What Is Anarchy?

[Anonymouse]

by Butler Shaffer

 

I have mixed feelings about the use of labels to describe philosophical views, whether of myself or others. It is difficult to avoid doing so because our efforts to understand and communicate about the world necessarily involve the use of words and words are, as Alfred Korzybski warned us, abstractions that never equate with what they are meant to describe. His oft-quoted statement that "the map is not the territory" offers a caveat whose implications for confusion are further compounded when addressing such abstract topics as political philosophy.

 

One philosophical abstraction that seems to befuddle most people is "anarchy." To those challenged by complexity – such as radio talk show hosts and cable-TV "newscasters" who are convinced that all political opinions can be confined to the categories of "liberal" and "conservative" – the word anarchy evokes an unfocused fear of uncertain forces. Images of bomb-throwing thugs who smash and burn the property of others are routinely conjured up by politicians and the media to frighten people into an extension of police authority over their lives. "Disorder" and "lawless confusion" are common dictionary definitions of this word.

 

That there have been some, calling themselves "anarchists," who have engaged in violence on behalf of their political ambitions, is not to be denied. Nor can we overlook the provocateuring occasionally engaged in by undercover policemen – operating under the guise of "anarchists" – to justify harsh reprisals against political protests. But to condemn a philosophic viewpoint because a few wish to corrupt its meaning for their narrow advantage is no more justifiable than condemning Christianity because a man murders his family and defends his acts on the grounds "God told me to do it!"

 

As long as a president continues to rationalize war against the Iraqi people as "operation freedom"; as long as the Strategic Air Command insists that "peace is our profession"; and as long as police departments advertise that they are there "to serve and protect," intelligent minds must be prepared to look behind the superficiality and imagery of words to discover their deeper meaning. Such is the case with the word "anarchy."

 

The late Robert LeFevre made one such effort to transcend the popular meaning of the word when he declared that "an anarchist is anyone who believes in less government than you do." But an even better understanding of the concept can be derived from the Greek origins of the word (anarkhos) which meant "without a ruler." It is this definition of the word that members of the political power structure (i.e., your "rulers") do not want you to consider. Far better that you fear the hidden monsters and hobgoblins who are just waiting to bring terror and havoc to your lives should efforts to increase police powers or budgets fail.

 

Are there murderers, kidnappers, rapists, and arsonists in our world? Of course there are, and there will always be, and they do not all work for the state. It is amazing that, with all the powers and money conferred upon the state to "protect" us from such threats, they continue to occur with a regularity that seems to have increased with the size of government! Even the current "mad cow disease" scare is being used, by the statists, as a reason for more government regulation, an effort that conveniently ignores the fact that the federal government has been closely regulating meat production for many decades.

 

Nor can we ignore the history of the state in visiting upon humanity the very death and destruction that its defenders insist upon as a rationale for political power. Those who condemn anarchy should engage in some quantitative analysis. In the twentieth century alone, governments managed to kill – through wars, genocides, and other deadly practices – some 200,000,000 men, women, and children. How many people were killed by anarchists during this period? Governments, not anarchists, have been the deadly "bomb-throwers" of human history!

 

Because of the disingenuous manner in which this word has been employed, I endeavor to be as precise in my use of the term as possible. I employ the word "anarchy" not as a noun, but as a verb. I envision no utopian community, no "Galt’s Gulch" to which free men and women can repair. I prefer to think of anarchy as a way in which people deal with one another in a peaceful, cooperative manner; respectful of the inviolability of each other’s lives and property interests; resorting to contract and voluntary transactions rather than coercion and expropriation as a way of functioning in society.

 

I am often asked if anarchy has ever existed in our world, to which I answer: almost all of your daily behavior is an anarchistic expression. How you deal with your neighbors, coworkers, fellow customers in shopping malls or grocery stores, is often determined by subtle processes of negotiation and cooperation. Social pressures, unrelated to statutory enactments, influence our behavior on crowded freeways or grocery checkout lines. If we dealt with our colleagues at work in the same coercive and threatening manner by which the state insists on dealing with us, our employment would be immediately terminated. We would soon be without friends were we to demand that they adhere to specific behavioral standards that we had mandated for their lives.

