Charles sent me this essay a few months ago. I love it.
The Obviousness of Anarchy
by John Hasnas
“You see, but you do not observe.”
Sherlock Holmes to Dr. John Watson in A Scandal in Bohemia
Introduction
In this chapter, I have been asked to present an argument for anarchy. This is an absurdly easy thing to do. In fact, it is a task that can be discharged in two words – look around. However, because most of us, like Dr. Watson, see without observing the significance of what we see, some commentary is required.
Anarchy refers to a society without a central political authority. But it is also used to refer to disorder or chaos. This constitutes a textbook example of Orwellian newspeak in which assigning the same name to two different concepts effectively narrows the range of thought. For if lack of government is identified with the lack of order, no one will ask whether lack of government actually results in a lack of order. And this uninquisitive mental attitude is absolutely essential to the case for the state. For if people were ever to seriously question whether government is really productive of order, popular support for government would almost instantly collapse.
The identification of anarchy with disorder is not a trivial matter. The power of our conceptions to blind us to the facts of the world around us cannot be gainsaid. I myself have had the experience of eating lunch just outside Temple University’s law school in North Philadelphia with a brilliant law professor who was declaiming upon the absolute necessity of the state provision of police services. He did this just as one of Temple’s uniformed private armed guards passed by escorting a female student to the Metro stop in this crime-ridden neighborhood that is vastly underserved by the Philadelphia police force.
A wise man once told me that the best way to prove that something is possible is to show that it exists. This is the strategy I shall adopt in this chapter. I intend to show that a stable, successful society without government can exist by showing that it has, and to a large extent, still does.
To continue reading, download the PDF by clicking here.
Showing posts with label behavior. Show all posts
Showing posts with label behavior. Show all posts
Friday, June 17, 2011
Saturday, June 4, 2011
the origin of the tango
[from Suzanne Jill Levine's biography of Manuel Puig: Manuel Puig and the Spider Woman, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000]
Tangos spoke of "poor spinsters" who had been left in the dust because women (unlike men) gave "everything" when they loved; of men who had been abandoned by their women; and, ultimately, of the burden of being a man. Pitched in the nasal, whining tones of Libertad Lamarque or Carlos Gardel, tangos were not exotic, like their exported image, but as homespun tangos originated in the 1890s as a lascivious dance in the brothels of Buenos Aires, in the dockside tenements teeming with new immigrants from Italy, Spain, and Eastern Europe. Of remote African origin, and in its original form a duel of sexuality and violence, domination and submission, it showed (as Borges put it) that "a fight could be a celebration." At first its lyrics were improvised and obscene, and then they began to tell rustic sentimental stories about gauchos and their women. Finally, the lonely, seamy side of the life and love became its main subject, tinged almost always with bitter recrimination.
A reflection of the "half breed" culture of Argentina, by the twenties the tango was popularized beyond the banks of the Boca by slick-haired idol Carlos Gardel, the illegitimate son of a French prostitute. He had begun his singing career in the house where his mother worked, where whores and hoodlums would bump and grind, thigh against pelvis, "cutting" or pausing suggestively; in the brothels men also danced with men, crossing the line between machismo and buggery, and women danced with women, to excite their clients but also because many prostitutes were, or became, lesbians. Just as the forbidden waltz at first caused a scandal in Johann Strauss's Vienna, so the lumpen tango, straight from the lower depths inhabited by harlots, thieves, and foreigners, was too lewd for polite criollo society, where it struck both a xenophobic and homophobic nerve. Many prostitutes were Jewish, sold into white slavery from Eastern Europe; the petty thieves or lunfardos were often Italian. After 1910 the National Council of Education (presided over by educator Ramos Mejía) "nationalized" the tango, or cleansed it of its associations with Jews and homosexuals. The tango was tied up in a nostalgia for its own past, not only for its former festivity but for "homosexual desire lost in the sanitization of a forbidden dance." Only after it was adopted by the sophisticated "gay Paris" of the "lost generation" between the wars did this racy rite of arousal gain legitimate cachet. But it lost something in translation, now refined into a stylized ballroom dance for the elegant international set; or, in Borges's words, "a devilish orgy had become a way of walking." For the lower-class provincials in Argentina, however, the sizzling lyrics of seduction and abandonment remained their language of love.
