View Single Post
Old 06-07-2006, 03:19 PM   #34 (permalink)
cellophanedeity
Heliotrope
 
cellophanedeity's Avatar
 
Location: A warm room
I think it could work if we were to take the forum we have now and turn it into AFP.

The problem with starting fresh is the idea of how anonymous the internet is, and how anonymity can create carelessness. If we want this to be similar in type to a "real world" model of anarchy, then we must take into account that people aren't entirely anonymous in meatspace.

We all would start with equal and total power, but our current "social positions" among eachother remain the same. Halx would be Halx, cellophanedeity would be cellophanedeity, and such. That way, if someone is banned, then the community knows who did it, and is able to find out why, if they're interested. Also, there's no reason to believe that anarchy begins as a meeting of equals with equal status. I believe that just a state of lawlessness is enough to be considered anarchy. (And whoever said that anarchy by definition isn't compatable with order is mixing anarchy and chaos, which is very easy to do!)

It would be interesting to see how things would progress from there. I have a feeling that a certain sort of Social Contract would form, in which we would put up with certain people that we don't particularly care for, but are not harmful in order to keep the peace.

Say for instance that I don't like Maleficent (I really do! I'm just using her as an example!! <3) and I have the power to ban her. I also know that a larger group of other people do like Mal, and would be upset if I banned her. In order to keep the peace and my place in the social sphere here, I would settle with my negative feelings.

I also suspect that we would develop a sort of policing method, in which certain, more socially powerful, people take it upon themselves to sort out the good and bad guys. And yes, this would be a popularity contest. Most things are anyway, even if we pretend they're not.

And from there, the "police" would develop rules to avoid arguments within eachother, then the other people would develop rules to keep the police from being in total power of them, and then we would be back a a democracy and then back where we are, and while it's not perfect, we do it to get along.
cellophanedeity is offline  
 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73