Anarcho-abolitionism?

A great deal of time was spent pondering how to begin this essay. Given the scope of the concepts at hand, there did not seem to be any way to properly introduce my ideas to the reader. So I decided to begin with the hackneyed postmodern device known as self-reference, thus absolving myself of the burdensome duty of being creative [end humor sequence]. Since most of the readership, which undoubtedly consists entirely of people I coaxed through facebook to follow a link here, is probably uninitiated in one or more of these concepts, it is necessary to explain each of them on the course presenting my own ideas.

What the H-E-double hockey sticks is anarchism anyway? In short, anarchism is a political philosophy promoting anarchy. The word “political” is used here only for the sake of clarity as to what domain of human experience we are discussing, that is, the domain of power relations. If we define politics as the exercise of power in a social context, we might conclude that anarchism is distinctly anti-political in nature. What is anarchy, then? Unfortunately, the term has been co-opted by so many different “political” and political factions (usually by using the prefix anarcho- in conjunction with another political philosophy that renders the anarchy part all but functionally irrelevant) that a precise definition of anarchy is elusive if not impossible. However, I’m going to attempt, ever so delicately, to construct a working definition. The most convenient way to begin this process is to define our terms negatively—to state what anarchy is not. Anarchy is not chaos.

What anarchy is—as Pierre-Joseph Prouhon, the first self-proclaimed anarchist, stated in his 1849 book Confessions of a Revolutionary, “Anarchy is order.” Anarchy, to Proudhon, was a state of society where every individual was liberated from the explicit tyranny of the state and the implicit tyranny of wage labor. Where each person owned the product of his or her labor and could buy or sell these products in a free market of voluntary transactions. Where social institutions consisted of free, non-hierarchical associations between individuals. No gods and no masters, to quote the man himself. Indeed, Proudhon’s vision of anarchy is a far cry from roving gangs of GG Allin fans dressed in bondage gear driving around on motorcycles and stealing gasoline from defenseless peasantfolk. Not only is anarchy order, order liberated from the inefficiencies and injustices of government, but it is flourishing. It is a system where a person can achieve their highest potential, unfettered by the burdens of arbitrary laws and law enforcement, exploitation of labor and creativity, and land monopolies that make subordinate employment a necessary condition for existence.

Today, much discrepancy exists between the far “wings” of anarchism: anarcho-capitalists on the far “right” generally define anarchism solely as the abolition of the state. At the risk of sounding glib, many anarcho-capitalists have no reservations about filling the vacuum left by the abolition of the state with every sort of private tyranny imaginable—corporatism, feudalism, etc.—based on absolutist property claims that could only be considered valid within the context of a system of state privilege (see my last essay, “The Ethics of SimCity”), thus creating what amounts to a de-facto state. Anarcho-communists on the far left tend to be completely indistinguishable from Marxists with the exception of favoring direct action over political. Sometimes. Anarcho-communists fall into the same trap of state apologetics that anarcho-capitalists do, though much more explicitly. As near as I can tell, anarcho-communists favor the abolition of capitalism as the primary means to anarchy and abolition of the state a secondary consideration at best. Contemporary anarchist thinker Alex Strekal explains these phenomena as overemphases on economic preference on the extreme left and right within the anarchist spectrum that marginalize anarchism itself (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2qaD1EmzAo). Still, this is all very confusing for someone that is trying to understand what anarchism is. But looking at the commonalities between the various strains of anarcho-isms, we can glean that what fundamentally characterizes anarchism is an opposition to authority and a desire for liberty. And that is precisely what attracted me to anarchism in the first place.

Recently, however, I’ve taken a great interest in the ethical theory of negative utilitarianism, originally conceived by Karl Popper and expanded upon most notably by David Pearce, the author of “The Hedonistic Imperative” (available online in full at http://www.hedweb.com/hedethic/tabconhi.htm). Negative utilitarianism is distinct from utilitarianism first formulated by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill in the 18^th century. Both theories are rooted in the hedonic principle, the seeking of pleasure and happiness and avoidance of pain and suffering that motivates the actions of sentient organisms. While utilitarianism propounds the ethical principle of “the greatest good for the greatest number”, negative utilitarianism propounds “the least suffering for the least number”. These two ethical theories at first appear to be opposite conclusions of the hedonic principle, but Karl Popper strongly believed that happiness and suffering are not symmetrical experiences in their ethical implications, contrary to the belief of the utilitarians. Pain avoidance (physical or psychological) is a much stronger drive in an organism than is pleasure-seeking; the unpleasant experience of suffering overshadows the rewards of happiness and it is only logical to assess the moral worth of each accordingly.

Utilitarianism, the greatest good for the greatest number, is troubling in its possible implications. For example, if we are dealing with a population with access to a certain amount of resources, there is no logical reason why all of the resources could not be concentrated into the hands of a few. Maximizing the amount of resources each person had until increasing their wealth no longer increased pleasure or happiness, saturating their hedonic circuitry if you will, while leaving most people with little or nothing would in no way contradict the basic principle of the greatest good for the greatest number. The greatest number would simply be very small. Since the symmetry between happiness and suffering is assumed, one could argue that the vast happiness enjoyed by the privileged few justifies the suffering, the starvation and poverty, incurred upon the masses via this monopolization of resources. If this doesn’t seem blatantly wrong, then you either have no conscience or a severely distorted view of the nature of existence. This would only make sense if all of the people involved comprised a hive-mind that experienced the aggregate sum of all the pain and pleasure input by its individual agents. A preposterous scenario. This problem does not exist in negative utilitarianism. Since minimizing suffering is a higher priority than maximizing happiness and there is no qualitative symmetry between the two experiences, skewing the resource distribution in order to grant privilege is not morally equivalent to more egalitarian patterns of distribution.

