In such places where animals are simply penned up, they are almost always more thoughtful than their cousins in the wild. This is because even the dimmest of them cannot help but sense that something is very wrong with this style of living. When I say that they are more thoughtful, I don't mean to imply that they acquire powers of ratiocination. But the tiger you see madly pacing its cage is nevertheless preoccupied with something that a human would certainly recognize as a thought. And this thought is a question: Why? Why, why, why, why, why, why, why? The tiger asks itself hour after hour, day after day, year after year, as it treads its endless path behind the bars of its cage. It cannot analyze the question or elaborate on it. If you were somehow able to ask the creature, Why what? it would be unable to answer you. Nevertheless this question burns like an unquenchable flame in its mind, inflicting a searing pain that does not diminish until the creature lapses into a final lethargy that zookeepers recognize as an irreversible rejection of life. And of course this questioning is something that no tiger does in its normal habitat.
That stung me when I first read it, it occured to me how similar it is in Humans, how we start out rebellious and passionate dreamers, than after we realize we must spend our waking life completing some meaningless task away from our family and friends, we give up, reject all our dreams and passions, and assimilate to the slave lifestyle in exchange for material posessions. And since material posessions cannot make us happy, we also require hard drugs like alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, paxil and prozac, in order to survive this maladaptive life. To quote John Zerzan about what the worst case scenario would look like:
People could just be so conditioned that they won't even notice there's no natural world anymore, no freedom, no fulfillment, no nothing. You just take your Prozac every day, limp along dyspeptic and neurotic, and figure that's all there is.
I think we may already be there. Einstein said we will not solve our problems with the same thinking that caused them. Democracy does not exist in the US, Congressman have a 99% incumbancy rate, and we get to vote for one of two puppets, who are appointed by the wealthy elites to run the big corporate slave machine. A centralized government in a capitalist society, has one job, to protect capital and property rights, period, never has this been different, the masses simply are given the idea that they have some control, and behind the scenes, the elites refer to us as the "rabble". Even in government statistics we are known as "consumers". We send our children at a young age off to what amounts to educational concentration camps, where they learn how to live a regimented, ritualistic, scheduled life, to prepare them for work in a factory, and pound out any trace of imagination, and passion from them. We than procede to drug the children who don't cooperate with ritalin. Total anarchy would be difficult because our society is too complex, and we have had all our survival instincts bred out of us, so without the overlords feeding us, the majority would cause quite a bit of chaos at first, but we all know that chaos is coming regardless of that. But the sooner we throw off the chains that bind us, the better. The current government, no matter who is in charge, will only continue to make matters worse. They will not get re-elected unless they perform for their masters. Therefore, like in a multi-national corporation, every decision must be made in the interest of profits, they will LOSE THEIR JOB if they make a decision that benefits people over profits, it really is that simple, thats how it is set up, and it runs itself.
The fact is that revolution is easier than reform, and preferable. However, replacing a totalitarian dictatorship with a proletarian dictatorship is not the answer, they are both centralized dictatorships, we need to ELIMINATE government.
After hurricane Katrina, the people in New Orleans, after quite a bit of chaos, once again found community. They didn't depend on the government to provide for them, they formed small bands and cooperated to survive. I have experienced this behavior also after hurricanes Frances, Jeanne, and this year Wilma. When the lights go out, we emerge from our climate controlled boxes and realize that none of us can survive without cooperation, and that when communication, and mass media is cut off, the only thing that exists is what you see in front of you, with your own two eyes, the only people that matter are the ones around you. Politics, and govenrment cease to exist when you are forced to take responsibility for your own life. I assure you, it will be easier to do now, rather than wait until the trucks stop pulling into Wallmart and Safeway. At least now, we still have the means to adapt to a new lifestyle. Humans are the most adaptable creatures on earth, and make no mistake about it, we DO NOT NEED RULERS. Anarchy comes from the greek anarchos, or "without a ruler", thats all it means, and its all we need. Perhaps Freud put it best when he said:
"civilization is something which was imposed on a resisting majority by a minority which understood how to obtain possession of the means of power and coercion."
And this is why division of labor was created, and along with it varying degrees of slavery for 99% of the population, and power and wealth for the 1% minority.
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