You have heard of red states and blue states, Democrat and Republican, conservative and liberal, but this congenital dichotomy mirrors itself exactly, all while seeming as cultural polar opposites.
Freedom is deified in Western culture today, but this entity has the most permissive and laissez-faire style. On the other hand, anarchy has been slighted — as if the negative end of a battery was a bad thing that the positive end of the battery could still function without.
Freedom and anarchy are etymologically made of the same linguistic DNA. Freedom — the domain of the free — has no controller restraining its occupants. A kingdom has a king. A dukedom has a duke. Anarchy has “no arch” — overseeing controller or leader demanding obedience. In their simplest meanings, they are the same beast: a multi-headed hydra.
From the end of the 19th century and into the beginning of the 20th century, anarchist assassins used handguns to accelerate the elimination of their “archos” or leaders: President William McKinley in the U.S. and Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary. This era ended with the start of World War I and the demise and/or marginalization of many monarchies. Maybe this is the source of anarchy becoming labeled as freedom spoiled or unrestrained. Anarchy did become a prodigal son in its own right as it grew into a political movement which stood vehemently in favor of purely voluntary political governance or none at all: a sort of Republic of Pirates with an informal Code of Conduct.
In recent decades, these twins seemingly have narrowed their fictional distinctions, but that may only be true to the non-historic eye. Contemporary times fool every generation with the near-sightedness of the now, blinding them to most of the great intricate frictions of the past.
Events we see are “freedom fights” if they side with our views or “causes of anarchy” if they seek to obscure those views. However, it must be noted that there is a small fragment of society that sees anarchy and anarchists with endearing eyes, and even more so because the majority of our society sees them with disdain. “Sovereign citizen” is the preferred label of many of these anarchists today.
Our stories and tales of the past may make that past seem simple and clear today, but in their own times these events they were just as politically loaded with blurred ethical and moral lines for their own contemporary, myopic onlookers to struggle with resolutely. Those who want to advance one’s own cause were freedom-fighters. Those who threaten one’s own desired order were anarchists. These twins became severed into opposing and loaded labels.
So how could any political state not immediately burn itself down when it permits these two very hot fires to rage within its borders? Like the power of heat in a furnace or kiln, their strengths are harnessed by their ironic confinement. Today, we have sold ourselves on the idea that freedom is happily increasing the temperature within the furnace, even if only for show. But the usually maligned anarchy would like to blow it open with an incensed ignobility.
Freedom is softer, loved and somewhat harmlessly, playfully juvenile, but anarchy is hard, jaded and an insufferable, uncompromising geriatric curmudgeon. Or is freedom wisely led by founding fathers and anarchy misguided by lawless youths?
Fiction stores tales in myths that societies call history. Their “truths” are constrained within and by their poetic script. The authenticity of the past faces its greatest threat from selectivity. In its limited space, only so much can be included in history. The little that makes it into these grand narratives is subservient to the language used to paint its pictures, just as visual artists are guided by the limitations of their palettes and their canvas sizes.
Flags don’t fight battles, but they finish them. Labels don’t justify the sides of struggle, but they are cheat sheets by which humans identify friend and foe. Freedom has traditionally been friend and anarchist became foe. However, just as terms of endearment, hazing nicknames and indoctrination rituals play with the uncertainty and instability of these states and their relationships within a group, anarchy can ironically be a group’s social bond all while that very same group conversely propagandizes the idea of freedom to the outsiders who observe them from afar. The Hell’s Angels seem to play with just such an oscillating duplicity.
Many academics or journalists may try to divide these twins, but these words both completely share all of their same essential organs, and their acclaimed or apparent separate “two sides” are hardly distinguishable as different at times. Are they conjoined twins or just the natural differences that each of us has between our own right and left sides? On the proverbial two-sided coin, both sides are both unified on the inside and divided on the outside.
If an honest distinction must be made between freedom and anarchy, it is this: As they are prejudicially seen by their users today, freedom is heralded as a sincere request from earnest citizens and anarchy is “saga-ed” as an insatiable and impatient personal coup that subjugates the civic norms for self-sovereign autonomy.
Maybe only the Roman god Janus can lead us through a gateway for reunifying these seemingly contrarian quests into a cohesive, coherent and heavenly whole.
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April 10, 2021 at 01:49PM
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Freedom, anarchy are twin ideals - Daily Journal
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