So you're walking down the street in
your home town, minding your own business,
not looking to bother anybody,
and suddenly the town bully is charging
down the middle of the street dressed in
red!
It's Mr. Trolley! And he's gonna kill five
people... Unless you step into his path
and punch him, slightly hurting him,
and allowing those five people to get
away.
Of course, this thought exercise is
famous because it has a lot of
variations. What if you do punch Mr. Trolley, and then
he says he was just kidding? What if you punch him and your right
hook is so powerful
that it kills him? What if you're not
close enough to punch him, but you do
have a gun?
What if... those five people
were "no angels"?
Facebook has announced
that they are going to
ban certain kinds of anarchist groups
from posting on their platform.
I've posted, down in the description, a
link to facebook's own statement on the
matter, as well as just some commentary
on it that I think is particularly
cogent. But i wanted to put in my own
feelings here as well. I've talked on this channel in the past
about the fact that i
am pretty anarchist myself, and what that
means -- that it's not, uh, Heath Ledger as the Joker. Who is
very much an ARCHist! Not anarchist, but... an archist. Anyway,
the etymology of the words comes from
"against"
and "hierarchy." In other words,
something real close to democracy, maybe
even a bit more so.
That people shouldn't be in charge of
each other unless there's a really good
reason for them to be so, like a parent,
or somebody in charge of a surgery in an
operating room, who can see everything
going on and direct stuff.
In situations that are NOT that, people
shouldn't be in charge of each other.
Because they don't need to be, and it
creates injustice. So that's what "anarchist" means.
Now, words are sticky, and as they roll
through the years,
they pick up extra connotations. Not
everybody who uses this word is using it
the same way as I am, and that's fine.
I just want you to understand what I
mean when i say it about myself -- which is not
that i want to steal all the money and
put it in a big pile and burn it
and then blow up a hospital. It is in
fact
that i want to give food to everybody.
Anyway, facebook is clearly not
talking about that sort of thing.
Which I get.  But listen --
even though they say they're only
banning the ones that "celebrate violence,"
that still is kind of dangerous, and I
want to explain why.
First off, what is violence? Who decides
what is violence?
Is self-defense violence?
Is self-defense before the other person
has hit you violence?
Is vandalism violence? Mostly not, but
 sometimes, yeah! Kind of! In fact, I can get
behind that! Let's fight all of our wars
with spray paint from now on. That sounds
amazing.
I made a reference to the Trolley
Problem at the beginning of this,
which as you probably know usually
involves an actual trolley and not a
dude.
There's two tracks. Five people are tied
up here, one person is tied up here. It's
barreling towards the five people.
Do you pull the lever redirecting the
trolley to the one person,
killing them and saving the other five?
I am not here to relitigate the Trolley
Problem.
I am here to remind you that it exists.
And the reason it sparks so much debate
is that people,
in fact, do not always come to the same
conclusion about what the right answer
is in any particular instance of the
Trolley Problem. Perfectly good people
can disagree about this and NOT walk
away thinking each other are monsters.
In other words, almost everybody thinks
that some amount of violence is okay.
Whether it's because you think
self-defense is okay,
or you think taking the first hit if
somebody else is gonna get violent is
okay,
or you're not thinking about it that
hard and you just have big feelings that
you need to get out in somebody else's
face.
Everybody's got at least one, probably
several,
lines that they'll draw on this. But
almost nobody is going to say that NO
violence is okay. So like, unless you're
Malala Yousafzai -- in which case,
welcome to the channel, I'm honored to have you -- it's silly to pretend
that violence is never okay. "Celebrating
violence" is another thing that's going
to have a whole lot of different
variations.
I think we can all agree that going, "Woooooo! Get him! That was what he deserved!"
is a celebration. But what else? 
Is it "celebrating violence" to
say, "I agree that this was justified"? What are
the standards that they're applying?
i don't know. The post doesn't say.
I really doubt that they have a system for
it, to be completely honest.
There is no universally right answer to
the Trolley Problem. But there is
a wrong answer, which i contend
is to say "Oh, I wouldn't let anyone get
hurt!" ...Okay. That's great. I would love that.
So, do you mean that you'd pull the lever
to save the five people, and let the one
person -- "No! I don't want the one person to get hurt, either!"
...Well, super. So what are you gonna do?
"Nothing!"
Okay, well, then five people are gonna die.
"No! I don't want them to die!" Okay, so what
are you gonna do? "I'm not gonna do
anything! I just want everybody to be
okay!"
