Freedomain Radio

I have been trying to find an answer to this question for about a year now. I still cannot identify a particular point when I decided that I was an anarchist. By the time I had made this realization, it had already happened.

There were a few events that nudged me toward the event horizon. There was that little tinge of doubt on the day of 9/11. Something did not seem right. There was the moment of head scratching in 2004 when I first thought about the fact that the two presidential candidates were fraternity brothers in the most exclusive and secret fraternity...perhaps in the world. It took a few years, but I finally started to question the “they hate us for our freedom” gag inducing explanation for the state of the world. These doubts; they were never really addressed at the time. They just hung around.

The journey was embarrassingly long.

One day, my wife told me about a book called, “The Fountainhead”. Her friends from work (they are engineers) had recommended it. She purchased it and read it. She could not wait for me to do the same. There are two segments of my life. Before and after Ayn Rand.

Suddenly, life made sense. Each page turned removed some fallacy that had been obscuring my vision. Prior to reading Rand I knew nothing about philosophy, even though I had taken a philosophy course in college. To me, philosophy was useless because everything I had learned on the subject to that point had been useless. Eventually, I made the further realization that my philosophy course was intended for the outcome which I had experienced. It was designed to be b-s because a mind equipped to function properly is too dangerous for the status quo.

If Rand is not stating a case for anarchism, then I may have a comprehension problem. According to most of her followers, and to the institute which bears her name, she is not. That is fine. I am not going to argue with them. Perhaps she did stop short. But I feel that anarchism is the natural extension of Objectivism. To me, it is the only conclusion one could draw from Rand. I am surprised to find that so many in the Objectivist community cannot make this connection. Maybe someone can help me out on this?

Following my consumption of all things Ayn Rand, I began to re-read history. I began to think. I found Brett Veinotte and the School Sucks podcast. I found Richard Grove and the Peace Revolution. I found Stefan.

So here I am. As I said, it was an embarrassingly long ride. 7 months ago, my little Liliana was born. I am hoping my long ride will set her up to hit the ground running. The timing was certainly perfect. She will be raised in a peaceful household with all of the world's accumulated knowledge at her disposal. It is a beautiful time to have been born.

What strikes me as interesting is how you can't pinpoint when you knew you were an anarchist...I mean, for me after the CAFTA referendum passed here I became disillusioned totally with a system which always seemed unjust...there was a period when I took a bit of an existentialist standpoint and realized there was currently no authority around me who I respected, so that lead me to anarchism, and after i read Bakunin and Kropotkin and so on, I looked up Anarchy on Youtube and at some point ended up finding Stef. Nowadays I don't think of myself as an anarchist as much as a freedomainer though because of the way it is condensed and integrated here.

I also relate to a sense of doom when i was a teenager after I first got into philosophy when I felt it was pointless...like I couldn't make a change in the world and I couldn't change myself, it was not until FDR came with its explanation of personal history approach that my interest for philosophy was rekindled. 

Welcome to FDR!

why Iowa if you're in phoenix?

Thank you for the kind welcome.

Honestly, I cannot explain. I believe I was on the telephone with my brother when it hit me; I could no longer accept the idea that humans need rulers. It sounds completely silly to me to think that at one time I believed in the benevolence of government, if only the proper formula were applied. I did not say to myself, "I am going to look into anarchism". One day, I simply found myself there. It was a process of reduction similar to refactoring code in my profession. Sometimes a programmer will write incredibly complex code to accomplish a task that can be completed with equal competence in just a very simple statement. For me, the refactoring of my beliefs led me here.

There was another influence. Stephen Wolfram wrote a book called, "A New Kind of Science". I am not going to pretend that I get it. I am only capable of getting it at a very very high level. In his book, Wolfram states that remarkably complex systems can arise from incredibly simple initial states. He then applies this concept to the universe by saying that perhaps we can model it in the same way: take simple initial conditions, apply a small set of rules and let it run. He says a lot more than that, but....

I will jump from that. I am simply not qualified to speak on this matter, but conceptually I think it is applicable in the realm of philosophy. Objectivism, Libertarian first principles, anarchism, etc. are very simple at their core, yet from this simplicity (I believe) will come the most free and prosperous society the world has ever known. Just a thought.

I chose Iowa as a handle because that is where I was born. I have many places that I call home, but Iowa is the real home.

I well remember that feeling of doom in the philosophy class as well. My class mates felt the same way.