who don’t want to be forever dominated and enslaved by a political ruling class. And while they can’t do much of anything without the permission of the rulers, and are continually robbed by the political machine, they scoff at any comparison of that to slavery, or even theft. They have learned to love their captors, to be dependent upon those who exploit and abuse them, and to scorn and mock any who advocate that they be free.

“He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.” - George Orwell (“1984”)