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Wednesday, January 03, 2018

Anarchy, Autonomy and Aliens

2017 was the year that I discovered I was an anarchist. Not a mohawk-wearing, pin through the nose, moshing type anarchist, just an honest to goodness "I have faith in human nature" type anarchist.


It was the book Shantaram that made me realise I've been an anarchist this whole time. A book that I started to read about 3 years ago and only finished when I moved back home. That doesn't mean it was a bad book, or difficult to read. I just find it harder settling myself down with a good book. Having said that, I read The Host by Stephenie Meyer and was unable to put it down. I am aware that the author became famous for her Twilight books, which I'm lead to believe is complete tripe, or at least the TV series based on the books are, but The Host was centred around a theme that was very interesting to me. It's set in a post-apocalyptic world where aliens (who are in fact parasites but referred to as 'souls') come down to Earth to take over human bodies as hosts for them to live a Utopian existence. The thing that fascinated me about the book was the altruistic nature of the 'souls'. They were unable to be dishonest, trust was implicit and Earth became a more ordered and peaceful world. Nobody hurt one another, laws were abided by and harmony was prevalent. But it didn't stop the fact that these 'souls' were parasites who used the bodies of humans to make this world possible. So the question is, who were the truly savage race? The humans who would use violence at any cost to protect themselves, or the aliens who felt themselves superior enough to take over the minds and bodies of an inferior race?

So throughout the book, I felt a lot of empathy for the alien, who in the end, found her loyalties with the humans who, despite not being 'perfect' at least understood the concept of autonomy. And, well, autonomy is very important, especially for an anarchist like me. What I've come to realise in the past few months, however, is that to be so rigidly attached to my autonomy can lead to a very isolating existence. Like the humans in The Host

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