Gardel was an Argentine hero . . . a talented musician and a bisexual celebrity who necessarily cast a veil of discretion over his private life; a man of modest origins, known to be kind and generous, a true man of the people. Gardel not only sang but composed, and his lyricist was Alfred LePera . . . So as not to disillusion his fans all over South America and in Europe, it was never disclosed that Gardel and LePera were probably lovers. The duo died together, on tour, in a plane crash over Medellin, Colombia, in 1937; it was a national tragedy. Manuel [Puig] would one day write a musical in honor of this universally mourned Argentine tango star who lived a double life. Called Gardel, uma Lembrança (Remembering Gardel), it depicted the life of a man whose "universe is inhabited by defeated creatures, forgiven betrayals, and the idealism of one's first love. Resentments do not last in his world because he understands and empathizes with all people. He never looks down upon them but rather sees them as equals."
Many thanks to Peter E., who writes:
I'm surprised that you did not report that Rudolph Valentino introduced the tango to American audiences in 1921 in his movie, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, from the Argentine novel [eponymous, authored by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez]. I have seen it. I recommend it.
 |
| Libertad Lamarque |
Tangos spoke of "poor spinsters" who had been left in the dust because women (unlike men) gave "everything" when they loved; of men who had been abandoned by their women; and, ultimately, of the burden of being a man. Pitched in the nasal, whining tones of Libertad Lamarque or Carlos Gardel, tangos were not exotic, like their exported image, but as homespun tangos originated in the 1890s as a lascivious dance in the brothels of Buenos Aires, in the dockside tenements teeming with new immigrants from Italy, Spain, and Eastern Europe. Of remote African origin, and in its original form a duel of sexuality and violence, domination and submission, it showed (as Borges put it) that "a fight could be a celebration." At first its lyrics were improvised and obscene, and then they began to tell rustic sentimental stories about gauchos and their women. Finally, the lonely, seamy side of the life and love became its main subject, tinged almost always with bitter recrimination.
 |
| Carlos Gardel |
A reflection of the "half breed" culture of Argentina, by the twenties the tango was popularized beyond the banks of the Boca by slick-haired idol Carlos Gardel, the illegitimate son of a French prostitute. He had begun his singing career in the house where his mother worked, where whores and hoodlums would bump and grind, thigh against pelvis, "cutting" or pausing suggestively; in the brothels men also danced with men, crossing the line between machismo and buggery, and women danced with women, to excite their clients but also because many prostitutes were, or became, lesbians. Just as the forbidden waltz at first caused a scandal in Johann Strauss's Vienna, so the lumpen tango, straight from the lower depths inhabited by harlots, thieves, and foreigners, was too lewd for polite criollo society, where it struck both a xenophobic and homophobic nerve. Many prostitutes were Jewish, sold into white slavery from Eastern Europe; the petty thieves or lunfardos were often Italian. After 1910 the National Council of Education (presided over by educator Ramos Mejía) "nationalized" the tango, or cleansed it of its associations with Jews and homosexuals. The tango was tied up in a nostalgia for its own past, not only for its former festivity but for "homosexual desire lost in the sanitization of a forbidden dance." Only after it was adopted by the sophisticated "gay Paris" of the "lost generation" between the wars did this racy rite of arousal gain legitimate cachet. But it lost something in translation, now refined into a stylized ballroom dance for the elegant international set; or, in Borges's words, "a devilish orgy had become a way of walking." For the lower-class provincials in Argentina, however, the sizzling lyrics of seduction and abandonment remained their language of love.
 |
| Carlos Gardel y Alfred LePera |
Gardel was an Argentine hero . . . a talented musician and a bisexual celebrity who necessarily cast a veil of discretion over his private life; a man of modest origins, known to be kind and generous, a true man of the people. Gardel not only sang but composed, and his lyricist was Alfred LePera . . . So as not to disillusion his fans all over South America and in Europe, it was never disclosed that Gardel and LePera were probably lovers. The duo died together, on tour, in a plane crash over Medellin, Colombia, in 1937; it was a national tragedy. Manuel [Puig] would one day write a musical in honor of this universally mourned Argentine tango star who lived a double life. Called Gardel, uma Lembrança (Remembering Gardel), it depicted the life of a man whose "universe is inhabited by defeated creatures, forgiven betrayals, and the idealism of one's first love. Resentments do not last in his world because he understands and empathizes with all people. He never looks down upon them but rather sees them as equals."
