cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/15059816
transcript [text overlaid on several pictures of benches and outside windowsills. the benches have bars, or gaps to prevent someone from sleeping on them.
text reads “Ban anti-homeless arctithecture”]
sauce: https://mastodon.social/@AnarchistArt/112901196516297447
Hostile architecture is among the symptoms of the hostile modern city, where neighbours never say hi, and people die on the streets as people walk passivly by.
Yes, genuine question. I don’t understand how the system doesn’t devolve into constant, chaotic vigilante justice.
Okidoke, thanks for answering.
Well first of all, we have to look at why people do things. Once we figure that out we can figure out how to prevent such things from happening.
Secondly, since rules were mentioned: What are the rules? Who do they serve? How did they come about? etc. These things must be looked at in any system that is attempting to create and maintain civility and cooperation.
With these two things in place processes can start being created in order to both constantly update our understandings of things and to ensure that such behaviours that you mention are either unnecessary or can be rectified (with things such as restorative and transformative justice etc) instead of devolving into “constant, chaotic vigilante justice”.
Such a system requires a lot of work to impliment, a lot of educating everyone on the best practises for dealing with problems should they arise, a lot of instilling values, a lot of looking at said values and seeing if they fit with the wanted goals any more etc.
This is not a simple or easy path to tread, it’ll take a lot of time to get there and there will be I am sure a lot of struggles along the way, including the vigilante justice you mention to some degree, however, problems do not mean failure, only when we stop trying is it a failure.
Basically it requires slow yet constant work on ourselves, unlearning all the harmful practices of this world and the way it is now, and a desire to do better instead, to help instead of hurt.
Does that help? Feel free to discuss it more with us if you’d like.
That genuinely does help. It sounds like the implementation of anarchism is a transformation of peoples’ attitudes and values. In a world full of people who think and behave that way, anarchism is the natural state of being.
My gut reaction is “well people tend to be just the pits, so that’ll never happen.” But I guess the argument is sort of like the argument for changing the way we do things to combat climate change. Some people think climate change is fake, but even if it is, we’ll end up with clean water and cheaper electricity in the end anyway. Similarly, just because we might not reach a state of anarchism in the next year, or ten, or fifty doesn’t mean the social transformation isn’t worth starting now. There are short term benefits that don’t yet involve a stateless society.
It does feel like a certain fraction of the population is always going to be, I guess, shitheads. I think unpleasant things are going to be necessary to weed those folks out. But even well-intentioned people, when forced to do unpleasant things, tend to be transformed by that process in a pretty negative way. And whoops, now we’ve got idealists who are good at wielding violent force, and those people tend to build followings.
We are glad to have helped! Yeah, exactly, we aren’t there yet, but doesn’t mean we shouldn’t head towards it.
Hmm, do you know why it feels that way for you? Also, even if there were ‘shitheads’ why is the only way to deal with them to do unpleasant things?