 

Should you come over to our home for a visit, you will not be taxed, searched, required to show a passport or driver’s license, fined, jailed, threatened, handcuffed, or prohibited from leaving. I suspect that your relationships with your friends are conducted on the same basis of mutual respect. In short, virtually all of our dealings with friends and strangers alike are grounded in practices that are peaceful, voluntary, and devoid of coercion.

 

A very interesting study of the orderly nature of anarchy is found in John Phillip Reid’s book, Law for the Elephant. Reid studied numerous diaries and letters written by persons crossing the overland trail in wagon trains going from St. Joseph, Missouri to Oregon and California. The institutions we have been conditioned to equate with "law and order" (e.g., police, prisons, judges, etc.) were absent along the frontier, and Reid was interested in discovering how people behaved toward one another in such circumstances. He discovered that most people respected property and contract rights, and settled whatever differences they had in a peaceful manner, all of this in spite of the fact that there were no "authorities" to call in to enforce a decision. Such traits went so far as to include respect for the property claims of Indians. The values and integrities that individuals brought with them were sufficient to keep the wagon trains as peaceful communities.

 

Having spent many years driving on California freeways, I have observed an informal order amongst motorists who are complete strangers to one another. There is a general – albeit not universal – courtesy exhibited when one driver wishes to make a lane change and, in spite of noncooperative drivers, a spontaneous order arises from this interplay. A major reason for the cooperative order lies in the fact that a driving mistake can result in serious injury or death, and that such consequences will be felt at once, and by the actor, unlike political decision-making that shifts the costs to others.

 

One may answer that freeway driving is regulated by the state, and that driving habits are not indicative of anarchistic behavior. The same response can be made concerning our behavior generally (i.e., that government laws dictate our conduct in all settings). But this misconceives the causal connections at work. The supervision of our moment-to-moment activities by the state is too remote to affect our actions. We are polite to fellow shoppers or our neighbor for reasons that have nothing to do with legal prescripts. What makes our dealings with others peaceful and respectful comes from within ourselves, not from beyond. For precisely the same reason, a society can be utterly destroyed by the corruption of such subjective influences, and no blizzard of legislative enactments or quadrupling of police forces will be able to avert the entropic outcome. Do you now understand the social meaning of the "Humpty-Dumpty" nursery rhyme?

 

The study of complexity, or chaos, informs us of patterns of regularity that lie hidden in our world, but which spontaneously manifest themselves to generate the order that we like to pretend authorities have created for us. There is much to discover about the interplay of unseen forces that work, without conscious direction, to make our lives more productive and peaceful than even the best-intended autocrat can accomplish. As the disruptive histories of state planning and regulation reveal, efforts to impose order by fiat often produce disorder, a phenomenon whose explanation is to be found in the dynamical nature of complexity. In the words of Terry Pratchett: "Chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. Chaos always defeats order because it is better organized."

 

"Anarchy" is an expression of social behavior that reflects the individualized nature of life. Only as living beings are free to pursue their particular interests in the unique circumstances in which they find themselves, can conditions for the well-being of all be attained. Anarchy presumes decentralized and cooperative systems that serve the mutual interests of the individuals comprising them, without the systems ever becoming their own reasons for being. It is this thinking, and the practices that result therefrom, that is alone responsible for whatever peace and order exists in society.

 

Political thinking, by contrast, presumes the supremacy of the systems (i.e., the state) and reduces individuals to the status of resources for the accomplishment of their ends. Such systems are grounded in the mass-minded conditioning and behavior that has produced the deadly wars, economic dislocations, genocides, and police-state oppressions that comprise the essence of political history.

 

Men and women need nothing so much right now as to rediscover and reenergize their own souls. They will never be able to accomplish such purposes in the dehumanizing and dispirited state systems that insist upon controlling their lives and property. In the sentiments underlying anarchistic thinking, men and women may be able to find the individualized sense of being and self-direction that they long ago abandoned in marbled halls and citadels.

[Dan]

What Is Anarchy?

The trendy word for Darwin's "survival of the fittest."

[Anonymouse]

The trendy word for Darwin's "survival of the fittest."

I disagree.

[Dan]

I disagree.

mmmhhmmmmm.. care to expand on that one?

[Anonymouse]

It is ipso facto assumed that there exists survival of the fittest, and indeed that depends on how you define that, since language is fungible by nature. Hitler of course took it to extreme proportions. Indeed it is a priori accepted that in our every day lives we try to survive, so the statement is in a way silly, in my humble opinion.

