Words Poorly Used #2 — Anarchy

I’m wondering if there is another word that is so difficult to explain so that those who abuse it will stop.  Like “chaos,” “anarchy” is misused in the media, by politicians, and in the vernacular.  I still get an image (vaguely tied in with Natasha Fatale and Boris Badinoff) of guys in black raincoats with little round bombs with sparkling fuses when I hear either word.  Let’s try Occam’s Razor, so the simplest idea that covers anarchy has the best chance of being correct, by saying that anarchy is not a thing — it is the absence of artificial rules.  Most people have a big problem understanding something other than what is.  We are up to our gunwales in artificial rules therefore is is nearly impossible to see a world without artificial rules.  The distinction between artificial rules and natural causality is critical.  People make artificial rules, most often vainly, to alter the flow of natural causality.  If we were to refrain from such rulemongering, there would be a space and time in which natural cause-and-effect established the quality of our lives.  We might call that anarchy but there would be no particular reason for doing so.

Kilgore