I hardly think that the regular readers of this blog consider themselves as anarchist. Most of them come from Ayn Rand school of thought which hovers dangerously around the borderline between the belief of her word as a command rather than her ideas as a right way of thinking. The borderline between a philosophy and a cult.

The state never teaches any of its “subjects” the virtue of anarchism. Just like we cannot expect a Islamic madarassa to teach the virtue of infidels, we can surely expect an organization whose sole purpose is the most optimized usage of force for maximum benefit of people and its own survival, to teach the virtue of anarchism.

What is “anarchism”? How can something as lawless as that be virtuous? This is a big problem which lies ahead of us. The rehabilitation of the word “Anarchy”. My friend Stefan Molyneux (host of famous podcast “Free Domain Radio”) wrote the first part of his magnum opus trilogy “Everyday Anarchy”, attempting to define Anarchy as a philosophy. He starts as following:

It’s hard to know whether a word can ever be rehabilitated - or whether the attempt should even be made…

Some words can never be rehabilitated - and neither should they be. Nazi, evil, incest, abuse, rape, murder - these are all words which describe the blackest impulses of the human soul, and can never be turned to a good end. Edmund may say in King Lear, “Evil, be thou my good!” but we know that he is not speaking paradoxically; he is merely saying “that which others call evil - my self-interest - is good for me.”

The word “anarchy” may be almost beyond redemption - any attempt to find goodness in it could well be utterly futile - or worse; the philosophical equivalent of the cliched scene in hospital dramas where the surgeon blindly refuses to give up on a clearly dead patient.

This book is not about how in a Anarchist society judiciary, national defense, or police function will be provided. Rather, this book is simply about how anarchy in our everyday lives work and makes us happier.

What is “Everyday Anarchy”? Is it really there in our lives? Well pretty much everything you do in your life which involves the mutual consent of both the parties is everyday anarchy. You go to a bookshop and buy a book, that’s called anarchy. You go on a date with a girl you like, that’s called anarchy. You go to office, work from 8-5 in exchange of wages, that’s called anarchy. You take a voluntary doctor’s services in exchange of your money, that’s anarchy. You hire a hooker, that’s anarchy. Anything you do with your own will and consent, combined with the will and consent of the all the other parties involved is everyday anarchy.

Your mom telling you to wash your clothes is not anarchy. Your friends forcing you to break up with a chick because she is fat when you don’t want to is not anarchy. Govt taking taxes from you(voluntary or involuntary) is not anarchy. You being forced to find a girl of your own race and caste by your family is not anarchy. You demanding sex from your wife as a nuptial right against her wish, is not anarchy.

If you give a cursory glance at both the lists under which I have categorized everyday anarchy and everyday … well lets call it “anti-anarchy”, you will find that you enjoy doing things anarchically, and you hate things which are anti-anarchically, YET, you do both these things, bringing some sort of convoluted reasoning in your head. We pay taxes because its a money given back to the govt for the services we use, and if we don’t pay taxes our country will not become superpower.(Indians have this fetish with making their country superpower till 2020, which is nothing but a govt propaganda to deviate people from actual issues). We must marry within our own caste and race for social acceptance, we must allow sex as a nuptial right otherwise a man will be forced to find sex elsewhere. We must follow our culture or else our society will disintegrate, delineate, and demoralized into animal tribes.

The point is, whatever you can call as everyday anarchy, this can be clearly judged by our own inner rationale. Whatever you can call as “everyday anti-anarchy” it must be brainwashed into us over years, the family values, the culture, the religion, the statism. Take for example, you cannot make a culture-based argument to an American, you cannot say to your average college buddy in America “Oh John, you must not have sex before marriage, drinking alcohol is against our culture, we must not smoke pot on 20th April”, the reason is because people in America aren’t brainwashed for years about “American culture”. A lot of them are about religion, but not culture, nobody can make logical sense that “Oh sex before marriage is against our culture”, but everybody can make logical sense of “Oh sex without consent (rape) is outright wrong” whether they know of any laws against it or not.

Another classic example is, the tip culture in America. When first time an Indian (or from any country where the custom of giving tip is not there) comes to America, he is perplexed when people around him point out that he didn’t pay tip. This thing is so difficult to get adjusted to. Since we never paid tips ever in our lives, suddenly everybody expecting us to pay some additional money over the value of stuff already paid for makes no sense. Same goes with taxes, if you came from a state-less anarchist society, to a statist society, you will be perplexed that how come you pay for the services you use as a percentage of your income, and not as a subjective value of the exact service used. You never pay for a cup of coffee as how much you earned that day, rather than the price of coffee in the market and what everybody else pays.

This is everyday anarchy in our lives, just because some lady proclaiming herself to be the priestess of logic and reason claimed “Anarchy is nothing but another form of collectivism”, it doesn’t mean that its a word of god for all “rational” people, and that there is no life beyond it.

This book is a must read for all those who really believe in “live and let live”, yet find themselves unable to clutched by notions of non-existent identities such as state, religion, caste, cult, nation, race. If you take pride in being an America, a Canadian, an Indian, a British, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Christian etc etc, yet you claim that the core part of that identity is your freedom, then you must read this book.

You can find the free PDF and Audiobook at the following link:

http://www.freedomainradio.com/books.html