 

Now let me ask you another question, care to add anything else aside from "survival of the fittest"?

[Dan]

Now let me ask you another question, care to add anything else aside from "survival of the fittest"?

 

well, not right now, no.. but I was going to start a post about anarchy and the parallels between it and the survival of the fittest a while back, but decided against it, as i don't have much time on my hands to sit down and write something that makes sense.

 

as for survival of the fittest - well, i am not talking about eating to survive here.. i'm talking about who is fit to survive trauma, etc., which is why i related it to anarchy, which in its meanest branches is concerned with blowing things up.. it could be argued that the children and grandchildren of the survivors of the Armenian genocide (well, not sure about those who hid and escaped before the genocide actually started -- i'm talking about those who actually survived the deportations and all that) are actually "filtered" according to the "survival of the fittest" theory.. i.e. they were the fittest among the rest of the group.. but that's hard to prove, because proving the role of chance/luck in that is just not possible, not to mention claims about religion and god and miracles.. so.. i don't know.. i guess i am just rambling on and on and on..

 

but i didn't read the thing you posted.. it's way too long for my non-existent attention span.

[Anonymouse]

well, not right now, no.. but I was going to start a post about anarchy and the parallels between it and the survival of the fittest a while back, but decided against it, as i don't have much time on my hands to sit down and write something that makes sense.

 

as for survival of the fittest - well, i am not talking about eating to survive here.. i'm talking about who is fit to survive trauma, etc., which is why i related it to anarchy, which in its meanest branches is concerned with blowing things up.. it could be argued that the children and grandchildren of the survivors of the Armenian genocide (well, not sure about those who hid and escaped before the genocide actually started -- i'm talking about those who actually survived the deportations and all that) are actually "filtered" according to the "survival of the fittest" theory.. i.e. they were the fittest among the rest of the group.. but that's hard to prove, because proving the role of chance/luck in that is just not possible, not to mention claims about religion and god and miracles.. so.. i don't know.. i guess i am just rambling on and on and on..

 

but i didn't read the thing you posted.. it's way too long for my non-existent attention span.

Well if you had read it, you would have known how anarchy is defined. Read it.

[Dan]

well, but no.. that is how the author defined it.. but i will read it when i have the time lol..

[Anonymouse]

well, but no.. that is how the author defined it.. but i will read it when i have the time lol..

But that's the inherent problem, words are abstractions, and fungible in nature.

[Accelerated]

mmm....an interesting read/theory. Some of the arguments used by the author are a little dodgy. And the whole thing doesnt seem to have a point except for:

 

words are abstractions, and fungible in nature.

[Dan]

But that's the inherent problem, words are abstractions, and fungible in nature.

well yes.. naturally.. lol

 

and i still haven't read it.. one of these days i will...

[Anonymouse]

mmm....an interesting read/theory. Some of the arguments used by the author are a little dodgy. And the whole thing doesnt seem to have a point except for:

The point is the State blows in simple terms.

[Accelerated]

True enough, peolpe left to their own devices could manage to live and co-exist peacefully to a certain degree.....but not today

 

simple example: a citys vital water supply - there needs to be an organisation to run/build the infrastructure, a management to control it and an overseer (ie. local goverment) to keep the management on a short leash: making sure everything is to a desired standard for the 'greater good'. Now if there was anarchy, how do you suppose this would happen?

[Anonymouse]

True enough, peolpe left to their own devices could manage to live and co-exist peacefully to a certain degree.....but not today

 

simple example: a citys vital water supply - there needs to be an organisation to run/build the infrastructure, a management to control it and an overseer (ie. local goverment) to keep the management on a short leash: making sure everything is to a desired standard for the 'greater good'. Now if there was anarchy, how do you suppose this would happen?

Of course, it is essential to the State that it should control the road, services of transportation, water. It has a monopoly on those things. Our political conditioning has taught us to believe that only the State can provide such things, but private business can do that as well.

 

The State is in itself a monopoly of violence in a given territory.

[Accelerated]

but private business can do that as well.

 

sure, but whose going to PAY, whose going to REGULATE to make certain the road, bridge, building is built to a certain standard and its not going to collapse tommorow and so on.....or do you think the private business will regulate itself voluntarily? possible, but highly unlikelly since THE fundamental reason for a business to exist is to make a profit/money.