Many thanks to Peter E., who writes:
I'm surprised that you did not report that Rudolph Valentino introduced the tango to American audiences in 1921 in his movie, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, from the Argentine novel [eponymous, authored by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez]. I have seen it. I recommend it.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Philip Morris vs Uruguay
[excerpt from Emily Dugan @ The Independent, 29 May 2011]
The unstoppable march of the tobacco giants
How the industry ruthlessly exploits the developing world - its young, poor and uneducated
When countries in these emerging markets try to clamp down on tobacco, the battle often ends up in the court room. In Uruguay, for example, the government had been leading the way under President Tabaré Ramón Vázquez Rosas, a former oncologist. In 2006 it became the first in the region to ban smoking in public places and now it wants 80 per cent of every pack of cigarettes to be taken up with health warnings.
In response, Philip Morris has sued the government. It is thought that the company will demand at least $2bn in damages if Uruguay loses.
Read the entire article here.
The unstoppable march of the tobacco giants
How the industry ruthlessly exploits the developing world - its young, poor and uneducated
When countries in these emerging markets try to clamp down on tobacco, the battle often ends up in the court room. In Uruguay, for example, the government had been leading the way under President Tabaré Ramón Vázquez Rosas, a former oncologist. In 2006 it became the first in the region to ban smoking in public places and now it wants 80 per cent of every pack of cigarettes to be taken up with health warnings.
In response, Philip Morris has sued the government. It is thought that the company will demand at least $2bn in damages if Uruguay loses.
Read the entire article here.
no smoking
[from MercoPress, 2 June 2011]
Argentina bans smoking in public places; forbids advertising of tobacco companies
The Argentine Lower House passed a law that bans smoking in public spaces and forbids advertising, promoting and sponsoring tobacco companies and forces manufacturers to include warnings on the back of all cigarette packs detailing the harmful effects of smoking on health.
The draft bill had the support of most political blocs and was approved by an overwhelming majority, with 182 votes in favour, one against and one abstention.
The draft bill already had the preliminary approval of the Upper House and bans the usage of marketing terms such as “light,” “soft” or others that create the false impression that a tobacco product is less harmful than another.
Deputy María Elena Chieno from the ruling coalition (Victory Front) said the bill seeks to prevent people from starting to smoke, especially since it causes 40 thousand deaths a year in Argentina, 6000 of which are passive smokers.
“The bill seeks to protect the health of the Argentines,” said Deputy Mario Fiad, who admitted that “he would have liked to intensify the citizens’ responsibility and stress on education.”
Opposition Civic Coalition lawmaker Marcela Rodríguez said the content of the law won’t dissuade people from smoking.
Argentina bans smoking in public places; forbids advertising of tobacco companies
The Argentine Lower House passed a law that bans smoking in public spaces and forbids advertising, promoting and sponsoring tobacco companies and forces manufacturers to include warnings on the back of all cigarette packs detailing the harmful effects of smoking on health.
The draft bill had the support of most political blocs and was approved by an overwhelming majority, with 182 votes in favour, one against and one abstention.
The draft bill already had the preliminary approval of the Upper House and bans the usage of marketing terms such as “light,” “soft” or others that create the false impression that a tobacco product is less harmful than another.
Deputy María Elena Chieno from the ruling coalition (Victory Front) said the bill seeks to prevent people from starting to smoke, especially since it causes 40 thousand deaths a year in Argentina, 6000 of which are passive smokers.
“The bill seeks to protect the health of the Argentines,” said Deputy Mario Fiad, who admitted that “he would have liked to intensify the citizens’ responsibility and stress on education.”
Opposition Civic Coalition lawmaker Marcela Rodríguez said the content of the law won’t dissuade people from smoking.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
kisses
[from Justin E. H. Smith @ 3quarksdaily, 23 May 2011]
I sit and stare at my computer screen and write because, in truth, this place terrifies me.
But I'm sitting here, obviously, because I've been going around France again, which means also going around exchanging bisous. This is problematic for me, as I am an American, and even among Americans am exceptionally awkward when it comes to physical contact. But over the years I've practiced, and have now reached the point where I am able to kiss strange cheeks with passable elegance.
But why all this kissing, anyway?
Something needs to be done to inaugurate social interaction. There must be some signalling of a transition from each doing his or her own thing, to each participating in a shared moment. The Japanese mark this transition by a subtle bow, Americans by a handshake (or sometimes a half-assed 'hug', a concept to which I'll return shortly); bonobos mark it by genital displays. But the merely visual presentation of the Japanese does not seem transformative enough, and in the bonobos' case it seems to misread the character of the impending interaction (or at least to read it in a way that human beings would rather not acknowledge too soon). The American handshake is indissociably linked to commercial interests, to deal-making and to vulgar Mammonism. One needs, as the Europeans have understood, to get the lips involved, to make a little suction noise that announces that two human bodies are in the same place doing the same thing, in order to set a properly human encounter in motion.
