Two things got me thinking about this, one is an episode of Kino’s Journey, the other was the movie Easy Rider. Still another is Che Guevara’s Motorcycle Diaries, but I don’t think I’ll be using it.
I’m not partial to anime, but I watched Kino’s Journey because a friend recommended it. Kino is a traveller in a fictional world, she rides a talking motorcycle (yeah I know, anime) called a motorrad, and is in a different country in just about every episode. In one of these countries (I believe the episode is titled “Land of Visible Pain”), she notices no one is out and about, just a few lone robots every now and then, cleaning dust on the street and zipping away. Finally, she finds a massive office-building, where everyone is working. She walks in, observing thousands of people crunching numbers all at separate desks. The bell rings for lunch and everyone immediately gets up for the break, but one guy takes the opportunity to stretch out and yawn and relax a bit as his desk.
Kino comes up to get some information from the man. He explains that in their country, technology is so advanced, that people no longer need to work at all – computers do everything. They manage the city, keep it clean, manufacturing is automated – everything, even food is planted, tended to, and harvested by robots. Kino asks that if there are no jobs left for humans to do – why is he in this building calculating things? The man replies that with no more work to do, they had no way to measure what people earned (no work = no money), so they created jobs such as his – where he verifies the main computer’s calculations. The computer is always right, and the job is essentially pointless, but work is no longer valued by the end product. Instead, it is measured by the amount of stress involved. The more stressful the job, the more you earn. They were mostly all miserable (logically), and because they still relied on such old sociopolitical systems (despite their technology) there still remained many poor people, and many wars.
Then there’s this scene in easy rider, where George Hanson (Jack Nicholson) goes off on this tangent about an alien civilization called “venusians,” because Billy was startled by a UFO in the night’s sky. George says the aliens are people, just like us, and their world isn’t much different from ours. The differences being “their society is more highly evolved.” They don’t have any wars, they have no currency system, and (the kicker) no leaders, “because, I mean, each man is a leader.” Because of their advanced technology, they are all able to feed, clothe, and transport themselves freely and equally. Their technology frees them from this work, and thus from their leaders.
Billy thinks George is nuts, and asks why the aliens don’t just reveal themselves. George explains they don’t because it would cause a panic, because we still rely on our leaders to tell us what’s happening and what to do. Thus, our leaders repress this information about UFO’s and other-worldly beings because of the shock it would cause to our old, archaic systems. Then he goes on saying that the venusians (being that they look just like us) are mating with humans, slowly enlightening us (I guess) so that “man will have a God-like control over his own destiny. He will have a chance to transcend, and to evolve, with some equality for all.” So, this venusian civilization George is ranting about, is obviously anarchistic – without leaders – because of their advanced technology, which frees them from the worries of survival and allows everyone to think for themselves, and be a leader unto themselves.
I like to think of classical Greece. Where the slaves freed the hands of the higher classes from toilsome work, which in turn allowed these higher classes to invent Democracy, and come up with all the great art and philosophy we enjoy today. Likewise, technology will inevitably free our hands from all toilsome work, so that we may achieve world peace, and anarchy.
In both stories, technology evolves to a point where human beings no longer have to fret with necessities of life – food, shelter, travel, et cetera – because they no longer have to work to get them. As a result, they have no wars, because all wars can be rooted to a lack of life sustaining supplies (food, land, work, freedom, et al). They have no leaders because when you have what you need the leaders we depend on to get what we need become unnecessary. We don’t need leaders for protection either, because ideally, if everyone has what they need, there is no reason to fight.
This is not the only way anarchy may be achieved, of course, but it is one way it may happen. One of the core values of anarchism, is that everyone’s needs should be met – and this utopian evolution of technology fulfills this value.
So, there is a fork in the road of technological-political evolution. Society may choose the path where leadership is retained, and people find some other way of measuring monetary values OR society may choose the path of Anarchy and peace. The conclusion I draw from the stories, is that technology is value-neutral. We will inevitably decide whether we use it to enforce totalitarian control – and perpetuate unrest, hated, and war – or if we shall use it for the betterment of the community as a whole (global community) in order to bring about the leader in every individual, and hence a peaceful anarchist society.