 

The State is in itself a monopoly of violence in a given territory.

 

its only violent towards those that BREAK the law, which in turn is set by the people WE vote into office - well, in the West at least.

[Anonymouse]

sure, but whose going to PAY, whose going to REGULATE to make certain the road, bridge, building is built to a certain standard and its not going to collapse tommorow and so on.....or do you think the private business will regulate itself voluntarily? possible, but highly unlikelly since THE fundamental reason for a business to exist is to make a profit/money.

 

Well, now you are opening a whole new can of worms, which is perhaps better suited for another thread regarding how the free market works, per the Austrian School of Economics.

 

The free market regulates itself. Of course the State and regulation hamper on the market. Thus when artificially created panics and depressions like the stock market crash, are created because of a central bank such as the Federal Reserve, which is nothing but a scam, we are politically conditioned to think that it is the market that fails, but it is not. On the market there is no problem, only a conflict of interest. Of course one must understand the dynamics of why business compete. It is because of competition that there can be progress because it will constantly ensure better quality and production. Regulation will only stiffen it. Of course the money will be commodity money, backed by gold and silver, which will not be issued by a central bank as fiat money ( paper money ), which is intrinsically worthless. Me thinks I am off topic now. It will be issued by a variety of banks, in proportion to a societies service and manifacturing base, not endless printing of stupid paper money which then causes inflation and the "business cycle". Without fiat money, there is no such thing as "inflation" or "business cycle".

 

its only violent towards those that BREAK the law, which in turn is set by the people WE vote into office - well, in the West at least.

 

Democracy is a sham! Think of the contradictions inherent in the system. You are not allowed to steal. Government however can steal in the form of taxes, eminent domain, zoning laws, etc. Our political conditioning will not allow us to call it theft though. Government can kill. War is nothing more than institutionalized violence by the State which we approve for some strange reason. We in our everyday lives are criminalized for essentially the same thing the State does and has a monopoly on. If you don't believe in killing, why do you vote for these morally depraved people into office? Such contradictions are never raised.

Edited January 14, 2004 by Anonymouse

[Accelerated]

The free market regulates itself.

 

I did not mean regulation in terms of the fiscal markets but in terms of building standards, water standards, food standards etc. You went on a little tangent there, which although not irrelevant, doesnt really need to be covered because it is doubtful such markets would exist in an anarchy.

 

Government however can steal in the form of taxes, eminent domain, zoning laws, etc

 

taxes are collected to pay for your roads, police, hospitals, water supply etc. Never heard of the latter two, exclusive to the US perhaps?

 

War is nothing more than institutionalized violence by the State which we approve for some strange reason.

 

agreed.

 

If you don't believe in killing, why do you vote for these morally depraved people into office? Such contradictions are never raised.

 

mmm....good question. I guess we have no choice. I should also add, I dont really mind my government waging war in a foreign land so I can get my petrol cheaper I am the selfish type in this regard

[Anonymouse]

mmm....good question. I guess we have no choice. I should also add, I dont really mind my government waging war in a foreign land so I can get my petrol cheaper I am the selfish type in this regard

I did not mean regulation in terms of the fiscal markets but in terms of building standards, water standards, food standards etc. You went on a little tangent there, which although not irrelevant, doesnt really need to be covered because it is doubtful such markets would exist in an anarchy.

 

Capitalism is anarchy. Why do you assume people themselves cannot come up with building standards. Why must it be government telling people what to do like little children suggesting that they themselves cannot accomplish or think about such rudimentary things? Besides, government is the worst regulator in terms of food standards etc. There would also be private competitive firms regarding standards. The government has been regulation the meat industry for almost a century, as the article said, yet look at the stuff that happens. FDA has approved fluoride in our toothpastes which is a known toxin, only a little less than arsenic and lead. Your point? The free market is precisely anarchy, it is chaos. That is what the free market is. Of course, all political systems, whether democracy, fascism, or communism makes no difference, because they are all socialistic.

 

taxes are collected to pay for your roads, police, hospitals, water supply etc. Never heard of the latter two, exclusive to the US perhaps?

 

But like I said, taxes are collected by the State, which we assume is the only one that can be in charge of roads, police, hospitals. Why do you believe private businesses cannot accomplish the same thing? After alot of conditioning via education institutions and media, we come to believe that only government can provide such services.

