They [anarchists] spring from a single seed, no matter the flowering of their ideas. The seed is liberty. And that is all it is. It is not a socialist seed. It is not a capitalist seed. It is not a mystical seed. It is not a determinist seed. It is simply a statement. We can be free. After that itβs all choice and chance.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes that the core of anarchism is the concept of freedom, independent of other ideological frameworks.
In this quote, Karl Hess argues that anarchists are united by a fundamental belief in liberty, which he describes as the 'seed' from which their ideas grow. He asserts that this seed is not tied to socialism, capitalism, or any other ideology, but rather serves as a straightforward declaration of the human capacity for freedom. After establishing this idea, he implies that the choices individuals make and the outcomes that follow are based on personal decisions and random events.
In practice
In a discussion about political ideologies, you might quote Hess to emphasize the importance of individual liberty.
It is curious to note that when for reasons of conscience, people refuse to kill, they are often exempted from active military duty. But there are no exemptions for people who, for reasons of conscience, refuse to financially support the bureaucracy that actually does the killing. Apparently, the state takes money more seriously than life.
We have the illusion of freedom only because so few ever try to exercise it. Try it sometime. Try to save your home from the highway crowd, or to work a trade without the approval of the goons, or to open a little business without a permit, or to grow a crop without a quota, or to educate your child the way you want to, or to not have a child. We all have the freedom of a balloon floating in a pin factory.
The revolution occurs when the victims cease to cooperate.
I am neither a sociologist nor a politician. All I can do is imagine for myself what the future will be like.
There's such divinity doth hedge a king _x000D_ That treason can but peep to what it would.
We know one another. This is the present. There is no past and no future. Here I am washing my hands, and the cracked mirror shows me to myself, suspended as it were, in time; this is me, this moment will not pass.
Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.
Me this uncharted freedom tires; I feel the weight of chance desires, My hopes no more must change their name, I long for a repose that ever is the same.
The gospel of the Savior is not simply about avoiding bad in our lives; it also is essentially about doing and becoming good. And the Atonement provides help for us to overcome and avoid bad and to do and become good. Help from the Savior is available for the entire journey of mortality - from bad to good to better and to change our very nature.
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