We are speaking entirely in the abstract of course, as agents of an omnipotent state that utilizes individuals toward particular ends. What I’m attempting to do is essentially is establish common ground between anarchism and negative utilitarianism, or rather, place NU within the anarchist framework. The two are not necessarily incompatible since negative utilitarianism has no specific scope, what population is included within the least number experiencing the least suffering. Abolitionism, the eradication of suffering in all sentient life, can be seen as the logical conclusion of NU. This, however, does not mean that NU must be applied on a universal scale. In fact, since our reach is technically limited to the sentient life on Earth, it would be impossible to eradicate all suffering assuming that life exists elsewhere in the universe. This is why I say that NU has no specific scope, because it is impossible to carry out consistently as an ethical imperative since our capacity to reduce suffering is confined to our knowledge of other sentient beings in existence, physical access to them, and the technical ability to eliminate suffering. This physical limitation is not a problem if NU is viewed through an anarchist lens, where positive obligations do not exist. The ethical imperative then, the negative obligation, becomes simply to not inflict harm or suffering on other beings. This sounds vaguely like the non-aggression principle espoused by voluntaryists. A major difference here is that NU actually provides a philosophically valid basis for not inflicting suffering based on the hedonic principle whereas voluntaryists believe that the NAP is axiomatic without any philosophical basis for that belief. Another major difference is that NU provides an exception to the rule of not inflicting suffering when doing so would prevent greater suffering already being inflicted. For example, hunting down and killing, in the most painless manner possible, a known murderer to prevent further victimization would be a morally right course of action, even if doing so meant aggressing upon them when they had not harmed you in particular. Of course, you could not be forced to take that course of action, which is what makes this synthesis of anarchism and negative utilitarianism distinct from pure NU, where the ethical imperative is levied as a positive obligation. This would naturally lead to a state that is empowered to assure that suffering is minimized, but that would in practice lapse into what a state always is; a machine of tyranny that prevents flourishing and tramples dissent. Perhaps then, the anarchist approach to negative utilitarianism is much more consistent with the reduction of suffering than pure NU as obligation.

To sum up this synthesis as briefly as possible: the premise of negative utilitarianism can serve as a solid basis for ethics in anarchism. Suffering is an experience that can be and so often is unimaginably horrible to sentient organisms and its abolition is certainly a socially desirable goal. The consistent application of NU as an imposed obligation, though, is impossible and might even lapse into a state that acts counter to NU’s own goals. Certainly, the construction of a society where hierarchy and obligation are opposed would result in drastically reduced suffering. And the flourishing resulting from liberty, technological and social advancement, would be conducive to abolitionism, the abolishment of suffering in all sentient life through designer drugs, surgical, chemical, or nanotechnological manipulation of the limbic system, and ultimately, a radical redrafting of the genome. Thus anarchism could be seen as a strategy for negative utilitarianism. Frankly, I was surprised that the union of negative utilitarianism and anarchism was not (to my knowledge) already conceived of before I wrote this. Many of the conclusions I drew here may be met with criticism with negative utilitarians and anarchists alike (if anyone was actually reading this, I mean), but it seems to me that the goals of the two are not so different and a strategic synthesis of the two would be mutually beneficial. Constructive feedback is welcome.

This was actually my final project for my Literature class but it’s entertaining enough to warrant general readership.  It’s probably better if you’ve actually read The Inferno, though.  I’ll probably write the rest of the cantos sometime in the future.

CANTO I

When I had journeyed half of our life’s way, that is to say when I was 36 years, 1 month, and 18 days old, I found myself on a crowded freeway confined behind the wheel of a passenger vehicle.  This scenario was quite unremarkable considering a large portion of my waking hours were spent in this fashion, all the more reason for my state of despair at the time.  Up ahead, a serious accident involving multiple fatalities hindered my progress toward home.  The hot sun was beginning to set when a loudspeaker announced that the entire incidental congregation of commuters would now be turned around to go the opposite direction.  We were to follow the flashing blue and red lights to the next offramp.  Well, technically, the last offramp.  Naturally, the whole ordeal took ages and by the time I had made it back to the street the sun was already sinking beneath the horizon.  If only those people hadn’t wiped out and gotten killed, I could be home watching TV right now.  Since I had already missed the Simpsons reruns, the night was basically ruined for me.  And with work in the morning, I was just moving toward oblivion, toward sleep that would only steal more time.  My mood darkened in step with the sky.

CANTO II

Since my night was already shot, I decided to stop and get gas, despite having more than half a tank already.  Maybe I would buy a Snickers bar or something.  The next gas station I saw was a Shell station with the “S” missing.  How appropriate, I thought.  I pulled up next to the pump and got out of the car to go into the station.  There were no other cars around at the time.  The clerk was a middle-aged man with a thin brown beard, shaved head, and prominent brow.  He gave a prolonged stare and smile as I walked in.  A glance that might otherwise have been friendly was made unsettling merely but its persistence.  I grabbed a Snapple from the cooler and a candy bar from the rack and put them on the counter.  He made no motion to ring up the items but continued to smirk at me.  Now I was starting to get very uncomfortable, but all I could utter was, “Ummmm” before he interrupted me.

“Dante, your life, your job, your house, your routine, they have separated you from the things that truly matter.  You have begun to feel, increasingly, that there is more to it all than the dull work-a-day world you have sentenced yourself to.”

“How do you know my name?”

“You may know me as Les Stroud from TV’s Survivorman where I survive in the wilderness for seven days with no crew or outside assistance.  Not like Bear Grylls from Man Versus Wild with his entire support team.  I carry the damn cameras around myself!  Ah, but I digress.  I was sent here by the woman in heaven who watches over you, you know her.  Betty, your ex-girlfriend.  I will guide you in this journey. ”

“Hold on.  Journey?  Where?  I have to work in the morning I can’t journey anywhere!  And Betty’s not even dead, she can’t be in heaven.”

“Yeah, about that.  She was actually one of the fatalities in that accident.  Ironic, right?  In a way, she guided you here, as I will now guide you through the nine circles of Hell.  So, let’s get going.”  He took out a bathroom key attached to a large piece of plastic from under the counter.  Why are bathroom keys always attached to something bulky, anyway?  To dissuade people from stealing them?  Why would anyone want a key to a bathroom, there’s nothing but plumbing fixtures in it!

“Hell?  That’s just silly!  Even if Hell did exist, it wouldn’t be a physical place that we could just go to!  Besides, I have a life with responsibilities, I can’t just leave!  I have work at 9 am tomorrow and I need to sleep!”

“You sure do complain a lot.  The reason we’re going through Hell is because it is part one of a three part series that ends with your holy union with the deity of your choice.  We don’t discriminate here.”

“That’s very progressive, but again, I can’t!”