 

mmm....good question. I guess we have no choice. I should also add, I dont really mind my government waging war in a foreign land so I can get my petrol cheaper  I am the selfish type in this regard 

 

Well, one can only wonder why the U.S. consumes most of the worlds energy, even though it is a tiny fraction of the world population. It's superpower mentality has done it so. Of course if money is invested in the right technologies and alternatives perhaps alternatives to oil will become practical, there are many alternatives, not enough research. Oil is a non renewable resource at some point eventually in the next 100 years. War does not bring down cheaper oil prices. In fact, it is theft. Of course going into the dynamics of oil cartels, and big business working with big government will involve too much time and effort and totally stray off topic from the point I am arguing. So you support government killing people on a massive scale like they are doing in Iraq?

[Accelerated]

Why do you assume people themselves cannot come up with building standards. Why must it be government telling people what to do like little children suggesting that they themselves cannot accomplish or think about such rudimentary things?

 

I've been over this point twice allready :naturally, it is the people in the respective industries that will be hired by the government to come up with the standards, but some authority (ie. government) will need to ENFORCE these standards so that the private sector is obliged to keep a certain standard of production that does not endanger the lives of the consumers

 

The government has been regulation the meat industry for almost a century, as the article said, yet look at the stuff that happens.

 

could have been worse. Besides, without massive government intervention in Britain for example, BSE could have wiped out their entire cattle industry.

 

FDA has approved fluoride in our toothpastes which is a known toxin, only a little less than arsenic and lead. Your point?

 

my point?!? Im not an expert on toxins, so I expect my govt to make sure that all goods that I consume are REASONABLY safe for me. If what you say is indeed true, then someone will surelly hang for it. And if its only 'a little less toxic than arsenic' I should expect a LOT of people should have died from it by now. Funny, I use toothpaste on a regular basis and am still alive

 

Why do you believe private businesses cannot accomplish the same thing?

 

...Im tired of going over the same thing: roads are built by private businesses, government standards keep them from building 'sub-standard' (read:unsafe) roads. Police, a private business?! Perhaps, you can explain how that will work.....

 

So you support government killing people on a massive scale like they are doing in Iraq?

 

they are not intentionally killing innocent people....

 

I've had enough of this repetetive discussion, IMO at the end the government is a NECESSARY EVIL. Could have done (and did) without it in the Stone Age, but fortunatelly we no longer live in that era.

Edited January 14, 2004 by Accelerated

[Dan]

its only violent towards those that BREAK the law

i disagree.

[Accelerated]

i disagree.

 

....i prob should have put 'ideally' in front of that statement.

[Dan]

yup, i would agree with that.

[Anonymouse]

I've been over this point twice allready  :naturally, it is the people in the respective industries that will be hired by the government to come up with the standards, but some authority (ie. government) will need to ENFORCE these standards so that the private sector is obliged to keep a certain standard of production that does not endanger the lives of the consumers

 

This assumes that the private sector cannot itself manage its standards without some big brother entity regulating it. Leave it to politically induced depressions and stock market fiascos such as the market crash of '29, thanks to the Federal Reserve, to create panics, which in the public mind is translated as the market cannot handle itself. The economic natural selection is a process that is acknowledged by all free market advocates. Why would businesses want to harm consumers? It would not be in their interest since they rely on them for their profit, thus they would insure them with quality. Only with government regulation will you get a dumbing down of quality. Since the government is a monopoly, from an economic standpoint, a monopoly is bad for consumers, so why would you have one big brother entity somehow ensuring "standards"? That would be counter productive.

 

could have been worse. Besides, without massive government intervention in Britain for example, BSE could have wiped out their entire cattle industry.

 

It is precisely because of government that we have the problem we have. Last I checked, the mad cow scare was on a Washington State Farm. The critical thinker will see this scare as nothing more than a scare, which the government is making it seem bigger than it already is, to justify more regulation and more government. The uncritical thinker will accept the story at face value. The critical thinker will ask why. The uncritical thinker will not. This isn't aimed at you, just the majority of hair brain Americans who watch this and never wonder.

