The Tao of Anarchy: Love, Freedom, Responsibility

Spend enough time on social media outlets and you’ll hear as much talk about awareness and spirituality as you like. I have learned long ago that it is not my job, if I were even capable – I am not – to judge anyone or their points of view as being truly aware, truly spiritual, or not. I have enough to deal with concerning my own ego to worry about what you are doing for your own awakening.

One of the most common memes among those who fashion themselves as aware is the idea of personal responsibility. Though the words are seldom used, the themes are similar. You must be the change you wish to see in the world. You yourself are the teacher and the pupil; you are the Master; you are the guru; you are the leader; you are everything! You have to be a Light unto yourself. You have to seek and search within your own being, because it is already there at the very Core. If you dive deep you will find it. You will have to learn how to dive within yourself, not in the scriptures, but within your own existence. I could go on forever.

If you’re familiar with the teachings of Krishnamurti, you may have heard him describe two modes of understanding: intellectual and actual. I am often reminded of this when I observe the words of many who fashion themselves enlightened, awake, aware.

There is great evil in the world. Few can deny the world is a ruinous, grotesque charade laughingly called “civilization”. I would like to point out some of the glaring contradictions in what we often see as solutions to this problem. For if we understand the concept of personal responsibility, not just intellectually but actually, it becomes clear that we are barking up the wrong tree in working towards a solution.

Bureaucracy

As by now the whole country knows, there is a county clerk somewhere in Kentucky that refuses to grant marriage licenses to gay couples because it is contrary to God's law, i.e., immoral. We as individuals are free to harbor our own individual morality of course, but to me and, no doubt, most people of the anarchist/voluntarist leaning, the irony has not been lost that a woman who is standing by "morals" is in the employment of the State.

To most people, i.e. the mob, who are indoctrinated statists (and thus worthy of our sympathy), the concept that it is immoral to work for the State may seem a bit hazy. After all, our society has become such a bureaucracy-choked morass that, at best, we have become numb to the army of bureaucrats we have to deal with on a daily basis; at worst, we think they are necessary. But while many people feel contempt and loathing for the stereotypical welfare whore who lives in government housing, sits around eating Cheetos and Dr Pepper, and makes more babies to be dependent on the State, few if any realize that the bureaucrat is actually more harmful to society.