“Yeah, yeah, your job.  Listen, buddy, you can get a job anytime but how many opportunities do you have to go to Hell?  Wait, that’s not what I mean.  What I’m saying is this will be an enlightening spiritual experience that will shape you as a human being.  You would give up that chance just to sit around in traffic and answer telephones all day?”

Survivorman was right.  Up until now, I had felt a profound emptiness in life.  Work, traffic, money, rent, everything that my world consisted of had alienated me from the essence of being.  It was time to rectify that.

Les Stroud opened the bathroom door from the outside of the building and ushered me inside.  It was dim, smelly, and plastered with graffiti.  About what you would expect from a gas station bathroom with the exception of a shovel propped against the wall by the toilet.  I couldn’t fathom what purpose that might have served.  Les went over to the sink and unscrewed the mirror with a screwdriver he apparently had in his pocket.  Pulling it aside revealed a hole in the wall large enough for a person to crawl through.  Immediately I knew what I was going to have to do.  If it had been anyone other than Survivorman leading me on, this whole scenario would have been very shady, but this man once ate a scorpion and drank distilled dew from plastic wrap because he was stuck in the desert with no food!  Truly he is the one meant to guide me on this journey.

“So you’re telling me the entrance to Hell is in a gas station bathroom?”

“Of course, where else?”  He took out a small stepladder from under the sink and placed it so as to grant access to the hole.  “Read the inscription first.”

“’FOR A GOOD TIME CALL JENNY’?”

“No, the one above that.”

CANTO III

“’ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE’ That seems awfully familiar.”

“Yes, well, it is a famous literary reference.  Get in,” he said motioning to the wall.

“Shouldn’t we make preparations first?  Going to Hell seems like it might be dangerous.”

“Nothing in Hell can hurt you, although what you see there may be frightening and disturbing.  In truth, I have been there once before.  I had to survive there for seven days with no crew or assistance.  I do fear returning there, but only because of the great pity I feel for the residents.”

“Alright,” I said, mustering my courage, “I’m ready.”  I climbed up on the sink and into the hole.  As I crawled on, the darkness and narrowness of the passage suddenly became very apparent.  I was on the verge of panicking when the passage suddenly dropped off onto a metal grate.  At first I thought it was just the area behind the cooler in the convenience store and Les Stroud had just played a prank on me.  Then I saw that I was in a vast complex of metal and concrete with poor lighting.  Les Stroud fell out of the hole behind me, then stood up and dusted himself off.

“Well, here we are.  Hell.”

“It looks like it could use some renovation,” I said, seeing its dilapidated infrastructure.

“Unfortunately, none of the souls here are condemned to an eternity of repairing things.  It does contribute a sort of unsettling atmosphere though, doesn’t it?”  He walked ahead leading the way to a dirt arena where chalk lines had been drawn into the sand as if in preparation for a race.  Down in the bleachers hundreds of souls sat looking bored and listless.

“Are these souls condemned to an eternity of boredom?” I asked.

“These are the souls of those who live without disgrace and without praise.  They used to get chased by swarms of Africanized honeybees while the other people in Limbo placed bets on the weekends.  The bees all died though since there are no flowers in hell to extract pollen from.  Now the souls just sit there, without disgrace or praise.  A much more fitting punishment if you ask me.”

“Can’t they leave?  Why do they stay here?”

“Actually, I’ve never been all that clear on why people here do things repetitively.  It’s not as though someone is forcing them to do it.  Maybe because the souls here do not require sleep, food, or water to survive there is no reason to pursue different tasks.  Without the struggle for survival, apathy sets in.  Remember that as you watch my show, Wednesdays at 8:00 pm on the Discovery Channel.  Next week, I survive the Serengeti Plains!”

The Survivorman led me to the center of Limbo where there was a circular chasm so vast that I could not see the opposite shore through the haze nor the bottom of the shaft which disappeared into darkness.  I gripped the guardrails as I surveyed the scope of the place.  Giant machinery climbed from the floor and across the walls.  Engines, pipes, pistons, gears, all whose function was unclear to me.

“I can’t believe all this was under the gas station,” I said.

“Technically it isn’t.  That hole was actually a portal to Hell which exists on a different plane of reality than the material world.”  Just as I began to wonder how he knew so much about Hell, the earth began to tremble and I began to feel extremely dizzy.  Keep in mind I was still standing over a giant abyss and I have pretty severe acrophobia as it is.  The last thing I wanted was to feel unsteady on my own feet.  Overcome by vertigo, I quickly fainted.

CANTO IV

“Quite a tumble you took there, champ.  You’re lucky that court-ordered guardrail was put up in 1982.”

“You look frightened, Survivorman.”

“Not frightened,” he replied, “I’m just anticipating the horror we will soon witness when we leave the first circle.  Hell is organized by circles by the way; I may have forgotten to mention that.  This is Limbo, the first circle, and the circles progress downward becoming narrower.  Anyway, I feel very sorry for some of the souls here, hence my apprehension.  Definitely not afraid, no way!  You know what I’m afraid of?  Bull moose during mating season.  The most dangerous animal on the planet!”

“Okay, just asking.”  We moved on to a small city of Romanesque architecture with paved roads instead of just metal grating and old concrete.  It appeared to be a pedestrian-based city as I saw no automobiles.  Can you get an automobile into Hell?  Could they make their own?  Either way, the people here seemed to be at least euthymic in their disposition, wearing no expressions of suffering.

“This is the City of Worthy Pagans.  Really, that’s the name.  The people here lived good lives but they worshipped the wrong god so none of their good deeds really mattered.  Still, eternal torture didn’t sound quite fair so they were sent here as sort of a consolation prize.”

We climbed the stairs into a large state building that Les Stroud informed me was city hall.  There we met the city counsel, which consisted of Mother Theresa, Siddhartha, Jesus Christ, and Obi Wan Kenobi.  Because Mother Theresa doubted Christian theology later in her life, she was automatically denied entrance into heaven despite her great humanitarian efforts.  Siddhartha was here because he was a Buddhist of course.  At first I was baffled as to Christ’s placement here but then he explained that because he was technically Jewish he too was denied entrance into heaven.  He tried reasoning and pleading with Saint Peter at the pearly gates, explaining that it was God’s command that he be in heaven, but Peter insisted that because his paperwork listed Jesus as a Jew that it was out of his hands and that Jesus would have to speak to his manager.  To date, God has not returned any of Jesus’ prayers.  Equally baffling was the presence of Obi Wan Kenobi, a jedi master from George Lucas’ Star Wars films.

