This notice about somebody’s wayward wheely bin raised an interesting and essential conversation on social media this week. Do you deal with problems face-to-face with people down your street or do you put out an impersonal bulletin to all the district? Is it time to be Personal or Institutional? This sort of thing is of vital interest to Libertarian Anarchists because we want to overhaul the social system and have less government.
Or, to be more precise, we want government to be more democratic and individualistic rather than top-down edicts. We accept that free people have the intelligence and emotional capacity to work together and solve their problems without an Institutional Machine Government doing it. Some people’s idea of helping people is to personally know the person they’re helping, to emotionally invest/care, and to act themselves. Others, and increasingly, have an idea of helping others that consists of calling on Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to do it. By writing an email or calling a tip line they genuinely think they’ve just performed an act of community service.
“Owners of Red rubbish bin at… Main South Road, Karoro, I just picked all your crap up over my driveway. Sounded like it got dragged towards our way. Please collect your bin asap.…”
This person, just south of Greymouth, is clearly going for the Institutional means of solving a problem rather than a Personal approach. Telling the Town Crier (Facebook) to yell out that someone’s “crap” is loose is an institutional substitute for knowing and caring for a neighbour. Not neighbours now but ‘the people next door’. I’m not even judging, only pointing out the type of solution this is. Should New Zealand, Karoro, go that way? Is there still a place for Social Capital or shall we dehumanise one another and run these sorts of things on a programme?
The debate thread probably will not last which is why I’m recording it in this post to Anarkiwi. Whenever there’s an absolutely essential debate about our culture that needs to be had, especially a passionate one, it tends not to be had. People are arguing both sides and not trying to understand each other. When the moderator wakes up this morning they’ll probably decide to put it all down the memory hole so that these tensions go unexpressed and grow stronger and more ugly as a result.
“This calling people out like this is not kosher,” Community spirit is on it’s death bed,” “On it’s deathbed? It was cremated long ago,” “for goodness sake, these are neighbours. How difficult is it to go and look?,” “How about popping over to meet them and mention it? Maybe you will get on well?,” “Not something you write on Facebook,” “The human voice is disappearing.,” “Maybe go knock on their door instead of posting it on Facebook.”- Reactions to the post
It’s a form of public shaming or even a prelude to a legal tort to advertise that someone’s unmentionables were ever loose. It’s to question their responsibility but not in a discrete way but as an APB that everyone has to know about.
Instead of an opportunity to relate to someone, to have and grow a community spirit, it’s reaching for the lever of public institution machinery. It’s Big City, it’s being a number, a dehumanised thing, boarding school, military.
You can say it’s good and prefer it and say New Zealand is better off going this way. But you’ve really got to admit it’s a retreat from the community spirit we all had until very recent generations. More and more New Zealanders don’t help¹ one another. Instead they write an email or letter to the editor to get the Government to do it. That’s what our schools teach our kids to do. That’s why Institutionalists contact the world this way and they are the current majority in New Zealand.
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1 That’s inaccurate. What they do is ‘help’ too but according to their means of production: Calling for an alpha protector. Someone who prays to God or summons a demon on behalf of another is also ‘helping’ after their own particular mode of production.
Or, to be more precise, we want government to be more democratic and individualistic rather than top-down edicts. We accept that free people have the intelligence and emotional capacity to work together and solve their problems without an Institutional Machine Government doing it. Some people’s idea of helping people is to personally know the person they’re helping, to emotionally invest/care, and to act themselves. Others, and increasingly, have an idea of helping others that consists of calling on Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to do it. By writing an email or calling a tip line they genuinely think they’ve just performed an act of community service.
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