But what if theirs a serial killer!

To an extent, discussing potential future anarchist societies is, somewhat of just a bit of a thought experiment ..
i cannot actually say how a given situation will play out, its not actually happening, you have to speculate a bunch and come up with a bunch of assumptions ...

but i will say, its significantly more productive and useful thought experiment when done with other anarchists,

because when your an anarchist you don't ask the same thought-terminating questions..
your not expected to entertaining 3000 questions about 'what do you do in (every single possible conflict that could ever arrive) of course, never any specifics either just
"what do you do if someone does this" .. in a vague way that wants a one-size-fits-all answer is just .. ugh-

and of course failing to accommodate any of these to some arbitrary satisfactory way means just falling back on the current status quo,
you must have 'authority' you must have 'control'.. you must have coercion etc, usually bringing up some extreme case,
like a serial killer, or a rapist, or some shit,

you explain that you would handle things on a case-by-case basis, that anything you do depends heavily on the situation,
what's the reasons for them to do this? what are the actual social conditions that lead to these,
.. people typically don't do this- both because generally harming others is seen as socially undesirable, but its also just not something people would *like* doing
so why would they do it, what's the reason, we can work from there- address those underlying reasons

but you see, this requires them to confront that most of the reasons for people to do these things are explicittly because of hierachy and power structures,
rape happens usually because of patriachical norms, someone feels entitled to another persons body, this entitlemennt doesn't come from nowhere-

murder happens for two reasons, one is that a person feels trapped or threatened, that they end up punching back as "self-defense" .. this is not 'great'-
but regardless, however avoiding this is done by preventing people threatened in the first place, therefore- so what leads to that,

well the reason is usually because of dehumanization, you have de-valued someone so much to the point that you no longer think they're deserving of life,
maybe they have done something you think is 'wrong' and your insistance on retributive bullshit leads you to feel thats the only "solution" .. perhaps you've been propagandized about Muslims being terrorists or some shit, or maybe your a cop so you've been given social permission to do so, but also propaganda stating 'necessity' to to that.

and so on.. which is again just hierarchical structures again; naturally-

of course answering this question is never enough, this always devolves to constructing a bogyman that doesn't exist;
'what if theres someone who just will do this, no matter what you do, with no means to reason with or otherwise address this'

.. this is just creating a situation that does not exist, this person doesn't exist; its a construction made purely to get me to try compromise on my principals
to say enacting power and coercion is "sometimes" okay, and of course, if whatever your suggesting has any problems whatsoever, its completley unattainable and can never work
and obviously the current status-quo of having prisons and "legitimate" force whos just allowed to hurt you and do all the same things their saying are apparently wrong-

is perfectly fine, has no issues, of course, because their allowed an imperfect system, the point was never to actually get an answer but rather-
to try force you to compromise on first principals.

eventually you get an actually reasonable description of a potential situation that could happen, you get to explaining how you'd do conflict resolution
maybe its something simpler like theft, or an abusive relationship that you want to break out of or something

and in this case, they will just keep going on about certain edge cases, 'oh what if they don't want to engage in conflict resolution.' .. 'what if they dont care about social consequences' .. 'what if they dont leave' .. 'how do you prevent them seeing whoever was harmed' ..

... i dont fucking know, what if someone evades capture, what if someone escapes prison, what if someone isn't caught, what if the one harming people is the same one whos "aapproved" to just brutalize people in the name of stopping it(?) what if i just dont comply with your laws, what if i just keep doing whatever it is just inside prison with the other people who are locked there and given no means to escape them? there?

(i use the word 'address' becuase it does not actually solve anything, or do anything, prisons and other retributive shit just hurt more people after the fact, and nothing else-)

of course none of *these* questions are enough to completely dismiss the system outright because you cannot think of a solution to a problem that you just made up and isn't even happening, it might not be able to address every single possibility ever .. yet, you still want to do that;

i dont think this problem will ever occur, because you just made it up with the explicit goal of dismissing whatever im saying or suggesting, specificlaly to try justify the existence of systemic violence and oppressive power structures, specifically to justify the existence of some 'authority' whos allowed to carry out all the same shit your complaining about on a collosial scale anyway, but you just don't care- about it;

because you know what-
but when its anarchist conflict resolution, any problem is too much, we can solve 99.9% of all conflicts that ever happen
you'll get so fucking caught up on the 0.01% that remains-

ignoring the fact that the state governments and hierachical forces are probably some of the biggest serial killers, if you consider the amount of people killed by military forces, or state sanctioned murders, or counter-terrorism or whatever the fuck other thing they use to try justify it.
.. and that this issue probably does not actually exist, like theres always an attempt to appeal to ableism or sanism to even try say it-
stereotyping mental health conditions and even attempt to make the point, (no, 'lacking empathy' does not mean your incapable for caring for other people, nor does it mean your an emotionless killing machine-) .. most of the serial killers i know about were motivated by the same typical hierchical forces
their targets were still those already dehumanized by society, it was sex workers, it was the homeless, etc; very often just targeted attacks,

you know what .. but yes- maybe at a certain point we cannot do anything about people harming eachother- but you know what,
if the only thing i have to worry about, is a once in a blue moon- "im out to get you all just cause nothing you can do will ever stop me (unless that thing happens to be prisons then i'll just stop for some reason)"

.. and all other types of issues are addressed; most of the reasons people would hurt eachother are gone, everyones doing okay, your all a mutually beneficial self-sustaining community, where any harm done to you would probably be harming you anyway, where everyone is dependant on everyone and we're all doing collectivism?

if have all my needs met, all the incentives to dehumanize me are gone; no one can concentrate power against me

if any attempts to internally justify mistreatment fall flat because it simply is not justifiable,

if its rare that actually tries to otherwise violate my autonomy, if im not mistreated just for being trans, poly or a woman,

if acknowledging im doing something wrong isn't granting you permission to hurt me; if when we make mistakes we can actually improve and learn from them,

if everyone is considered when a conflict arrives, not just some binary idea of who the 'victim' is-

if the whole scope of conflicts is recognized, and we don't fall into a binary of either the 'abuser' and a 'victim' .. and rather that very often there are issues arriving from everywhere-

if all of that, but the only thing i have to worry about is a possibility of some serial killer who cannot be reasoned with under any circumstance,
a once in a blue moon occurrence, if it even happens at all. .. where they seemingly exist purely to try counter the exact conflict resolution strategy we made .. and nothing else

if that's literally the fucking only thing, then .. yeah .. i think im a pretty good spot,

.. certainly .. beats still having that issue; and also cops doing the same thing, and mega corporations, and everything else.

if you're curious about some aspect of anarchism im willing to talk about it, if your interested in some logical infrastructure behind something, im here to talk to you about it, if your want to talk about alternative means of distributing and managing resources, thats great- here to repeat the same 5 thought-terminating points that you cant even "solve" yourself im not interested .. frankly and don't be surprised if i just link you here instead.

im here to write fiction for you, i am not here to come up with a potential solution to every single potential (and extremely and very annoyingly extremely vague and incomplete-) scenario you can think of, i don't even look at things in the same way as you; im not here to just legitimize your already preconceived conclusion that authorities committing atrocities is perfectly fine because otherwise someone else might commit atrocities, im not here to indulge you in your already decided conclusion that systemic oppression from authorities is fine actually and the only possible 'solution' ever™

08/23/26

But what if theirs a serial killer! - The Crystal Website