“But Obi Wan is a fictional character,” I said to him.  He mumbled something about Aenias being in the original Inferno.  We bade our hosts farewell and set off for the second circle.

CANTO V

A large freight elevator obviously designed to transport hundreds of people at once took us to the second circle where the souls of the lustful were condemned.  The main area of the circle was behind a tall fence crowned with razor wire.  The gate was guarded by former U.S. president Bill Clinton who had inexplicably grown a stereotypical devil tail and horns.  Clinton explained that it was he who determined the placement of souls in the circles of Hell, as if he were now the president of Hell.  He really did say that too, partly in jest.  I inquired why he of all people would be the guardian of the circle of the lustful.  He only had a single affair and surely there were so many more that were much more lustful.

“Everything in Hell can be summed up in one word: publicity.  The amount of attention your sin receives is directly proportional to the likelihood of some writer incorporating you into their ironic vision of Hell.”  I didn’t think to ask why he was here when he was supposedly still alive until he had already let us though.  We passed into the main chamber of the second circle which was an enormous wind tunnel where sinners where blown all around by strategically placed giant fans, colliding with the walls and with each other.  I couldn’t see the irony.  Les Stroud just shrugged and we circled the perimeter of the chamber looking for familiar faces.  I couldn’t discern anyone in particular; there were so very many of them and they were moving around too fast.  Disappointed, Les Stroud and I moved on.  I fainted for no reason.

CANTO VI

“You’re lucky I’m used to carrying fifty pounds of camera equipment with me wherever I go,” Les Stroud’s voice explained as I came to, “Otherwise I couldn’t have picked you up and carried you all the way down here to the third circle, where the gluttonous souls are condemned.”

“You could have let me wake up where I was and we could have walked here.”

“I could have but I carried you.  Is this fainting going to be an issue?”

“Actually, those were the only two times I will faint in the entire journey.”

In this circle, there was a heavy downpour of hail, snow, and dirty rain.  Not all at the same time of course, it varied with the local temperature.  There was also a sophisticated drainage system to prevent the circle from flooding.  In the main chamber, millions and millions of poor souls were bent over wet soil filling baskets with scrawny, frost-bitten vegetables.  At the far end, a giant three-headed dog lay on a quilt on a raised platform.  We ran over there as fast as we could to avoid getting terribly wet and sought an audience with the guardian of the third circle.  He introduced himself as Cerberus and told the story of how he used to slash the denizens of this hell with its claws.  Apparently, now that so many human societies had entered an age of post-scarcity, this circle was overpopulated with people who in life felt no need to restrain their appetites.  Eventually it was no longer prudent or even possible to give each patron equal slashing time, so Cerberus decided to radically overhaul the third circle and had vegetable seeds planted.  Now instead of being slashed, the gluttonous harvest food to be exported to other planes of existence where scarcity is still an issue.

“The beauty of it,” he explained, “is that their punishment is now productive, more humane, and above all, more ironic than before.”  Relieved of the duty of physically torturing everyone himself, Cerberus was now able to enjoy occasional downtime.  The diminished stress, he said, has calmed him down significantly and made him less prone to assaulting visitors.  On our way to the fourth circle we encountered deceased comedian Chris Farley.  The expression he wore indicated that he hadn’t laughed in a very long time.  I contemplated how unfair it was that he was stuck here forever just because he over-indulged a bit.  An eternity in freezing rain seemed less than just.

From ChartingTheEconomy.com

TODAY’S NEWS: Healthcare “reform” bill passes, Earth continues to orbit sun AND rotate on it’s axis.  Conservatives panic about “socialist” healthcare despite the government having been entrenched in the industry for centuries and despite a critical misunderstanding of what the word socialism actually means.

TOMORROW’S NEWS: Health insurance providers will continue to be irresponsibly rich, the vast majority of Americans will continue to have poor healthcare, I will continue not seeing any doctors at all.  Also, police will continue to militarize, American ordinance will continue to blow up civilians in far away countries that nobody can point to on a map, the US will continue to be the prison state of the world with 3% of its entire population incarcerated mostly for statutory crimes, the State will continue to be the de facto proprietor of all land not already owned by banks ensuring that near-total reliance on government and capital remain imperative to survival, the credit industry will continue to profit from the never-ending debt of people who can barely afford their minimum payments, land developers will continue to create suburban sprawl, squatters will continue to be forced out of their abandoned warehouses and become homeless people who will in turn continue to be forced to wherever they are not visible, anarchists will continue to be brutalized by cops without badges while protesting peacefully, the best drugs will continue to be illegal and thus expensive and lucrative for the *other* gangs without badges who will in turn continue to be petty and violent, and the rest of us will all continue to work some shitty job for shitty pay under a shitty boss trying to realize an American dream that doesn’t exist, and public schools will continue to manufacture stupid, complacent children to fill these jobs: hard workers, loyal citizens, all-around dull fucks without a shred of creativity.  In other words: everything is going to be okay ;)

"This is an unlawful assembly! Disperse immediately, you fucking peasants!

"Stay in your homes!"

"Bob, get a shot of me fucking this guy up!"

Take THAT, Freedom of Assembly!

This child is now property of the State!

The land of the freeeeeee... and the home of the braaaaaave

God Fuckin’ Bless America!!

Even Kevin Arnold's little brother knows about the warp whistle

Hey there, got a few minutes? Great, then let me spin a little yarn for you. You’d better have a drink for this one, good thing I prepared this rum and coke ahead of time. What? Hmmm, tastes fine to me. Anyway, a profound revelation was imparted to me today, as I crafted a flute from PVC pipe following directions I found on the net.  Let me note first of all that I don’t actually know how to play a flute but after failing to forge a working woodwind from a branch of dead poplar earlier in the day, I needed an ego boost.  As the monumental plans to paint this flute orange and write “Warp Whistle” on it in order to woo hipster girls who enjoy reminiscing about retro video games they never actually played almost as much as they enjoy reminiscing about entire decades they wish they were born into, danced along my synapses, I was struck by a realization. No, of course I’m not alluding to you! Clearly you’re different. Here, have another drink.

