Тег: Pozharsky

Review of Mikhail Pozharsky’s video about how he grew to love war

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Mikhail Pozharsky released a video in which he began to justify violence and war as entirely normal human phenomena and tools for solving problems, while insulting opponents of war in every way and accusing their position of being untenable. Of course, it is first and foremost the position of Pozharsky himself that can be called untenable, which we will now examine in more detail.

He started well by criticizing the works of Steven Pinker, who claims that the level of violence has decreased throughout history, and that prehistoric humans suffered from chronic wars that could claim the lives of the majority of the population. Pinker was indeed wrong; he drew conclusions by considering only examples that were convenient for his argumentation. But if one considers all archaeological and anthropological evidence, we see that prehistoric populations did not suffer from wars—only 2% of representatives of past hunter-gatherer tribes died as a result of violence. After the agrarian revolution and the emergence of states, the level of lethal violence rose to 5%, after which it began to decline, amounting to only 3% for the 20th century (and this including the bloody conflicts that occurred within it). As anthropologist Douglas Fry believes, the level of violence in history changed according to an “n-type curve.” Pozharsky does not mention these data at all, and they do not align with his argumentation.

Instead, he decided to talk in detail about the violent nature of chimpanzees and cite primatologist and anthropologist Richard Wrangham, who believes that humans have an innate predisposition to cruelty, which he explains as an evolutionary legacy. But as Robert Sussman and Donna Hart write, the evolutionary paths of humans and chimpanzees diverged 8 million years ago. Meanwhile, the paths between chimpanzees and bonobos diverged only 2.5 million years ago, which did not prevent the latter from being peace-loving creatures. Pozharsky also mentioned bonobos, but spoke only of the aggressiveness of their females, failing to mention that their aggression is predominantly defensive, as well as the fact that they fundamentally do not have killings. Furthermore, many researchers, including anthropologist Brian Ferguson, believe that most violence in chimpanzees is provoked by human interference in their habitat, and that they have no innate predisposition to commit murder, just as humans do not.

Pozharsky also cites the Dani people as an example, among whom wars and killings are quite common. However, one could with equal success cite examples of the Paliyar, Semai, and many other peoples who are complete pacifists. Moreover, as Douglas Fry notes, research data shows that the majority of cultures (376 out of 590 studied) were either absolutely non-warlike or not inclined toward war (participating only in minor military actions). And only a third of the cultures participated significantly in wars, pursuing specific political or economic goals.

Next, Pozharsky provides individual examples of violence in history, which is an approach similar to that of Pinker (using episodes convenient for one’s argumentation while ignoring the full picture), claims that war can be just if a set of rules is adopted to reduce the harm it causes (but only suggests following them, without guaranteeing their execution in reality), and also attacks pacifists, portraying them as literally the worst people in the world by groundlessly attributing to them practices that only promote violence, such as appeasing the aggressor or waging war against a proclaimed “evil” without sparing any effort and ignoring the rules.

Of course, Pozharsky never once mentioned the position of anthropologists who quite reasonably do not consider war to be something natural for humans, or the position of military experts, according to which most healthy people possess a strong internal resistance to committing murder (or as researchers of human psyche and neurophysiology call it—the violence inhibition mechanism), and only a tiny fraction of individuals with high psychopathic predispositions are capable of engaging in such activities easily. All of this was ignored.

Learned helplessness, the illusion of control, and agorism

Mikhail Pozharsky has released a very good video about the illusion of control. Be sure to watch it in full if you haven’t already, and I, as usual, will provide the key points as I understand them.

  1. The experience of falling into a hopeless situation (one in which the subject’s position does not depend on their efforts) triggers the development of learned helplessness.
  2. Learned helplessness sharply reduces the subject’s competitive potential in situations where their actions actually do make a difference.
  3. An important psychological defense against learned helplessness is the illusion of control. In a hopeless situation, one can believe that something still depends on them, and thus learned helplessness will not arise.
  4. However, the rituals of psychological defense designed to create an illusion of control can themselves worsen the hopeless situation.
  5. Therefore, the skill of reflection is more effective, where the subject analyzes what they can actually control and what they cannot, and does not waste strength on the illusion of control, accepting force majeure as it is.
  6. Such a skill is formed through the experience of independently finding a way out of difficult situations, and in no other way.
  7. Therefore, creating cumbersome centralized structures and shifting the responsibility for everything onto them is an illusion of control, whereas a real fight against difficulties implies a decentralized approach based on personal responsibility. Period.