Like... It doesn't work that way.
And listen, I agree! Maybe we should
redesign our public transportation
system so that trolleys quit bearing
down on people. But a lot of folks are
out here not wanting to do that, either.
And we gotta do something. I am also a
pacifist. I wish we could all get along.
I completely understand the instinct to
throw yourself
at the trolley like Sailor Moon and say,
"I know there's good in there! If you'd
only come out!!"
But what right do i have to look at
somebody else and say, 
"People are attacking your
children and you have to let them"?
Here are two stories that illustrate
what i'm talking about. They're both
taken from the Book of Mormon -- which you
don't have to be down with. Just take them as stories.
I mean the book, by the way not the other thing.
In one story, there is a group of people
that has a tradition
of doing a lot of raiding and a lot of
murdering
and a lot of general bloodshed and
stealing.
And that group of people collectively
decides to change their ways,
and they decide that they want to
make absolutely sure that they never
return to that way of life,
so they dig a big hole and they bury all
of their swords, and
make a promise to God never to kill
again,
even in self-defense. And 
when they are attacked by their enemies,
they fall on their knees,
and they say, "Please don't kill us," and
some of them get mowed down.
And they still don't go back on their
promise.
Years later, some of their children who
have NOT made the promise do take up
arms to defend their families. But the ones
who really felt that this sin
of violence was on them
choose to make this covenant.
In a later story, there is a civilization
that has a democratic government,
and there is a charismatic leader who
wants to become the monarch
of this government, and put his friends
in charge
and put himself at the top of the
hierarchy. There is
a military leader of the people
who wants to oppose this coup on their
government
and maintain freedom.
However the would-be king's buddies
want to be put in big cool positions, and
they say, "We're not going to fight in
your army.
We are going to sit by." And
the military leader says to them, "If you
are going to sit by and watch your
neighbors
get killed, you are an enemy combatant,
and I'm going to treat you like an enemy
combatant and kill you."
And i have to say, I love both of these
stories.
I think that they both have valuable
things to teach in the context of the
situations that they're in.
I believe that all people are basically
the same kind of thing,
and have value.
I believe that some
people are under different levels of
threat. I believe in a more spread-out
government
where there is less hierarchy among us.
I believe in a more spread-out economy
where there is
more well-being among us. I believe
that if somebody comes at you with a
sword, you're allowed to meet them with a
sword.
And listen, I know a lot of people from
my social circles think that this is
super radical, but the American Revolution
was an anarchist conflict. And again,
that's weird to hear. I understand that.
But they were specifically fighting
against a hierarchy,
trying to create greater equality. 
And... there was violence.
I think most of the people I know are
okay with that,
and I want those people to understand
that
what a lot of the folks who call
themselves anarchists are going for
is THAT kind of thing, but better.
And you can disagree about
individual policies that should
happen, but
just banning all talk of it outright
makes me pretty uncomfortable. One of
the links that I put down below
refers to the inconsistency of
Facebook's treatment of these policies
that it has,
how it will remove something where
somebody talks about punching a cop, for
example,
but it will leave up white supremacist
calls for violence. It's spotty.
It's not gonna be perfect,
but it seems to be imperfect on one side,
and that's a really big
problem. As if this wasn't complicated
enough, let me take it a step further.
I don't begrudge Facebook the decision
to take anything that they want off of
their website. It is a privately-owned
property,
and they don't have to platform anybody.
I fully support taking down child
pornography and white nationalist movements and
quack coronavirus cures. Those things
hurt people.
It's not censorship, because it is their
website
and they are not the government. I
understand if somebody looks at me and
says, "Hey, you're being a hypocrite," but
let's be really precise about what I'm
saying here.
I think Facebook has the right to do
this, AND that in the case of anarchists,
they should not.
Because they are taking down something
that, in my opinion, brings more good to
the world than bad.
And those other things do not bring more
good to the world than bad.
White supremacists kill people. 
The number of people who have been killed
by antifa or by people associating
themselves with the term "antifa"
it's zero. It's none.
And if that number is still too high for
you, I don't know what to say.
If you can prevent harm coming to people
by doing a smaller amount of harm,
sometimes you should.
Maybe sometimes you shouldn't.
I think anarchist principles are a force
for good in the world;
I think they're a force for peace in the
world. I think anarchism
is the LEAST violent ideology I've ever
studied.
I also think it's the most honest about
it.
And if that's what gets them banned from
public platforms...
I think that's a crappy thing to be
punished for.