Where was I? Oh, yes. I pictured myself playing the warp whistle theme from Super Mario Bros. 3 on this awesome DIY flute and realized that the warp whistle theme is identical to the hook from the Ocarina of Zelda: Ocarina of Time title theme! I wondered, was Nintendo just lazy and decided to recycle that melody or was there some deeper meaning I could fill up a blog post reading into? Well this is a blog post, so I think you have your answer. This is a blog post, right? Conversation? IRL? Huh. Did you finish that drink yet? Whoa, you’re not driving home are you? I don’t think you’ll be sober for quite awhile, you’d better let me take you home. Right now, actually.

Like I was saying, the allusion to the SMB3 warp whistle theme (played on an ocarina, by the way, another woodwind instrument) is hardly surprising considering the other connections between Ocarina of Time and Super Mario Brothers. Take a pull from this flask and I’ll tell you all about it. I love your headband, by the way, it really compliments that oversized waistbelt you’re wearing around your ribcage. So, in Hyrule Castle, the abode of Princess Zelda and citadel of the country of Hyrule, we can see though the courtyard windows a throne room, the walls lined with portraits. Help yourself to those pills in the glove box, by the way. They’re aspirin or something.

View of castle interior from courtyard window

Portraits, as we see here, of Yoshi, Princess Peach, and Mario respectively. Why in Farore’s name would these characters from a totally different Nintendo franchise be honored in royal portraiture? Are we expected to believe that Nintendo inserted them into the game as easter eggs? Light-hearted self-reference? That would be a much too parsimonious explanation to fill up a post with. No, I say! The real answer is plain as day! Hyrule and the Mushroom Kingdom must co-exist within the same game universe on the same planet! Your house is on the left, you say? Gotcha.

The most compelling evidence for this connection, however, is the existence of the characters at Lon Lon Ranch: Talon the jovial but perpetually sleepy ranch owner, Malon, Talon’s smoking hot barely-pubescent daughter, and Ingo the disaffected ranch hand. Have a look:

An overweight mulatto gent with a red shirt underneath a blue tunic with a grapefruit-sized proboscis, mustache, and caterpillar eyebrows. Now who do you know that matches that description almost exactly? You guessed it! It’s a-me, Mario! Here let me help you out of the car. Oh dear! You can barely stand up! It would be downright irresponsible on my part if I didn’t make sure you got to your door safely. And Ingo? Clearly he is Luigi. An older Luigi, bitter from years of being second banana to his vertically-challenged brother. Can you blame him, really? Luigi’s Mansion, need I say more? OK, I will. Mario is Missing. There you go. And that little red-headed tease Malon? Obviously the offspring of Mario and Princess Daisy, you know the seldom-mentioned red-headed princess that was just sort of forgotten after Super Mario Land until being reintroduced as a playable character in Mario Tennis. Oh no, be careful, silly! No falling down like that! It would be a heavy burden lifted from my conscience if you would just let me get you safely to your bed. I won’t take no for an answer!

So here’s my theory about the whole Mario-Zelda thing: Hyrule and the Mushroom Kingdom are neighboring nations that are on friendly terms. Mario and possibly Luigi, with the help of Yoshi and Princess Peach assisted one of the many previous generation Links in defeating one of the many generations of Gannondorfs and are honored to this day in the halls leading to the throne. At some point in the years between that adventure and that of Ocarina of Time Link, Bowser seized power in the Mushroom Kingdom forcing Mario, Luigi, and Daisy into exile in Hyrule, living on that ranch under the pseudonyms Talon, Ingo, and possibly Bridgett. I made that one up. Daisy gives Mario a child (Malon) at some point but dies of natural causes later, hence not being around the ranch anymore and Malon’s devotion to her mother’s memory via Epona’s Song.

That warp whistle theme in the Ocarina of Time title? Another homage to Hyrule’s “other” hero; Mario. Well I hope you enjoyed my little story. Oh, are you asleep already? Excellent. Excellent…

-“This is madness.”—C-3PO, on the nature of war

-“We’ll be deactivated for sure!”—C-3PO, on mortality

-“There’s one!  Set for stun.”—Stormtrooper, on restraint

-“Don’t act so surprised, your highness, you weren’t on any mercy mission.”—Darth Vader

-“You are a part of the rebel alliance and a traitor.  Take her away!”—Darth Vader, on secessionism

-“We seem to be made to suffer.  It’s our lot in life.”—C-3PO, on existentialism

-“Look, sir.  Droids!”—Sandtrooper, believing that everything made of metal is a droid

-“We’re doomed.”—C-3PO, reflecting on mortality again

-“What I really need is a droid who understands the binary language of moisture vaporators.”

-“Vaporators?  Sir, my first job was programming binary load-lifters.  Very similar to your vaporators in most respects.”—Uncle Owen and C-3PO, on climbing the corporate ladder

-“Uncle Owen, this R2 it has a bad motivator.  Look!”—Luke, on criminal psychology

-“But I was going into Toshi Station to pick up some power converters!”

-“You can waste time with your friends when your chores are done.  Now come on, get to it.”—Luke and Uncle Owen, on wage slavery

-“Well, if there’s a bright center to the universe, you’re on the planet that it’s farthest from.”—Luke, on self-pity

-“You’ve got a lot of carbon scoring here.”—Luke, criticizing R2-D2’s appearance

-“Have you been in many battles?”

-“Several, I think.”—Luke and C-3PO, on PTSD

-“Well, my little friend you’ve got something jammed in here real good.”-Luke, on establishing human-cyborg relations

-“Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.”—Leia, on memes

-“Who is she?  She’s beautiful.”—Luke, on incest

-“Wait a minute, where’d she go? Bring her back!  Play back the entire message!”—Luke, frustrated by the disappearance of his pr0n

-“What message?  The one you’re carrying inside your rusty innards!”—C-3PO

-“I don’t think he likes you at all.  No, I don’t like you either.”—C-3PO, on ostracism

-“Please don’t deactivate me!”—C-3PO, on confronting mortality

-“Master Luke is your rightful owner now. We’ll have no more of this Obi-Wan Kenobi gibberish!”—C-3PO, on bootlicking

-“There are two banthas down there but I don’t see any… wait a minute.  They’re sandpeople all right, I can see one of them now.”—Luke, it’s a trap!

