The Wit’s Guide to Anarchy

Or, slouching toward MYOB

Oct 24, 2024

*The Anarchist, or, Sir, We’re Going To Have To Ask You To Conform, Félix Vallotton, 1946.*

Everyone wants anarchy until they get it. Then they realize they ordered wrong and try to flag down the waiter, but the waiter emptied the cash register and took off with the hostess and now the restaurant is filled with penguins. Oh, you didn’t mean that kind of anarchy? Too late!

“Anarchy is like custard cooking over a flame; it has to be constantly stirred or it sticks and gets heavy, like government.”
— Tom Robbins

Of course I am pulling the classic square move of equating anarchy with chaos. Anarchy just means no rulers, and ideas like mutual aid and collectivism are tenets of anarchist thought. So why do we think of anarchists as punks throwing Molotov cocktails when at their core they believe in peaceful coexistence? Maybe the people in charge have something to do with that. Or Sid Vicious.

“Anarchism is a game at which the police can beat you.”
— George Bernard Shaw

Consider how The Peter Principle would operate in an anarchic society. This rule states that everyone is promoted to the level of their incompetence. But if we remove all hierarchy, there are no promotions. Instead of managing up, you’d have to manage out. Your key deliverables become peace, love, and understanding. In every quarter, we’d leverage operational alignment toward utopia!

“The most improper job of any man, even saints, is bossing other men.”
— J.R.R. Tolkien

The most successful anarchist intellectual of our time was David Graeber, a founder of the Occupy movement and author of several brain-tickling books about gently rejecting *waves hands around* all of this. He hooked me with Bullshit Jobs, asking why we need so many flunkies, goons, duct tapers, and box tickers, perhaps because when I first read the viral essay on which the book was based, I was a duct taper upskilling to be a box ticker. The dude had pizzazz; his essay “Are you an anarchist? The answer may surprise you?” gently asks such questions as “If there’s a line to get on a crowded bus, do you wait your turn and refrain from elbowing your way past others even in the absence of police?” There’s an alternate reality where he’s still alive and touring this material like an anarchist Jeff Foxworthy.

“Oh, judge, your damn laws — the good people don’t need them, and the bad people don’t obey them, so what good are they?”
— Ammon Hennacy

Could we use a bit more anarchy, maybe just around the edges? Ben Hecht thought so. The journalist-turned-scriptwriter invented the screwball comedy, and in his classic 1954 memoir A Child of the Century, he laments the demise of art in America. Cause of death: Anarchy deficiency. “Our talents, like our waterfalls, have all been harnessed to make life pleasanter for the Public,” Hecht laments of his time. All the true artists took advertising jobs, and “without their anarchy to freshen the public’s entertainment, it must grow constantly duller. Without visionaries to steal from, the box-office entertainment servers must offer staler and staler dishes.”

“I am a Tory Anarchist. I should like every one to go about doing just as he pleased — short of altering any of the things to which I have grown accustomed.”
— Max Beerbohm

When you’re at the Baskin Robbins of anarchy picking out your fave flav, might I recommend either Christian or Tory? Both are delightfully paradoxical: The Christian Anarchists believe in a Supreme Being in the sky but no head honchos down here and count Tolstoy in their number, while Tory Anarchism is a obscure but hardy strain of British thought that has included George Orwell, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Waughs Evelyn and Auberon. Leave us alone in our idyllic country villages, they gently insist. Tolkien described his anarchism as “the abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs.” Unfortunately, as a breed that lives for A Nice Cup Of Tea, they are undone by the best-ever joke about their philosophy:

Why do anarchists drink herbal tea?
Because proper tea is theft!

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On a swing and a prayer

There is rarely news in this newsletter, though there are always letters. But my weekly News Quiz in the Toronto Star is another thing altogether. (Altogether: “Another thing!”) This week, how much do you know about the seven jurisdictions that will decide an upcoming big political contest?

Quote Vote

“The center will not hold if it has been spot-welded by an operator whose deepest concern is not with the weld but with his lottery ticket.”
— Donald Barthelme

Nothing like researching an esoteric political philosophy to make me feel like the mature student in the back of the class. The next issue lands on Halloween, so howzabout something seasonal?

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That was issue No. 277 of Get Wit Quick, which I was tempted to send out in a scrambled order at an unusual time but then I realized that I naturally prefer order. That’s why my book Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting features ascending page numbers. Decadent Action was a British satirical British anarchist group that aimed to “destroy the capitalist system by a leisurely campaign of good living and overspending,” but I think capitalism had their number. Tap the ❤️ below if you’re sick of being told what to do.