Some etymological considerations. The verb 'to kiss' in many languages is formed by onomatopoeia. In Sanskrit the verbal root is chumb- (giving us the lovely syllabic redoubling of the third-person singular perfect form: chuchumba, 'she kissed'). 'Kiss' and 'küssen' hear the sound differently than their Indo-European ancestor, but somehow no less accurately. When the verb is not onomatopoeic, it often emerges from a semantic cluster that is even more revealing than the natural sound of a kiss. Thus the Russian tselovat' is connected to tsel', which is to say 'target'. And isn't that what kiss-compressed lips in fact are? Isn't that what bodily orifices are?
Read all of Justin's post here.
I sit and stare at my computer screen and write because, in truth, this place terrifies me.
But I'm sitting here, obviously, because I've been going around France again, which means also going around exchanging bisous. This is problematic for me, as I am an American, and even among Americans am exceptionally awkward when it comes to physical contact. But over the years I've practiced, and have now reached the point where I am able to kiss strange cheeks with passable elegance.
But why all this kissing, anyway?
Something needs to be done to inaugurate social interaction. There must be some signalling of a transition from each doing his or her own thing, to each participating in a shared moment. The Japanese mark this transition by a subtle bow, Americans by a handshake (or sometimes a half-assed 'hug', a concept to which I'll return shortly); bonobos mark it by genital displays. But the merely visual presentation of the Japanese does not seem transformative enough, and in the bonobos' case it seems to misread the character of the impending interaction (or at least to read it in a way that human beings would rather not acknowledge too soon). The American handshake is indissociably linked to commercial interests, to deal-making and to vulgar Mammonism. One needs, as the Europeans have understood, to get the lips involved, to make a little suction noise that announces that two human bodies are in the same place doing the same thing, in order to set a properly human encounter in motion.
Some etymological considerations. The verb 'to kiss' in many languages is formed by onomatopoeia. In Sanskrit the verbal root is chumb- (giving us the lovely syllabic redoubling of the third-person singular perfect form: chuchumba, 'she kissed'). 'Kiss' and 'küssen' hear the sound differently than their Indo-European ancestor, but somehow no less accurately. When the verb is not onomatopoeic, it often emerges from a semantic cluster that is even more revealing than the natural sound of a kiss. Thus the Russian tselovat' is connected to tsel', which is to say 'target'. And isn't that what kiss-compressed lips in fact are? Isn't that what bodily orifices are?
Read all of Justin's post here.
| Justin E. H. Smith |
Friday, February 4, 2011
EFAM
Susan Ruch brings EFAM, escapefromamericamagazine, to our attention, particularly so that we will read this article:
A Global Positioning System, The Provincial Whore, & The Dead Woman
A Tale Of The Argentine Department Of Highways by Roger Gallo
The Argentine, while predictable; surprises. The dead woman has shrines on every motorway, littered with hundreds of water bottles. Sometimes the shrine is replete with the sculpture of a woman, child at breast, sometimes not. What I at first glance perceived as mounds of debris in front of a Goodwill Box, was a Eucharist-like offering of hundreds of multicolored plastic bottles; belated offerings of water for a woman who died of thirst in the desert. The dead woman, Deolinda Correa, worshipped by the truck drivers of Argentina, was a woman whose husband was forcibly recruited during one of the Argentine civil wars that occurred around 1840. She is now a popular saint through no fault of her own, unofficially, and unrecognized by the Catholic Church. She performs miracles.
The road to my vineyard passed two such shrines. . . . read the rest of the article here.
You might also enjoy Lucy & Matt's Fertility Treatment – Our Experience with IVF in Argentina.
EFAM offers many more articles about Argentina.
A Global Positioning System, The Provincial Whore, & The Dead Woman
A Tale Of The Argentine Department Of Highways by Roger Gallo
The Argentine, while predictable; surprises. The dead woman has shrines on every motorway, littered with hundreds of water bottles. Sometimes the shrine is replete with the sculpture of a woman, child at breast, sometimes not. What I at first glance perceived as mounds of debris in front of a Goodwill Box, was a Eucharist-like offering of hundreds of multicolored plastic bottles; belated offerings of water for a woman who died of thirst in the desert. The dead woman, Deolinda Correa, worshipped by the truck drivers of Argentina, was a woman whose husband was forcibly recruited during one of the Argentine civil wars that occurred around 1840. She is now a popular saint through no fault of her own, unofficially, and unrecognized by the Catholic Church. She performs miracles.