-“Come here, my little friend, don’t be afraid.”—Obi-Wan, on the repeated victimization of R2-D2

-“You’re fortunate to be all in one piece.”—Obi Wan, on counting your blessings

-“Ben?!  Ben kenobi?!  Boy, am I glad to see you!”—Luke

-“The Jundland Wastes are not to be traveled lightly.”—Obi-Wan, on the counter-intuitive wisdom on not traveling lightly in the desert

-“Now that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time.”—Obi Wan, on being a hermit

-“I think we better get indoors.”—Obi-Wan, on seducing lost farm boys

-“The sand people are easily startled but they’ll soon be back, and in greater numbers.”—Obi-Wan, safari guide of the Jundland Wastes

-“There’s no sense risking yourself on my account, I’m done for!”—C-3PO, on melodramatic martyrdom

-“He feared you might follow old Obi-Wan on some damned fool idealistic crusade like your father.”—Obi-Wan, on Uncle Owen’s doucheness

-“An elegant weapon, for a more civilized age.”—Obi Wan, yearning for the enlightened time of 20 years ago

-“Before the dark times, before the empire.”—Obi-Wan, misremembering the good old days

-“Vader was seduced by the dark side of the force.”—Obi-Wan, on the sexiness of the dark side

-“Surrounds us and penetrates us and binds the galaxy together.”—Obi-Wan, on the Freudian nature of the force

-“You must learn the ways of the force if you are to come with me to Alderaan.”—Obi-Wan, moments before dropping his robe

-“Mos Eisley spaceport.  You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.”—Obi-Wan, but what about Coruscant?  You were there, dude, it was way worse.

-“I can take you as far as Anchorhead.  From there you can get a transport to Mos Eisley or wherever you’re going.”—Luke, goddamn dude, forget about those stupid power converters at Toshi station already

-“The imperial senate will no longer be of any concern to us.  I have just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the counsel permanently.”—Grand Moff Tarkin, given what we saw of the senate in the prequels, they probably didn’t put up much of a fight

-“Fear will keep the local systems in line.  Fear of this battle station.”—Grand Moff Tarkin, on diplomacy

-“If the Rebels have obtained a complete technical reading of this station, it is possible, however unlikely, they might find a weakness and exploit it.”—General Tagge, yeah unless they notice that giant exhaust port leading straight down to the reactor core

-“Any attack made by the Rebels against this station would be a useless gesture, no matter what technical data they have obtained. This station is now the ultimate power in the universe. I suggest we use it.”
-“Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.”
-“Don’t try to frighten us with your sorcerous ways, Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the rebels’ hidden fortress…”
-“I find your lack of faith disturbing.”—Admiral Motti and Darth Vader, on theocracy

-“These tracks are side by side.  Sand people always ride single file to hide their numbers.”—Obi Wan, on strategery

-“And these blast points, too accurate for Sandpeople. Only Imperial stormtroopers are so precise.”—Obi-Wan, on senility.  Stormtroopers?  Precise?  When?

-“That would lead them… home!”

-“Wait Luke, it’s too dangerous!”—Obi-Wan, who moments ago insisted that Luke accompany him on a dangerous mission to Alderaan.

“I want to learn the ways of the force and become a jedi like my father.”—Luke, I guess Uncle Owen was right

-“You don’t need to see his identification.”

-“We don’t need to see his identification.”

-“These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”

-“These aren’t the droids we’re looking for.”—Obi-Wan and stormtroopers, on the power of suggestion

-“We don’t serve their kind here.”

-“What?”

-“Your droids.  They’ll have to wait outside, we don’t want them here.”—Bartender, on irrational hatred of droids

-“He doesn’t like you.”

-“I’m sorry.”

-“I don’t like you either.  You just watch yourself, we’re wanted men.  I’ve got the death sentence on 12 systems.”

-“I’ll be careful.”

-“You’ll be dead!”—Luke and Doctor Cornelius Evazan

-“You’ve never heard of the Millennium Falcon?  It’s the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs.”—Han Solo, parsecs are an astronomical unit of distance (about 3.26 LY), your attempt at a boast failed hardcore

-“Over my dead body.”

-“That’s the idea.  I’ve been looking forward to killing you for a long time.”

-“Yes, I’ll bet you have.”—Han Solo, on Han shot first

-“Perhaps she would respond to an alternative form of persuasion.”—Grand Moff Tarkin, on seduction

-“Travelling through hyperspace ain’t like dusting crops, boy.”—Han Solo, on hyperspace vs. crop-dusting

-“I felt a great disturbance in the force.  As if millions of voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.”—Obi-Wan, on geriatric dementia

-“Don’t everyone thank me at once.”—Han Solo, on the importance of gratitude

-“Cause a droid don’t pull people’s arms out their sockets when they lose.  Wookies have been known to do that.”—Han Solo, on losing gracefully

-“You don’t believe in the force do you?”—Luke, on the force, which he himself just learned about earlier that day

-“With the blast shield down I can’t even see, how am I supposed to fight?”—Luke

-“I call it luck.”

-“In my experience there’s no such thing as luck.”—Obi-Wan, on the non-existence of luck but the existence of something similar and even more preposterous

-“That’s what I’m telling you kid. It ain’t there, it’s been blown away.”—Han Solo, on covering up his poor navigating skills

-“That’s no moon.  That’s a space station.”—Obi-Wan, on semantics

-“You can’t win but there are alternatives to fighting.”—Obi-Wan, even though they end up fighting and winning anyway

-“TK-421, why aren’t you at your post?”—Imperial officer, on micromanagement

-“The Princess?  She’s Here??”—Luke, well she’s definitely not on Alderaan

-“Prisoner block, cell 1138.”—Han Solo, on esoteric references to other Lucas films

-“Everything’s under control, situation normal.”

-“What happened?”

-“Had a slight weapons malfunction… but everything’s perfectly all right now”

-“We’re fine.  We’re all fine here now, thank you.  How are you?”

-“We’re sending a squad up.”

-“Negative, negative.  We have a reactor leak here now.  Give us a few minutes to lock it down.  Large leak, very dangerous.”

-“Who is this?  What’s your operating number?”

