December 2018
- “Under what circumstances is it moral for a group to do that which is not moral for a member of that group to do alone?”
- “A rational anarchist believes that concepts such as “state” and “society” and “government” have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals. He believes that it is impossible to shift blame, share blame, distribute blame… as blame, guilt, responsibility are matters taking place inside human beings singly and nowhere else. But being rational, he knows that not all individuals hold his evaluations, so he tries to live perfectly in an imperfect world… aware that his effort will be less than perfect yet undismayed by self-knowledge of self-failure.”
- Chapter 3 contains interesting dialog pertaining to revolution and revolutionaries, as well as the optimal way to set up a hierarchical organization while retaining a high degree of anonymity among the members and still allowing for communication redundancy. (The model is a pyramid of tetrahedra).
Themes:
- How much control can and should we trust to computers?
- Colonialism and the concept of nation on multiple bodies
- The relationship between tradition and function, and how malleable traditions might be should circumstances change