[Continued from what was initially a Fark comment that turned out to be way too "tl;dr" and tangential to post there.]

profplump: Sean M: Fear of getting hurt / getting caught is what keeps most of us from jumping off roofs or robbing banks.

Roofs, sure. But I am unwilling to live in a world where I must believe that fear of being hurt or caught is what keeps most people from robbing banks.

What do you think is going on in their heads? Respect for private property and love of free enterprise?

You might also note the part of the article where they discuss all the social and personal upsides of not having fear. I suspect there's some compromise that's superior to either extreme; good judgement requires a lot less fear than most people typically provide.

I'd like to believe it's more than just of consequences that keeps me from publicly plighting my troth at LaurenAguillera, but from her nine years in the army I would bet she could hurt me.

Seriously, I find good judgment isn't far behind fear from keeping me from doing Bad Things I'd really like to do. E.g., robbing banks sounds like fun if only I were smart enough to get away with it.

I'll grant you that it's not so much "fear of getting hurt or caught" that keeps me from, say, rape-murdering little boys and old ladies, but there my "good judgment" is allied with hedonism: rape-murdering anybody does not sound like fun. And it sounds so messy.

Okay, my sense of compassion and ethical-political principles has a lot to do with not doing that, but also there's my fear of consequences from my own mighty conscience: the ayenbite of inwyt harasses me endlessly over more trivial transgressions, so imagining what the little voices would put me through if I did rape-murder a helpless victim makes the whole thing sound like too much trouble, too much risk for whatever benefit one can get from such things. Even if nobody ever found out who did it.

I'm quite capable of doing "worse" things that do sound like fun, even if I'd never get hurt or caught, because I don't judge them wrong. If I understand correctly what you mean by "good judgment" that is a factor, but then too the amount of trouble I'd have to go to seems to outweigh the fun I could expect. It costs too much, or I'd have to plan ahead too far, or I'd be away from my dog too long, something like that: something other than what most people intend by the word "wrong."

And as for my mighty conscience, it beats me up over things I doubt other people would care much about. Things like being made "uncomfortable" by a guy's bad clubfoot, or not "making" a half-crippled old lady let me roll her trash bin back from the street. That requires me to (over-?) compensate by going out of my way to do "nice" things, just so I have a few pieces "Yes but!"

The thing is that despite my perhaps eccentric emphases and proportions I'll wager than in general my "good judgment" and morals/ethics are pretty much on par with what we see around us here in "the Western world," that most people whose countries were in NATO before 1990 fear the consequences of badness more than they value rational or religious goodness. And I'll bet that a guy of my age in similar circumstances in Sofia, Bulgaria fears consequences even more than one in Paris or Bonn, because he grew up under an even more fear-based regime.

I'd like to believe otherwise, because for one thing my ideal anarchist society would depend far more on good judgment than on fear of getting hurt or caught, but it does seem that our intellectual evolution ain't quite up to that yet: as my then-17 year old niece came out with once, "people aren't smart enough for anarchy." And I'd like to believe that my reply to her makes sense, that perhaps people will become smart enough with a few generations of education and social engineering, but that might be a pipe dream.

For one thing it requires people with good judgment getting more control over writing and producing popular TV shows, and not only educational sitcoms like the Cosby Show but also fun thrillers like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Until "the masses" are programmed with values appropriate for social democracy -- let alone successful anarcho-syndicalist communes -- the best we can hope for American society is that it doesn't keep going ethically downhill as quickly as it has been in the past few decades (or Presidential administrations, or whatever the major relevant factor is here).

As it is what I foresee is an American society too closely resembling that in the Dryco universe of author Jack Womack: all that really requires is that things keep going as they have been for most of my life. What can one expect of a society where the majority of Americans who vote really seem to believe that Obama is a Marxist Muslim who's out to enslave the white race and take their guns away?

What struck me most about Womack's Random Acts of Senseless Violence when I read it not too long ago is how "contemporary" it seems, i.e. how "prophetic" it was when published in 1993. At the current rate all we need is one more Republican like "Bush II" -- or one more Democrat like Clinton or Obama -- for us to wake up in a "Dryco" world in 2021.

Those who'd remind me that Jack Womack writes speculative fiction get answered with a snort. Who would have dreamed in say 1978 that a (half-) black man like Barack Obama would ever get elected, or that any President with such an obvious center-rightist program would be mischaracterized as a Stalinist gun-grabber? They didn't even say such mean things about Jimmy Carter, and when it comes down to it he was more "liberal" than Obama seems to dream of being.

Imagine today a Southern Baptist President of either "major" party who sincerely believes it's a big sin to "lust in [one's] heart" let alone "murder the unborn" nevertheless regarding it as his duty to uphold Roe v. Wade. Doesn't that sound rather "SciFi" in 2015? Can you picture the Barack Obama of 2012 campaigning on a pacifist, liberal, anti-NSA platform?

Granted though Carter was liberal enough in other ways he did pretty much take a fall to the Reaganites regarding abortion by not publicly defending Roe v. Wade as you'd expect a "Marxist tyrant" to do. I too respect the quality and consistency of his moral thought (though I disagree with him on many things), but his conscientious inability to defend "murdering the preborn" had a lot to do with inflicting this current shiat on today's USA. As it stands we've had 24 years of what amounts to an increasingly demented and hilarious Reaganism. (Thanks a whole lot, Mr. Habitat for Humanity.)

As for Barack Obama, his Administration some decent things (see here), but to regard Obama's record as anything like socialism is just plain silly, as even those wacky Trots at the so-called World Socialist Web Site could tell you (and just did).

Anyway. As previously noted in several places over the past few years I hate this "SciFi universe" you people make me live in, but I'm holding on (with the help of two antidepressants and a lot of caffeine & booze) because one fluffy little dog has made it clear to me that he thinks his life would really suck if I left it. He'll be 10 this summer and given his current good health and the expected life-span of his breed I'll most likely be here in Lexington, KY, through the rest of this decade. After than, or if he should somehow be struck down sooner, it depends on what shape I'm in: if I'm still able to keep crawling along in life well enough I'll move to someplace like Hawaii even if I have to be homeless, but if I'm in bad shape at the time I'll just eat some buckshot and get it over with.

Had I known in 1984 that this life I'm living in the society you give me would turn out to be the best I could ever expect I would have offed myself after a "substances & sluts" binge, probably during the Major Depressive Episode that would inevitably follow such a thing.

Y'all "normal Americans" and your continued inability to even try to show good judgment have really fucked up my life. Of course if I weren't such am emo fruitcake it might not seem so bad to me, but the responsibility ain't mine: I wasn't among those who essentially elected Ronnie Reagan NINE (9) frigging times.

It'll take several decades of "influence over the Media" -- much more than any "true progressives" could ever realistically hope to have -- to get my fellow Americans anywhere near anarchist consciousness. Hell, it'll probably take the majority of today's Millennials 30 more years to figure out what "liberal" means.

But hey. At least I'll have a few more years of bitterness and Schadenfreude to sit here and "prophecize" -- even if I will have to hold my nose and vote "straight Democratic" a few more times. Being able say "See? I toldja so!" is one of the most enjoyable things I'm still capable of in my "declining years." And y'all can be surely be relied upon to give me more chances to do that than I have time or energy to keep up with.

And to refer back to the first topic of this document, yes I myself am nowhere near as good at anarchist consciousness as I'd have to be to survive in my ideal America. But then thanks to American normalcy I'll never have to strain myself anywhere near that hard, will I.

Hope this helps! Have a nice day!