A Lesson About Denial

I was surfing around last night, and found an excellent Ravi Zacharias video. In my opinion, he is the premier intellectual of our day. His skills in logic and, to put it plainly, getting to the point of an issue are unsurpassed by anyone I have encountered.

Here’s a magnificent video clip of an argument he presents.

Hat tip: The Well-Drained Mind. This video and the thought behind it uncannily coincides with a blog post I read and with which have been participating: Pushing the Political Easy Button. Unfortunately but not surprisingly, the biggest dissent is over the definition of words. You’ll have to visit the post for a full and better idea of what is going on– I dare not try a synopsis here for fear of making the issue long in tooth. But it’s a good post.Today, young people (and, granted, older people as well, although this is found less frequently) desire to define themselves. They often take long-established terms and redefine them according to their own experiences and insights. I believe this is unfavorable. It makes the topic of discussion too slippery and leaves one with more universal skepticism than a solid conviction of truth to be discovered. I’ll take the leisure of posting just a small bit from the blog post to which I referred:

Anarchy is not just a desire to eliminate the State: it is a moral commitment to voluntary interactions and non-violent principles. The Anarchist is a person committed to helping his fellow man, not hurting him through either political means or more mundane criminal means…

The reason we lack freedom is the government, plain and simple. But in order to move towards a free society we need to do so much more than remove government. We need to reeducate as many people as possible into understanding that government is the one thing standing in the way of freedom. As long as the general populace continues to see government as the solution instead of the problem we will continue to be slaves.

That’s what all of my posts on anarchy are about: educating as many as possible. Showing them the truth that government is standing in the way of their freedom and is incapable of doing anything but constricting it.

I found much error in this. My response:

I don’t understand how one could eliminate government. Where there are two people, there’s government. Government is the system whereby it enacts and enforces rules so a group can interact with each other, essentially… I’m sorry, I don’t think this constitutes anarchy. Anarchy is defined as a state of society without government or law. “Helping fellow man” is something completely different. If one’s political purpose is to “help fellow man” that immediately constitutes a form of government– a rule of law whereby one helps another– and cannot be defined as anarchy.

The reply, in brief:

Your assumptions are faulty, Mrs. Mecomber, although widely accepted as fact. There can (and often are) two (or more) people coexisting without government. To claim otherwise is to deny the evidence all around us. Children play with each other sans rules constantly. Couples do not always have an authority figure.

While you are correct that government enacts and enforces rules, your assumption that such a body is necessary remains unproven. There have been countless societies throughout history that existed and prospered without a central authority figure.

And my response, again, edited for brevity:

no, I don’t think my logic is faulty. Children playing with each other DO have rules. The rule is to 1) play with each other, 2) play peacefully. If one child is hitting the other, haven’t the rules been broken? Or perhaps the rules are to hit each other.. then, playing peacefully rule is broken. One does not need an authority figure to have a government– self-rule is a rule.

I think perhaps you are confusing a central authority figure as a form of government? This does not matter. The authority of the law constitutes authority (i.e., a form of governing) just as much as a figure, or figurehead.

You are denying the existence of something that you need to be existing in order to deny it. See?

In case you haven’t noticed, I am talking about government as one of the laws of nature (see Locke’s writings). I am talking about the essence of government, based upon the necessity of law itself, which is inherent of nature and of life.

Therefore, it seems the big hang-up is over what is “anarchy” and what is “government.” Anarchy is defined as rejecting a state or form of government, yet anarchy is a form of government– it is a form of government that rejects forms of government. If you took the time to watch the video clip in this post, Ravi Zacharias makes the same point about atheism:

“If you’re an atheist, what are you denying?”

You cannot deny nothing that is there. How can you make a moral judgment in an amoral universe? It’s like C.S. Lewis said: “Atheism makes no sense. If the universe has no meaning, we never should have found out that it has no meaning.”

Update: The comments on the post just kept flowing. I made my final point and could not make it any clearer:

I’m sorry, but self-rule is a form of government. Self-rule is not an amorphous karmic philosophy that will naturally occur as soon as mean old men get out of the way.

“Philathropism” is a philosophic gesture, which perhaps defines your point much more than the “rejection” of government. There have to be “checks and balances” that protect self-rule, because of the corruption of human nature. Therefore, self-rule must be enforceable, even if everyone desires self-rule, because humans will at some point deny someone else’s own self-rule to gain something for his own self. To deny this is truly delusional, as history and experience provides.

An intervening commenter named Francois (about whom the post was written, actually) interjected with this mind-whirling post:

Government is not an evolution. It is a devolution. It is a corruption of morality in the name of dominance and hierarchy. Once we take down government, humans will once again live in relative peace, instead of the state of war we live in today.

Holy cow! This betrayed all intent. A kum-bay-yah lovefest of holding hands in perfect harmony is not the whole picture here. Flabbergasted, all I could say was:

Wow, reminds me of Citizen Genet.

Francois, you said: “Once we take down government…” what if OUR self-rule says we do NOT want government taken down? See what I mean! You become our tyrants, and what’s worse, you think you impose your tyranny on us for our own good! Hypocrite!

What illogical, ridiculous, nonsensical blather!

It’s been an interesting and turgid discussion. The anarchists didn’t seem to agree, but then again– these are anarchists! They are going to reject anything that is said to them anyway! lol.