-“Boring conversation, anyway. Luke, we’re gonna have company!”—Han Solo, on discretion

-“Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper?”—Leia, on prejudice

-“A tremor in the force.  The last time I felt it was in the presence of my old master.”—Darth Vader, on repressed memories

-“Into the garbage chute, flyboy.”—Leia, on anal sex

-“Get in there, you big furry oaf.  I don’t care what you smell.”—Han, on anal sex

-“Will you forget it I already tried it, it’s magnetically sealed!”

-“Put that thing away! You’re gonna get us all killed!”—Luke and Leia, use your imagination

-“There’s something alive in here!”

-“It’s your imagination.”—Luke and Han Solo, on animism and reification

-“Something just moved past my leg.”—Luke and Leia, dear god, I don’t even have to try

-“I got a very bad feeling about this”—Han Solo, on everything

-“Will you shut up and listen to me?  Shut down all the garbage mashers on the detention level.  Do you copy?  Shut down all the garbage mashers on the detention level!  Shut down all the garbage mashers on the detention level!”—Luke, on sabotage of waste management

-“If we can just avoid any more female advice, we oughta be able to get out of here.”—Han Solo, on sexism

-“Look, your worshipfulness, I take orders from just one person—me.”—Han Solo, on anti-authoritarianism

-“Will somebody get this big walking carpet out of my way?”—Leia, on racism

-“You seen that new BT-16?”

-“Yeah.  Some of the other guys were telling me about it.”—Stormtroopers, on esoteric perimeter droids referred to by model number

-“It’s them!  Blast them!”—Stormtroopers, on solving problems by blasting them

-“The circle is now complete.  When I left you, I was but the learner.  Now I am the master.”

-“Only a master of evil, Darth.”—Darth Vader and Obi-Wan, on silly comebacks

-“Your powers are weak, old man.”

-“You can’t win, Darth.  If you strike me down I shall be come more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” —Darth Vader and Obi-Wan, on reincarnation

-“You should not have come back.”—Darth Vader, on Monday morning quarterbacking

“They’re coming in too fast!”—Luke, on anal sex of the rough and group-oriented varieties

-“We’ve lost the lateral controls.”

-“Don’t worry, she’ll hold together.  Hear me, baby?  Hold together?”—Han Solo

-“I got him! I got him!”

-“Great, kid! Don’t get cocky.”—Luke and Han Solo, on the virtue of humility

-“That’s impossible, even for a computer!”

-“It’s not impossible, I used to bull’s-eye womprats in my T-16 back home and they’re not much bigger than two meters.”—Some pilot and Luke, on animal cruely

-“They could use a good pilot like you, you’re turning your back on them.”

-“What good’s a reward if you ain’t around to use it?  Besides, attacking that battle station ain’t my idea of courage.  It’s more like… suicide.”

-“Alright.  Well take care of yourself, Han.  I guess it’s what you’re best at isn’t it?”—Luke and Han Solo

-“Look at the size of that thing!”—Wedge Antilles, that’s what she said

-“I’m going in.  Cover me, Porkins.”—Luke, making up hurtful nicknames for your obese comrades will probably not encourage them to protect you

-“Stay on target.”—Gold Five, quoting a motivational poster

-“Use the force, Luke.”—Obi-Wan, molesting Luke from beyond the grave

-“The force is strong in this one.”—Darth Vader, can’t think of anything clever

-“Luke, you’ve switched off your targeting computer.  What’s wrong?”

-“Nothing.  I’m all right.”—Rebel Base and Luke, on Luke’s luddite sympathies

-“You’re all clear, kid, now let’s blow this thing and go home.”—Han Solo, more innuendo

-“The Force will be with you… always.”—Obi Wan, assuring Luke that he will continue to be sexually victimized for all eternity

-“Sir, if any of my circuits or gears will help, I’ll gladly donate them.”—C-3PO, on the power of droid friendship

Since I was a wee tot with Jurassic Park velcro shoes and a bowl haircut I’ve played SimCity in one incarnation or another.  I don’t mean that I’ve played it consistently for that long, but the concept of SimCity is burned into my motor memory right between potty training and coloring inside the lines (which I later stopped doing because it is a form of programming: going “outside the lines” is considered wrong, you do the math.  I still do use the toilet though, quite routinely).  The first SimCity I played was, well the first SimCity game ever made on the Commodore 64, then I upgraded to the Super Nintendo version when it came out.  I remember very little about the Commodore version but the SNES version was one of my favorite games at the time.  For those unfamiliar with the SimCity series, the premise is pretty simple: you are the omnipotent, perpetually incumbent, de facto mayor of a city that does not yet exist.  You must then build a city starting with a power plant and then add “zones”, i.e. residential, commercial, and industrial zones.  There is a meter that informs you of the demand for each type of zone so you get a sense of what to build.  You can also build various civic and utilitarian structures like police and fire stations, airports, and of course roads and rails for transportation.  And on you go like this, expanding, bringing in more and more citizens while managing a budget, balancing spending and tax revenue.

The entire point of the game, really, is merely to add to the population.  You progress to the next stage of the game by accumulating a certain number of people.  The ultimate goal is to reach 500,000 and become a “megalopolis” (though the game doesn’t end there, it’s very sandbox).  When you reach the megalopolis stage you receive a Mario statue (the SNES version was very nintendized) and the satisfaction of being a super-efficient urban planner!  Sadly, the most I ever got was about 350,000.  The thing is, it’s nearly impossible to get 500,000 people due to map size limitations.  There are specific techniques to cramming that many people on the map.  The most commonly expounded of these is “donuts”.  The donut method consists of building 8 “zones” in a square pattern with an empty space in the middle.  The zones typically consist of 3 residential (houses, condos), 3 commercial (businesses, office buildings) and one utility (police or fire station) and the empty spaces consist of trees or a municipal park if you are granted one.  To create a truly prosperous (read: populous) city, you must create a grid of these donuts divided by roads or train tracks with some industrial zones along the edges of the map.  And that’s it, that’s the ideal strategy.

