People with very little actual historical background often say of
anarchy that it would never work - without realizing that not only has
it worked for much of the history of the races, but that it is in fact
working right now. Anarchy is simply cooperative self-determinism - it
is a part of every day life, not something that will only happen "after
the revolution". Anarchy often works for circles of friends everywhere -
so how can we make all our relations anarchist? Anarchy is in action
when people cooperate on a camping trip or arrange free meals for hungry
people - so how can we apply these lesson to our interactions at
guild-school, at work, in our subdivision neighborhoods?

To consult chaos theory: anarchy is chaos, and chaos is order. Any
naturally ordered system - a forest, a friendly neighborhood - is a
harmony in which balance perpetuates itself through chaos and chance.
Systematic disorder, on the other hand - the discipline of complex laws,
the sterile rows of crops enhanced by complex spells to protect against
pests - can only be maintained by the ever-escalating exertions of
force. Some thinking disorder is simply the absence of any system,
confuse it with anarchy. But disorder is the most ruthless system of
all: disorder and conflict, unresolved, quickly systematize themselves,
stacking up hierarchies according to their own pitiless demands -
selfishness, heartlessness, lust for domination. Disorder in its most
developed form is evil: the war of each against all, rule or be ruled,
sell or be sold, from the soil to the sky.

We live in a particularly violent and hierarchical time. The maniacs who
think they benefit from this hierarchy tell us that the violence would
be worse without it, not comprehending that hierarchy itself, whether it
be inequalities in economic status or political power, is the
consequence and expression of violence. Not to say that forcibly
removing the authorities would immediately end the waves of violence
created by the greater violence their existence implies; but until we
are all free to learn how to get along with each other for our own sake,
rather than under the swords and "holy" maces and daeggers directed by
the ones who benefit from our strife, there can be no peace between us.

This state of affairs is maintained by more than swords, maces, and
daeggers, more than the vertigo of hierarchy, of kill-or-be-killed
reasoning: it is also maintained by the myth if success. Official
history presents our past as the history of greatness, and all other
lives as mere effects of their causes; there are only a few subjects of
history, they make us believe - the rest of us are all its objects. The
implication of hierarchy is that there is only one "truly free person"
in all society: the guildmaster, overseer, sultan, seneschal, tyrannus,
or imperiate. Since this is the way it has always been and always will
be, the account goes, we should all fight to become her, or at least
accept our station beneath her gracefully, grateful for others beneath
us to trample when we need reassurance of our own worth.

But even the Demiurge or the Insidious or the Hand of Elysia isn't free
to go for a walk in the neighborhood of his or her choosing. Why settle
for a fragment of the world, or less? In the absence of force - in the
egalitarian beds of true lovers, in the democracy of devoted
friendships, in the topless federation of playmates enjoying good
parties and neighbors chatting at sewing circles - we are all queens and
kings. Whether or not anarchy can "work" outside such sanctuaries, it is
becoming clearer and clearer that hierarchy does not. Visit the cities
of the new world "order" - sit in a governmental bureaucracy, experience
an urban slum, witness a forest raped by death magics, wallow among
cities and divine orders bloodied by hatred, stand by "righteous" bigots
of the Church on your left and slavers of the "holy" Apostates on your
right - and behold the apex of mortal progress. If this is order, why
not try chaos?!


-Dr. Saruman.

Penned by my hand on the 11th of Ero, in the year 322 AF.