This is why, having outlined three main paths toward ancap — minarchism, panarchism, and agorism — I pay special attention specifically to agorism.

One can start a political party, like the big shots do, hold rallies, like the big shots do, and believe that through political pressure you are somehow influencing the policies pursued by the authorities — and when asked why life isn’t getting better, answer that the efforts undertaken are insufficient, and not a hundred thousand, but a million people must take to the streets.

One can propose reforms to create functional competing jurisdictions, dream of Facebook citizenship or the Bitnation project, and when asked why none of this is being implemented, answer that everything is heading that way anyway, but it would be good to double the propaganda efforts.

Or one can simply make a deal and not pay a tax. Or bypass an inconvenient ban. Or invent a service that is useful to people but invisible to the state’s servants. This is no longer an illusion of control. This is control itself. Through such things, a person learns to independently find a way out of difficult situations. And if they find themselves in conditions where they cannot control the possibility of getting out of the situation, they will already be resistant to learned helplessness, and will not fall back on rituals for the sake of an illusion of control.

One can remain an atheist in the trenches under fire. While one is shitting their pants and another is praying, the agorist digs the trench deeper.

https://youtu.be/pJuUbGwYH1Q

In Praise of Moderation

On February 1, the Tea Club held a conference with the elegant title “Keep to the Right” in Moscow. Among others, speaking was Mikhail Pozharsky, whom I have quoted many times, who used simple examples from the First World War to explain why you don’t need to fight the left to defeat them.

Today, the state handed down huge sentences in a flimsy case regarding the preparation of terrorist attacks, the so-called “Network” case. But this case was preceded by a real terrorist attack by anarchist Mikhail Zlobitsky, after which security services employees smirked with joy, having received new powers, budgets, and quotas for fabricating extremists. History has known cases where liberal reforms were rolled back or bloody wars were unleashed as a result of terrorist attacks, but I cannot recall a single instance where a terrorist attack prompted the state to loosen its grip on society. At best, the state limits itself to increased security measures for top officials, as happens in the USA, with its traditions of shooting presidents.

The other day, a second round of debates on anarchy took place between a team of ancaps and a team of left-wing anarchists. This was preceded by a long period of personal negotiations and attempts to find common ground; now, they managed to organize a civilized conversation in a public forum. And this is bearing fruit—for example, this review in an anarcho-channel. Each side is discovering the other, searching for conciliatory language, avoiding escalation during the debates themselves—and realizing that the main common enemy is not the left or the right, but the state.

Perhaps, over time, it will be possible to sway the brave left-wing anarchists away from revolutionary rhetoric toward something more moderate, so they stop their meaningless self-sacrifice for the benefit of provocateurs from the security services.

Indeed, I myself have significantly reduced the degree of approval for purely military tactics in my articles. I was quite rightly reprimanded during the discussion of my article on the doctrine of deterrence for the example of eliminating the King of Thailand. Truly, the will of one person does not decide so much that one can expect to solve a problem by eliminating that person or creating a deadly threat to them. It is far more useful if the idea of an attack by state representatives is viewed as ethically unacceptable, and this is achieved through the softening of manners.

So, let us continue our activity of education and persuasion, continue peaceful protest and the creation of a mass feeling of the state’s uselessness—and under no circumstances let us give it a reason to claim its necessity for the sake of fighting various dangerous extremists. The slogan that extremism in the defense of justice is not a vice is false.

As for those innocently imprisoned, they must, of course, be fought for against the state. This means taking to the streets, public appeals from celebrities, and other boring but effective political practices.

P.S. I was immediately written to saying that I confused cause and effect, and that Zlobitsky’s bombing happened precisely as a reaction to the “Network” case. Please forgive the blurred take; however, in such a scenario, the situation only becomes even more tragic.

Interview with Mikhail Pozharsky on Libertarian Band

While I was relaxing in Germany, the well-known and highly respected libertarian Mikhail Pozharsky visited Novosibirsk to give a lecture. It is a great pity that the lecture itself was not recorded, and consequently, I was unable to listen to it. Fortunately, the Libertarian Band studio team caught Mikhail before his presentation and conducted a fairly thorough interview.

In my opinion, it turned out to be very interesting; thanks to Katya Khudoleva for the questions. It’s great that the studio proves itself to be a quite viable team, even when someone is away for a while. I would have asked different questions, but I’m not sure the result would have been better.