It’s easy, especially when you’re a young gamer, to confine your perception of the game to the goals outlined within it.  However, think for a moment about the sims living within your functionalist wet dream.  Do the sims really want to be crammed into a homogenous sea of donuts?  Perhaps it is not the worst scenario to live in a city where every block is basically identical for miles and miles, the housing is affordable certainly, but there is no choice exercised on behalf of the sims.  An anarcho-capitalist (or any kind of capitalist for that matter) might argue that the act of moving to the city is in itself an exercise of choice, but if every SimCity mayor is as eager to reduce each individual sim to an inhuman digit on the population counter and cram as many of them per capita into every square inch as you are, what choice is really being exercised?  It is merely the preference of your shitty donut metropolis over other, shittier donut metropolies.  There is something deeply flawed in the premise of this game, and that is the idea that cities must be constructed in a top-down fashion.

Let us examine the idea of land ownership for a moment.  According to the labor theory of property first explicated by John Locke and later refined by American anarchists Lysander Spooner, Benjamin Tucker, and Murray Rothbard, land is acquired by applying one’s labor to unused natural resources or disused land previously acquired by the former method.  This theory is derived from the idea that one owns his or her own labor and thus the products of his or her labor.   In a free society, homesteading would be considered the primary method of space acquisition.  In the monarchical SimCity (and most often in present day nations, democratic or otherwise), the repressive state apparatus does not recognize property obtained through these means.  Within any particular nation the state is the default owner of all land and ownership is transferred, for a fee, to a person or group via title deeds.  If a person does not acquire the space they occupy through state-controlled means, their land claim is deemed illegitimate and violence may be used to eject them from that space.  This is especially true of squatters, those who take advantage of the extended absence of the person or persons holding the title deed to a particular space.  Often this property has been entirely neglected by the titular owners, yet the oppressive arm of the state enforcement apparatus is called upon to forcibly remove those who actually put the abandoned space to use.  This appalling example of territorialism is in part the result of incentives for preserving the assets of the wealthy, the state collects property taxes from these plots of land so long as the title holder continues to “own” them.  Corporatism, as we can see, tends to go hand in hand with territorialism.  A group of ragged peasants with no source of income are worthless to the state and its agents.  There are, of course, myriad social aspects to this horrific scenario but these are best reserved for discussion at a later date.  To clarify: the state assumes ownership of vast quantities of unused land that none of its agents have any legitimate claim to; the ownership is purely nominal but enforced through violence; the state sells or rents the land that it never rightfully owned to its citizens—those who happened to be born within its arbitrarily-defined borders—usually on a highly conditional basis.

This mechanism serves the interests of the state and its agents in two important ways.  1. In order to purchase space to occupy, a person must render a fee to the state.  In order to secure the wealth necessary to render this fee, a person must labor.  Since a condition of existence is occupying space, existing necessarily entails laboring for the benefit of the state.  In this way, the agents of the state, the privileged class, acquire wealth, the product of another’s labor at no expense to themselves.  Of course, this becomes a little more complex when banks of private individuals own the land on behalf of the state and houses are built by developers and sold by realtors.  The basic power structure remains intact though, but with several intermediaries also parasitizing on the citizen’s labor.  The state still retains ultimate sovereignty and now collects property taxes in exchange for these bureaucratic functions.  2. Because the state dictates the terms and parameters on which it distributes land, it can essentially shape development as it sees fit.  This is a tremendous source of power.  Even the ability to “zone” land has wide-scale social implications.  For instance, in older urban communities and those that emerged more spontaneously, mixed zoning is common.  That is, commercial and residential spaces with no clear separation between them.  In these communities, human interaction is a much more prominent feature of daily life due in part to the practicality of pedestrian transportation.  In newer urban and suburban communities, zoning tends to be quite rigid with blocks of residential zoning and commercial plazas with distinct boundaries.  As you may have guessed, this arrangement tends to produce highly insular communities where alienation of people from one another is a common feature of daily life due in part to dependence on automobile transportation.  Why then, given its negative social (and environmental) impact, is this arrangement becoming increasingly common?  The profit potential for single-use zoning greatly exceeds that of the more humane mixed-use zoning.  Single-use zoning drastically reduces construction costs and encourages consumption of commodities.  The shopping mall is an excellent example of how this dictum holds true.  We can see then how the privileged land-owning class benefits from the state-mandated segregation of space functions—it is a tool to consolidate wealth.  As I mentioned before, corporatism is a mutually beneficial arrangement whereby the state and business may both parasitize on the citizen’s labor.

The truly disheartening aspect of this whole arrangement is that its legitimacy is seldom questioned.  Sure, some of the so-called liberals of today may concern themselves with the practices of major businesses and some of the so-called libertarians may oppose the state’s de facto absentee land ownership (often on a very inconsistent basis), but the collusion between the state and business is a connection that few either make or acknowledge.  This is a shameful state of affairs.  The tendency of contemporary libertarians to defend the exploitative tactics of corporations and ignore the dependency of land developers on statist propertarianism is nothing short of appalling given the anti-authoritarian roots of the movement.  Equally unacceptable is the utilitarian defense of central planning by state socialists and social democrats.  Not only is central planning wildly unethical in its means, but its end is pretty shitty too, thus failing the utilitarian acid test.

Given how ingrained the concept of central planning is in most people’s minds, it should come as no surprise that an urban development game bestows grossly-magnified powers upon the player.  Like the state, the player determines the type and placement of all the single-use zones, decides where all the roads go, commissions utilities, and adjusts the budget and tax rates as necessary or just on a whim.  Maybe Mr. Mayor and his friends need new swimming pools?  Not a problem because you can jack up taxes and collect all the revenue you please.  Granted, people may not want to move to your town if income tax is 25% but it’s pretty astonishing how many people will actually stick around.  Urban sprawl is hard to crawl out from under I guess.  Even if you decide to treat your sims (yes they are yours, people are the property of the state) with a modicum of human dignity, you have still defined the spaces they can and cannot occupy and since you built the police station and allocated the law enforcement budget using the spoils of plundered labor, you are presumably responsible for oppressing any one of them that does not abide by your authoritarian property laws.  No matter, sooner or later the urge to expand like a concrete cancer will strike you.  That Mario statue is starting to sound pretty badass.

That is the real SimCity, a centrally planned urban sprawl owned by a greedy donut-building tyrant with his sticky fingers in the communal chest.  And as your blood starts to boil thinking about the elitist prick in his top hat and monocle living up on the hill in an extravagant mansion build by the hands of chattel slaves, you take another sip of cognac and turn in your chair.  You halt as a tall vanity mirror meets your eyes and discover that the elitist prick is… you.