“I’ve got more knowledge in my left testicle than you’ve got in your whole brain.”
Oh Gawds, the arrogance is over nine thousand!
The title quote from a right-libertarian redditor named “Libertarian Atheist” who fancies themselves as some kind of anarchist. They got a bit upset that I declined to include /r/agorism in the confederation of anarchist reddits and apparently tried to educate me on their personal ideology. The discussion soon after degraded, until they said this particular sentence, and I just had to bow out. What more can you say to that, that is not said by itself.
For posterity, I’m going to quote in full their latest reply. It’s that amazing.
You mistake arrogance with intelligence, knowledge, and an ability to convey ideas in an effective manner. “Arrogance” is a term dumb people with false ideas and impressions use to describe other people with better ideas. A smart man with false ideas and impressions who comes across another person with better ideas will not call that person “arrogant,” he will try to better understand what the other man is saying and be on the ready to throw out his own follies. What you laughably call a “combin[ing]” of “ideologies” is not so, it is the end result of years of study and reading, throwing out weak ideas (like “gift economy”) and championing the strongest. This is what I have been doing all my life and it does not bother me in the least that you (or anyone else, anarchist or otherwise) can’t understand. Luckily opinions are not measured by how many people “take [it] seriously” (if that were the case Christian and Muslim opinions would be the best) and a man seeking the best opinions does not care who “takes [him] seriously”, what matters is reaching as close an approximation of the truth as is humanly possible.
The funniest part is where you claim to be able to teach me anything. I’ve got more knowledge in my left testicle than you’ve got in your whole brain. You’re barely fit to teach a dog. You deign to reply to me? What a laugh! This back in forth with you is the greatest waste of my time this year so far. . . we’ve got quite a bit to go but you’re in a very high running at this point.
I just love that they also italicized the “me”, making that phrase totally sound like Invader Zim. Adorable!
That's just golden. Give this guy an Ayn Rand seal of approval – he established himself as a paragon of humanity and a pioneer of philosophy, even giving a shoutout to his heroic nuts while at it! Truly an anarchist rolemodel for years to come.
Just out of curiosity, why wasn't /r/agorism included? Does the ideology not meet the qualifications of tr00 anarchism, or are the denizens of that subreddit just ancap trolls (like this douche) who pick fights with left-anarchists out of ignorance? At least on a practical level, agorists are doing more revolutionary things than I expected – their participation in broader anarchist discourse might be subsatisfactory, though.
Well, I am not convinced that Agorism is revolutionary at all. Except the fact that most agorists I've seen are simply some strain of "Anarcho"-Capitalist (or at the very least, support private property and the allow for wage labout), Agorism itself if based on the idea that Black Markets can destabilize a society enough to topple the state. However I've seen no reason to not expect anyone most successful in the black market to start colluding with the state in order to strengthen their market share.
Well, certainly where there are black markets there are protection rackets. And few if any operators operating independently of seriously organized crime, which is seriously big business. Where there are black markets there are usually addictions, and addictions invite the "Enter the Dragon" type business models based on extreme exploitation. Agorist.info seems to think that a black market in bread is appropriate. I suppose it's an act of disobedience, and perhaps participation in black markets can serve as training in "security culture," but black market norms definitely don't play to my strong suits. Definitely not my idea of how the world should work.
Also, some say the CIA operates in the black market. Would make sense. How can expenses be kept off the books w/o laundering money?
Dammit, you took the words right out of my mouth. The number of times this douche said, "a man" instead of somebody or someone made me think he had been possessed by Rand's ghost. Add the "left testicle" comment, and the d00d is clearly not confident about his masculinity.
Must be one of the "men of ability."