michael adams wrote
Rod Speed wrote
michael adams wrote
Roger Hayter wrote

Anarchy doesn't mean no organisation and no rules; it just means they
are collaborative rather than dictated. But there must be a way of
dealing with psychopaths, anarchy is not the same as pacifism.

In Western culture, certainly since the decline of religion one
of its most dominant characteristics has been a tendency for
people to disagree or argue about almost everything.

They always did, even before the decline of religions,
most obviously about which was the only true religion.

Which could get you burned at the stake.

And which produced most of the important wars up until about
the Boer War, tho is arguable with the Napoleonic wars.

The only pity is that you never lived 600 years ago
so as to be able to shoot your mouth off and put your belief in such a
ludicrous notion to the test.

Even you should be able to manage better than that pathetic effort.

Obviously not.

Without this scope for and positive encouragemnt of disgreement its
doubtful for instance if there would have been much scientific or
technological progress at all.

That’s very arguable.

Only if you've never heard of Galileo.

He was in fact a very small part of the
total scientific or technological progress

In fact much of the understanding of what
is involved in plant breeding etc was done
by some of the religious like Mendel with
no opposition by the roman catholic church.

Galileo's problem was that what he proved
conflicted with that the book of fairy storys
had proclaimed and he almost got burnt at
the stake for insisting on what actually happens.

There was also chap called Bruno who actually got burned at the stake
solely on account of some inconvenient cosmological speculations.

Again, only a tiny part of total scientific or technological progress

Never mind progess, at least as some people would term it, in the arts.

Ditto.

Or the Renaissance.

That didn’t happen because of a tendency for
people to disagree or argue about almost everything.

This also makes collaboration between individuals very problematic as
there is no agrred mechanism whereby the peoples wishes can be made
known, never mind implemented in any way.

The anglo saxons were in fact quite democratic.

Much more than those unspeakable Normans.

Dear me the good old "Norman Yoke".

Nope, and nothing even remotely like
it. And it is actually cheap you too.

As a schoolboy Michael Wood the popular historian entered an essay
competition choosing the Norman Yoke
as his topic. Only for it to be pointed out to him later that the judges
were chaired by Field Marshal Montgomery as good as Norman as you could
expect to find anywhere.

Irrelevant to whether the anglo saxons were
much more democratic than the normans.