The road to my vineyard passed two such shrines. . . . read the rest of the article here.
You might also enjoy Lucy & Matt's Fertility Treatment – Our Experience with IVF in Argentina.
EFAM offers many more articles about Argentina.
Monday, January 31, 2011
desaparecidos in Chile & Argentina
[from Jacobo Timerman's Chile: Death in the South
, tr. Robert Cox, Vintage, 1987]
The psychologists [at a conference of psychologists in Buenos Aires on "The Culture of Fear in Totalitarian Regimes"] established the following general characteristics of a state of constant fear:
Sensation of vulnerability: In the face of life-threatening situations there is a sense of personal weakness. The individual feels "identified" and "persecuted" and loses all possibility of privacy and intimacy in his personal life. He becomes susceptible to arbitrary behavior beyond his control.
State of alert: The senses are exacerbated and the individual cannot rest in the face of imminent danger and the life-threatening situation this poses. This can be expressed in various symptomatic ways.
Individual impotence: The individual recognizes that his own resources and strength are inadequate to deal with adversity. The individual in this situation feels he has no control over his own life and that decisions about his future are not in his hands. This impotence, and the allied feelings of vulnerability and helplessness, give rise to a sense of abandonment in the face of violence.
Alteration of the sense of reality: As one of the objectives of inducing fear is to deprive an individual of his ability to act, the ordinary sense of reality is deliberately disrupted and rendered useless. It comes to seem practically impossible to verify what is objective fact as against subjective experience, and the boundary between what is real and possible on the one hand and what is fantasy and imagination on the other tends to dissolve. Reality becomes confusing and threatening, with no clear borders, and so loses its guiding role in subjective processes.
, tr. Robert Cox, Vintage, 1987]The psychologists [at a conference of psychologists in Buenos Aires on "The Culture of Fear in Totalitarian Regimes"] established the following general characteristics of a state of constant fear:
Sensation of vulnerability: In the face of life-threatening situations there is a sense of personal weakness. The individual feels "identified" and "persecuted" and loses all possibility of privacy and intimacy in his personal life. He becomes susceptible to arbitrary behavior beyond his control.
State of alert: The senses are exacerbated and the individual cannot rest in the face of imminent danger and the life-threatening situation this poses. This can be expressed in various symptomatic ways.
Individual impotence: The individual recognizes that his own resources and strength are inadequate to deal with adversity. The individual in this situation feels he has no control over his own life and that decisions about his future are not in his hands. This impotence, and the allied feelings of vulnerability and helplessness, give rise to a sense of abandonment in the face of violence.
Alteration of the sense of reality: As one of the objectives of inducing fear is to deprive an individual of his ability to act, the ordinary sense of reality is deliberately disrupted and rendered useless. It comes to seem practically impossible to verify what is objective fact as against subjective experience, and the boundary between what is real and possible on the one hand and what is fantasy and imagination on the other tends to dissolve. Reality becomes confusing and threatening, with no clear borders, and so loses its guiding role in subjective processes.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
who's a barbarian?
[from El Argos de Buenos Aires, February 9, 1822]
[during Carnaval]
the most distinguished people stoop to behavior that must be called barbarous . . . showing every sign of having lost their reason; and sometimes we see them associating with the grossest sort of plebians. . . . We therefore hope that the refined people in Buenos Aires will show by their example how such diversions, which must be considered holdovers of barbarism, can be replaced by other kinds of pleasure marked by the good taste, order and sensitivity which must characterize a people now embarked on the great work of civilization
[after Carnaval]
despite all we say, our hopes have been shattered, and we must painfully conclude that there are yet among us many profane people unable to enter the temple of good taste
[during Carnaval]
the most distinguished people stoop to behavior that must be called barbarous . . . showing every sign of having lost their reason; and sometimes we see them associating with the grossest sort of plebians. . . . We therefore hope that the refined people in Buenos Aires will show by their example how such diversions, which must be considered holdovers of barbarism, can be replaced by other kinds of pleasure marked by the good taste, order and sensitivity which must characterize a people now embarked on the great work of civilization
[after Carnaval]
despite all we say, our hopes have been shattered, and we must painfully conclude that there are yet among us many profane people unable to enter the temple of good taste
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