Hey Bri I'm an anarchist, Part 2

Evan became an anarchist sometime during middle school, but it didn't become a defining feature until high school. He went to a sort of artsy school, did theatre with an "re", and started playing music. I think the artsy environment helped him a lot - the two of us have always felt, I think, somewhat like outsiders, and his school was filled with other outsiders. I also think that the school helped to foster his anarchist philosophy.

It is strange that Evan went to Swarthmore. It is strange because Swarthmore was one of my top choices, and yet I never really knew that he was looking there. Our friendship was almost frozen in boyhood; when we were together, we weren't really applying to schools, certainly not graduating high school. We were maybe, maybe in middle school, but often still playing video games like we did when we were young.

But, in any case, it was, as far as I could see, at Swat that Evan really developed some intellectual basis for his anarchism. I mean, certainly he read Zinn and others in high school, and he was active in the anti-war movement, but his passion though righteous and certainly genuine, was not entirely reasoned. That is not to say that it was adolescent or stupid, merely that, in high school, we do not feel like our feelings need to be justified to a broader world. If they can be justified, where is the rebellion?

I confess that I know very little about anarchist philosophy, and most of that which I do know is through Evan. I know now who Emma Goldman was, though I have read none of her work. And, as an economics major, I was not exactly receptive to Evan's views. He was calling Kerry a coward and a fascist for voting for the war; I was working for Kerry's campaign.

But over the years, though I still disagree fundamentally with his view of human nature - I guess I am more of a Hobbesian than I'd like to admit - I understand where he is coming from much more than I used to. I understand, now, what it means to be so frustrated with the system that breaking the system down and rebuilding it from scratch seems like a reasonable option.

Evan's views have become more like mine as well, in a certain way. He is now very concerned with being effective; the "if you are concerned about practicalities than you are not being true to your principles" reasoning is gone. And he recognizes the strengths of other methods; he is glad that some people are working on legislative paths to change, and that others are working on changing corporate practices. Those are things that must be done. He just feels that someone also needs to be standing up for revolution.

Now, to be clear, I, and Evan, use the term "revolution" in a somewhat figurative sense, to mean a complete and swift overhaul of the status quo. Which does not in anyway mean violence. Evan, like most of his anarchist friends, abhors violence. Anarchists are almost all vegetarians, and most, I would say, are vegans. They will not condone the killing of a chicken, much less a human being. So when Evan speaks of revolution, he is speaking of a world in which people, through individual actions, refuse to support the current system and ensure that another system is put in place. The revolution is not one of killing off the leaders of the society, but of rewriting the social contract and having every member of society ratify it anew.