From freethinker to anarchist

In this mind boggling existence I know as life, there has been one thing that has really helped me along in understanding the world around me: freethinking. I have considered myself a freethinker since I was just about to turn 15. The idea of questioning ideas proscribed to me in school was a familiar practice; I learned how to mindfully challenge authority back in middle school when I gained the concept of authority and rebellion through punk music. Even farther back, in preschool, I would evade the preschool aides who assigned me timeouts for bad behavior by running into the jungle gym. But I digress.

Freethinking can be a relatively simple practice. One can begin by looking at two opinions about the same issue and then forming ones' own opinion. But for me, freethinking is not enough to understand our complex systems of interactions and socially constructed identities. That is why I am a radical. Radical comes from the Latin "radix," meaning root. To be radical, means to look at the root of the issue. While freethinking does utilize multiple opinions, science, and logic, it doesn't, to me, go as deep as radical analysis, which often incorporates an acknowledgement that whatever is in question, and the ways in which one does the questioning, has flaws of their own rooted in the current social order.

To be more specific, I am an unapologetic anarchist. *gasp* Some people decide not to take specific titles. A lot of people group themselves into the larger definition of progressive or radical for the sake of not having to defend their ideas. However, anarchist is a specific identity that I feel those of us with decentralist, community-based, and collective-power oriented tendencies need to own up! Corporate media and hegemonic history books paint a picture of anarchists as destructive, reactionary individualists. Fighting this image of anarchism is necessary. To me, reclaiming the identity of anarchism is as vital to social justice as informing the world that NO ONE IS ILLEGAL, that WAR IS NOT INEVITABLE, and that MARKETS ARE NOT NATURAL PHENOMENA.

Anarchism has a rich cultural history. One can point to Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers as an expression of early anarchist tendencies at the outset of private property. In the 19th century, anarchists were among the first to advocate free love, an idea that challenged marriage and can now be considered the dialectical opposite of that institution of ownership. Anarchists have, since their first written accounts, had the belief that human behavior is social, and therefore learned. This line of thinking is what has made anarchists question the legitimacy of hierarchal structures that run contrary to how humans have traditionally functioned. Furthermore, this idea is, to me, an indication that anarchists were thinking sociologically far before any theories labeled "sociological" in retrospect.

Well, I'll leave it there for now. I'll be incorporating anarchist fact into my weekly blogs in any case. Good night.