You are quite right that it's more complicated than it seems at first. Larken has been an anarchist for 20 years, so he is deep into the philosophy, and he got that way by arguing with people until he couldn't rationalise his positions anymore. But people reach a new way of thinking in various ways. For some it happens when they learn about the hundreds of false flag attacks perpetrated by governments on their own people and labelled as terrorism, which breaks some of that blind trust. Some join the military, go to war and then experience profound empathy for the people they have to kill, who turn out to be just like them, with hopes and dreams, families and beliefs. Some, like me, spend a long time hating the idea of a government, especially as corrupt and inefficient as the one we have here in South Africa, but there seems to be no alternative, or rather we never had a chance to think outside the paradigm.

I started labeling myself an anarchist after watching Larken's video The Super Market, where he describes his time in prison and how a free market exists inside every prison where there is trade, currency and even charity and, despite constant surveillance, no privacy and strict rules expressly forbidding all those things. So if "criminals" can create a thriving and relatively efficient economy in the worst and most impossible conditions, why do we believe we can't do it in a free world? And that got me learning about free market roads, unschooling, alternative systems of health care, private security models, urban farming and lots of other things until I felt way more comfortable with the idea. So everyone has their own unique path they follow to be able to read any of Larken's stuff without freaking out and going back into "zombie mode."

I think the key in these arguments is always to make people feel as safe as you can. When you reassure them that you respect everyone's views, but that you feel yours promote more peace, more prosperity and more ingenuity and you are actually quite excited about all the SOLUTIONS to our problems that governments don't make room for, they are more likely to listen and less likely to go full zombie on you.