18 August 2011

49. God and the State

God and the State - Mikhail Bakunin

What a miserable fella Bakunin must have been. It seems that everything is either absurd, stupid or is enslaving mankind.

Christianity was especially hated throughout the text, though he made the same old arguments and rationalizations that have been tossed about repeatedly. Whatever dude. You don't want God to exist because you don't get to be omniscient yourself. For a long time I thought he was equating the Roman Catholic church with Christianity. In the end he meant Christianity and all kinds of religion. The eastern religions (Buddhism and Hinduism) did get a slight pass with some footnotes attached. Blah blah.

The thing is, I expected the book to be anti-christian, so none of that surprised me at all. What did surprise me was that Bakunin dislikes schools, governments, historians, scientists, Romans, Greeks, plumbers, carpenters, teachers, priests, anything at all that would be any kind of authority figure in even the minutest fashion.

Anarchy! It is obviously the only way for any reasonable human being to be free to make all his own decisions without external influences and therefore using only his own reasoning. Ban everything immediately! Wait, if I tell you to ban everything and you want it then I am infringing on your ability to choose and am therefore inflicting my own authority over you and must be banned myself.

I guess the only real solution would be to shoot myself dead in the face if I lived in Bakuninland.

I did enjoy hearing a different perspective on many subjects despite my disagreeing with much of it.

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