 

my point?!? Im not an expert on toxins, so I expect my govt to make sure that all goods that I consume are REASONABLY safe for me. If what you say is indeed true, then someone will surelly hang for it. And if its only 'a little less toxic than arsenic' I should expect a LOT of people should have died from it by now. Funny, I use toothpaste on a regular basis and am still alive 

 

Well, perhaps people are dying from it as we speak, since I remember reading a study that was suggesting a connection between fluoride and Alzheimerz.

 

...Im tired of going over the same thing: roads are built by private businesses, government standards keep them from building 'sub-standard' (read:unsafe) roads. Police, a private business?!  Perhaps, you can explain how that will work.....

 

Once again, since government is a monopoly, what makes you think that government standards are the best? As there is no other competitive agency or entity we can compare the standards to, it is ipso facto coercive in nature, therefore, anti free market, and hence hampering on quality. As far as police, why can you not conceive of it as privatized? Is the idea that foreign to you? Instead of being extends of the State, police would be competitive, indeed private security, could do exactly what police do, competitively, ensuring quality. When there is a monopoly in a given institution and it is not exposed to the principles of competition, it will dumb down, corruption will increase, and it will lose quality, as is the case.

 

they are not intentionally killing innocent people....

 

I never expected a naive statement such as this from you. So the Turkish government wasn't intentional? Nor for that matter America bombing Iraqis wasn't intentional? How many innocent people have died because of governments?

 

I've had enough of this repetetive discussion, IMO at the end the government is a NECESSARY EVIL. Could have done (and did) without it in the Stone Age, but fortunatelly we no longer live in that era.

 

Why do you assume that the government is a necessary evil? Such thinking prevents us from actually questioning our own ideas and throwing self-responsibility into the gutter. What the heck, lemme just not think, and let government have its way. Of course by government, I mean a omnipotent central power ruling with coercion, which is what government is. It is important to note that government can mean many things. Family is a form of government. I am not advocating the destruction of family. Leviathan is not family, it is a minority, ruling over a majority.

 

Think of it this way. In free market economics, businessmen and employees, cannot earn an income unless they produce goods or services which can be sold on the market. The buyers' purchases are voluntary. In contrast to this, politicians, political parties, and civil servants, do not produce any good or service, nor anything that can be sold on the market. No one buys government 'goods' or 'services'. On the one hand, this implies that it is impossible to determine their value and find out whether or not this value justifies their costs. Because no one buys them, no one actually demonstrates that he considers government goods and services worth their costs, and indeed, whether or not anyone attaches any value to them at all.

 

Does this sound familiar? This was how the Soviet model was. So democracy is not different from Communism. Politicians', civil servants' salaries remain the same, whether their output satisfies consumers or not. Accordingly, as a result of the expansion of 'public' sector employment, there will be increasing laziness, carelessness, incompetence, disservice, maltreatment, waste, and even destruction – and at the same time ever more arrogance, demagogery, and lies ('we work for the public good').

[Accelerated]

Anon, I got a bunch of stuff due on Monday so I wont reply untill that time. I've had a brief read of your post and will make a couple points:

 

they are not intentionally killing innocent people....

 

I never expected a naive statement such as this from you.So the Turkish government wasn't intentional? Nor for that matter America bombing Iraqis wasn't intentional?

 

Are you meaning to say, that the US Army intentionally attacked and killed innocent civilians for absolutelly no purpose?! Im not the one to believe everything the media or government has to say, but this behaviour would be illogical, simply because it would foster (more) hatred among the Iraqis. I do believe there are some stupid people running the US government, but they arnt THAT stupid.

 

On the subject of anarchy:

 

You dont have to look far to see what anarchy can do to a country, just look at Armenia (I was there summer '03). A nominal government does exist there, but thats all it is nominal: a facade for the rest of the world (and an ugly one at that). Anyhow, to the point, do you know what happence in the absence of a government/law? Money BECOMES the law - literally. Armenia has reverted back to the Medieval Age my friend: we have a dozen chieftains (with money) running the country. Each has set-up their own little castle: complete with walls, armed guards and a territory to rule, skirmishes occur on the outskirts. Hell, if you got enough money you can join them, or better yet buy Kocharians seat, though that might require you to visit Moscow on route, just to make sure they dont object...

[Accelerated]

I should also note, Anon, I dont completelly discount where your coming from, but do require some convincing, I just need to be pointed in the right direction: a book perhaps, I am sure it will prove a worthwhile read and will get to it as soon as I finish "The Art of War"