| Intellectual Anarchy 103 |
| If you've explored the previous two lessons, you may be wondering when we are going to say something interesting. That is a valid concern. All concerns are valid. One of your concerns may be that you don't know what the hell intellectual anarchy means. You may be interested in the term, but you're not sure what it means, because we haven't defined it. You learned in lessons 1 and 2 that defining "intellectual anarchy" will impose a limit on it. You've learned that it's necessary to impose a limit. You've learned that you have the power to impose any limit you want. Or rather, in this case, PERF has the power, since we're the ones making the definition. So here is PERF's definition: Intellectual anarchy means not limiting the limits people choose to think by. This means that if people choose to limit their thinking by means of any linguistic trick, trap, quirk, paradigm, algorithm, or pattern, of any moral, intellectual or emotional nature, we accept and respect that choice. Even when the person doesn't recognize that they've made a choice. Even when the choice sucks. This is anarchy. Anything can happen, and everything does. Intellectual anarchy gives unhappy, unconscious, reactive people (like Max in The Parable of Max) a lot of power. But it gives a lot more power to happy, conscious, proactive people -- people who recognize and take responsibility for their individual moral, intellectual, and emotional authority. Consider the economic counterpart of intellectual anarchy -- capitalism. Pure capitalism is economic anarchy. Who gains power when trade is unrestrained? People who have the most stuff to trade. In other words, people who have the most money. In other words, people who have power already. Anarchic systems always tend to increase the power of the powerful. The difference between intellectual anarchy and economic anarchy is that intellectual anarchy is not a zero-sum game. When wealthy people become more wealthy, poor people become poorer. However, when conscious people become more conscious, unconscious people do not become less conscious. This is because the amount of physical resources in the world is finite, while the world's intellectual, moral and emotional resources are infinite. If everyone in the world were to accept the simple principles associated with intellectual anarchy, each person in the world would become an incredibly powerful, super-conscious individual. |
| The First Step: The first step towards increasing one's individual consciousness is to understand that consciousness is an infinite thing. The consciousness game is not a zero-sum game. The fact that some people appear to be more conscious than others does not reflect a real hierarchy. There can be no real hierarchy of consciousness. Real hierarchies exist only when resources are finite. Understanding the infinite nature of consciousness will help you to begin to understand the motivations behind the People's Entropy Research Front. We are aware of a strange and powerful resource that everyone can use as much as they want. Such a resource can't be sold. By its very nature, it comes only as a free gift. We expect people to disagree with us. We expect extremely conscious people to disagree with us. Our conclusions are not derived from absolute principles and many of our statements can easily be used to undermine many of our other statements. This is how intellectual anarchy works. It's expected and embraced. Expecting and embracing disagreement will be the focus of the upcoming second series of our educational program, Intellectual Anarchy 201. |