Anarchism: The lens to liberty
- Anup Joshi
One usually gets perplexed with the idea of anarchism. People misunderstand anarchism as disobeying authorities and turning vandalist or fanatics. They speculate anarchists as Vampires or peace-spoiler group of people. But it is not what anarchism is about. As Emma Goldman, the prominent anarchist of 20th century wrote in her bookAnarchism and Other Essays, Anarchism is “The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary.”
The human civilization is all set up in the notion of ruling and being ruled. This old age tradition is dominating our attitude, culture or religion. We write poetry about being free like a bird, but our dream is just limited within the poetry. In real, we are stuck into the world ofdo and do not’s. We are made by the religion we follow, ethnicity we belong to and the cultural obligations. From centuries we have been fighting each other in the name of country, religion, culture or ethnicity. These are the barriers in our living. We are deceived by politicians. We are deceived by the wicked idea of patriotism. Due to all social propagandas, we turn so weary that finally we can’t withstand to rebel against our horizon.
People are living the life of dependence and ignorance. They think that there is government or society to look after them. They are planted with this notion that all the institution around them is to nurture their life. So they become reluctant to any creativity. We run after acquiring freedom but real freedom is within us. As says Goldman- “People have as much liberty as they have intelligence to want and courage to take”. So it is foolish to relay on any government and bargain for freedom. When we see from the lens of anarchism there is freedom and freedom everywhere. We don’t have to request any authorities for any amount of liberty.
The corrupt governments are hypnotizing us and messing with our resource. Anarchism hereby denounces all form of authority and attempts to live naturally without any fancy military campaign. We may think that to imagine a state without any government or military is merely a utopia. But it is not so. We have witnessed many milestones in the history. Most of which are anarchic. The abolishment of monarchy was anarchy. The establishment of democracy was anarchy. Actually every achievement we have acquired in the history was anarchic. To question against authority and rebel is anarchy. All the people’s movement are anarchic. Just the tragedy is that after every revolution, we again mistake to hand over our state or privilege to the politicians. Then the authority is established. As it is for sure authority violates the people.
Our activism and struggle for liberty has always rested in vain because the philosophy behind it was ephemeral. We want to be free like bird. To be free we have to avoid all kinds of authority and governance. Prejudice is just by product of authority. Here, Anarchism is lens for the liberty, the liberty we have always desired.
i agree with u, liberty=anarchy. unfortunately, looking at the new constitution being written by our tyrants freedom is only a fantasy in nepal.
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