Hello,
My name is Lucas, i'm a 19 years old brazilian self-taught filmmaker/animator/motion grapher/professional AV geek, raised by a single mother, went to a leftist government school and this is how against all the odds i grew up to be an ancap, because i think my perspective is at least interesting and we all can learn a lot and learn quicker with each other if we discuss it together
1. The scenario
If you know how Brazil or South America in general works you can skip this section altogether, if on the contrary you have no ideia of how things work around here than please bear with me.
People here in Brazil and in our neighbouring countries have overall a pretty colectivist mindset, they are mostly leftist, or right winged conservatives/nationalists, we also have some "left-anarchists" (which i like to call anarcho-statists...those are some funny folks) crawling out of universities, and speaking of universities, you can't step into any university without receiving a red blast of leftist propaganda, it's a country who has an official communist party (PCdoB), the "woker/laborer class cause party" and the "workers party" who has been in power for about three election cycles (we have four year election cycles), since 2003, since i was a little kid there are literal waving red flags in power and every single news source and intelectual thinking on universities are full of leftist propaganda, radical feminism the "anti racists" and other dumb equalitarian movements (which are basically colectivists saying they hate the other deviant forms of collectivism), and all the oposition to the left are other leftists with suits using different colors, our government also openly endorsed and sponsored Cuba and other leftist countries, even Venezuela where the keynezian socialist shit is hitting the fan and spreading the disgusting effects all over the place
Recently our president has been impeached (by fully constitutional means) and all the left minions went shouting it was a coup and they didin't recognize or respect the new govermment (good, me neither, if you follow the logic you also don't respect democracy, which was a coup on the empire, that was another coup...you got the idea). This is the scenario in which i live and grew up, 70% of taxes, you work an average of 5 months to pay all your taxes, there are stupid heavy regulations, goddammit we can even have the potential to be the new Greece or the new Argentina even a new Venezuela isn't that exciting ?
2. How i became an anarchist ?
To an extent, i believe we are all born anarchists and the state tries as soon as possible to shove in our heads that it has always been there and that it's natural, virtuous and necessary because all human beings are bad and "selfish", so naturally we would need another small group of totally non-selfish human beings pointing their guns to our heads and telling us how to behave, what to do, controlling the market and everything, because this should work, right ? Hell no, get these violent babysitters with guns out of my property.
Well, i grew up alone, my parents had a divorce when i was about 7 years old, and even before that my father wasn't very present, when i was 6 my parents would leave me home alone with my video games to work or study, my father was constantly lying to my mother, and they were both very young, my mother was 20 year old when she got pregnant and my father was 5 years older than her, i've always had this curiosity and questioned just about everything around me, my parents were very religious when i was young i didn't understood why that so called god wouldn't let me rent and watch harry potter on VHS, why the devil would make such a fun movie and why it was so wrong, i was always bad at sports, didnt had many friends, and i was not a peoples person, i always tried to understand other people but always felt like they didn't made much sense and sometimes were plain idiots, i even had that small notepad were i took notes of how people behaved to understand then and maybe try to fit better when i was arround 12 years old.
It didn't took me much time to see that something was very wrong with the world around me, i remember to this day, that i was around 9 or 10 years old, and was watching the news with my mother on dinner time, the news about the raise on minimal wage came up and she started celebrating, i asked her "hey mon, where is your boss gonna get that additional money to pay everyone ? If everyone has to pay more to the employees wouldnt this just raise the price on everything and just end on the same place it started ?" she replied that she didin't knew and that her boss should be rich and etc and i was like "huh...sounds good, if he really has a lot of money there should be no problem on giving a little more to everyone', from this point i started developing a marxist thought and go on the wrong direction, my mother was always saying things like "why don't they print a lot of money and pay the national debt ? They should be able to do it" obviously i didnt knew there was an austrian school of economics, and i only heard of inflation on the tv news and barely knew what it meant, but i alway tought that something was wrong with it all. My mother even dated this asian guy that was affiliated to PSOL "Socialism and liberty party" or "partido socialismo e liberdade" in portuguese and i started sympathizing with the idea and starting to think that the problem was the evil greedy capitalists and started to develop pretty contradictory values in my head
On my teenage years (that you could say that i’m still living) i was a pretty sad boy, i havent had any girlfriends, had a weird musical taste that almost no one liked, had a few friends, i didnt really fit anywhere, as a result of being raised by a single mother i was really insecure and never took any initiative because, you know mothers tend to be overly protective and without a masculine presence to kinda break this protection loop or give “man advice” you grow up with some missing pieces, i had pretty decent grades, loved philosophy, i even wanted to be a teacher at some point, that lasted until the end of my school years, i was really depressed i was starting to smoke weed and get into drugs and take depression medication (what a fucking lovely combination) i was literally going crazy, there was all this leftist contradiction in my head, all my deceptions, i didnt liked my new step-father and hated being home, i would only play video games or do my first youtube videos and edit all day long as an escape, there was this day on a history class where my leftist teacher was talking about govermment system, she divided it into “evil greedy dumb capitalism”, “socialism” “comunism” and “anarchism”, when she talked about anarchism she said “there are also this people that say we dont need govermment…” than it clicked in my head “wait, why do we need a govermment, we can do stuff without a govermment” than she started talking about all the left anarchism crap that didnt made any sense and sounded a lot like democracy and it turned me off a little bit. but the tought stayed deep in my head for a lot of time.
After school i was just a sad fuck, i was applying to some universities and studying for the tests, smoking more and more weed, my mother discovered it we had a lot of family fights i had to work and live with my father (who really is a better person nowadays, we’re not very close but we don’t have any problems), i was literally going insane when a found some conservative right winged guys on youtube talking about the free market and than later a brazillian libertarian (Raphael lima) that i thought had some pretty interesting ideas and he was also talking about philosophy and anarchy, i thought it was a little crazy but started considerating it. i started reading ayn rand’s “virtue of selfishness” and my head started getting into place, i stopped with the drugs because i realized it was a contradiction to the value of life and rationality. i’ve read “anatomy of the state” from rothbard than read a lot of articles on the mises institute watched some rothbard speechs, hoppe praxeology lessons on youtube read the six lessons by mises, a lot of introductory books on austrian economics, machinery of liberty from friedman some Stefan Molyneux podcasts, it all started making sense, i started thinking about the initiation of force, the NAP discovered how the state was immoral and inneficient, and sometimes i would just read a books introduction and start thinking for myself and when i would read the rest or watch the authors or other libertarians talking about it i just felt in an echo chamber i came to the same conclusions by myself, it was fun, i was thrilled again, i loved that stuff, i was also in college, started an internship on a multinational as a video editor, i dropped the internship and an now working as a freelancer with a pretty chill irish guy and it’s turning out really well, i’ve been happy with all of it for some time now, i can pretty much win any argument with leftists with just the austrian theory of value and capital (debates with leftists are pretty much like beating a dead horse).
And here i am to share with you my perspectives, debate and probably learn quicker discussing with you than by trying to shove human action and ethics of liberty on my head alone in my room. this is who i am, this is how i became an anarchist and i hope you liked reading it, maybe next time we can take a swing on some collectivists contradictions, i dont know, sorry for my clumsy Latino english, fell free to correct my grammar point any mistakes at all and criticize everything i’ve said, have a good day and untill the next time
Best regards,
Lucas