If you did well in school, slayed every single class subject with straight As, then the working world of STEM, becoming a CEO, or even starting your own business in law, finances, or insurance is perfect for you. But if you're reading this book, you probably ddidn't get good marks or were relieved to finally have the summer off after the last class in May or June. As soon as I started working like a dog in front of the grill at McDonald's, I discovered that the world of work is just basically high school with a higher risk of drowning in a sea of co-worker drama with little chance of promotion, and fewer chances at friendship with fellow workers or being taken seriously by supervisors when customers or clients are whiny or when other co-workers screw you over . Work has the same old power trips, but instead of teachers and principles, you have bosses, foremen, real estate agents, landlords, and cops.

When I finally left high school, a weight slowly lifted off my shoulders after turning 18. I could finally spend some time alone playing video games and producing my very first rap album. I was so happy to get a break from being told what to do after graduation. And then something happened. Phil from McDonald's on St. Mary's gave me a job even though I did poorly in the interview. I was happy to start making my own money to become financially independent and then I saw some people who still went to my old high school, who trained people like me on the job, and who were popular both in school and while helping Phil sort finances and schedule when certain workers would come in to flip burgers and assemble them. McDonald's turned out to be just more of the same, only with no spares and at some point in 2002, unwanted bills for a psychiatric assessment for ASD. The adult world's a real swift kick in the butt when it comes to freedom. Not only did I have to "run on default" while on the job, I had to put on a mask to co-workers who used to go to high school with me who still treated me like that "special kid" who was constantly picked on.

To me, hierarchy is one of the most disgusting components of the status quo. It's why everyone so obsessed with telling us what to do and who's in charge. It's like the world's worst pyramid scheme where everyone's "fighting" to be closer to the top, while "being friends," "building a network," and still pushing each other around. And we're stuck doing this because we've been raised from a young age to take orders from anyone who's got a fancy title or more money than us. I had a crush on a girl named Patty while she was in high school. I didn't know she worked as a manager at McDonald's when I was hired. The moment we worked our first shift together and she kept on correcting me when I made mistakes, was the shift that caused my feelings to completely disappear. This hierarchy is why a ton of awful things happen in society: racism, sexism, refusing to believe in climate change and environmental decay while driving cars and littering in the park; you name it, it's hierarchy.

I never liked rules. And it's not just because of how constraining and legalistic they are. Because I'm autistic, I had to figure out how to live a certain way that was different in order for me to process the world around me properly as well as to preserve my mental and physical health. Maybe that's why I'm starting to become more of an anarchist sometimes, not in a 'smash everything' kind of way, but just doing certain things without constantly needing someone else's stamp of approval. It's probably why I enjoy places like raves and hackerspaces where there are people with different dress codes, different genders, and different ways of seeing technology and the world, yet we all bring something to the party. We either drink and dance to dark techno or house music, we get into groups and compete playing video games, Dungeons and Dragons, or chess, or just program random things and create art without any rules or bosses telling us what to do outside of managing funding and basic decorum to keep the space going. That's the kind of anarchy I'm talking about here - just good vibes, being helpful, and keeing each other happy in a dark world.

I know for a fact that deep down we all want to live out our own lives and do their own thing without someone else's boot on our necks. That's kind of what anarchism is all about in a nutshell. It's not about burning down buildings or not having any rules or giving into chaos and "anarchy" (although sometimes that is entertaining). Living a good life is about questioning why we put up with so uneeded misery and injustice from people who say they know how we should suffer in life better than we do. It's about realizing that we can actually live a full fruitful life without someone bossing us around all the time.

Is it all just a pipe dream? Can we really live without bosses, cops, and governments? When one does research, history gives some good examples of societies that didn't put hierarchy on a pedastol and they still managed to have an economy, good education, and basic resources with reasonable costs. I've always found when I'm not being told what to do, when I'm not being micro-managed in a call centre, when I don't have a to-do list, I'm ten times more productive. And when I'm more productive and don't have to be put under a microscope, I do a little better than usual in social situations, especially when I travel outside Winnipeg or Brandon. But life is unfortunately all about playing 'King of the Hill' and playing with power (in a non-Nintendo kind of way) leads to things going off the rails.

If you're reading this and you're into the idea of calling the shots in your own life and not letting anyone else tell you who you are or what you should be doing, maybe it's time to see how a new world can be built with the mindset of today's anarchism. Somedays I do want to just tear it all down, but again, anarchism is about building something better, it's about slowly and passionately constructing a world that actually works for everyone. Who knows? Perhaps if we start small, like not letting our jobs or landlords or the government run our lives, we can create up to something bigger, like a society where everyone's got a voice and everyone's treated like they matter. It's a big ask, but if we don't aim for the horizon miles away, we won't move an inche.

So, let's stop seeing anarchism as some wild political theory like communism or Marxism, and see it as a way to live our lives without letting anyone else control us. It's possible for us to start looking at the world and saying, "You know what? Maybe we don't need all these power-hungry billionaires telling us what to do. Maybe we can sort this out ourselves and quit simping around." And if you're in a situation like me where you can't change the world, the best place to start is by not letting anyone tell us we're not good enough, or that we don't deserve happiness, or that our lives aren't worth living unless we're climbing the corporate ladder or following all the 'right' rules. It's not virtue signalling when it's telling the truth.

When I used to go to church, my old pastor once said that "we all have an inner socialist" but I think, we all are anarchists at heart in a way. If a good portion of people reading this get it, we don't need to put much effort into fighting the power, one small step at a time, until something finally changes; whether it's getting a basic income with profit as a side effect or having a three day work week. Anarchy, not communism or socialism or Marxism, is about building a society where everyone's happy and no one's got to break their backs just to survive.

Morality is an Illusion

Sometimes, my wife lets me read some of her psychology papers that she's using for study at University of Winnipeg. One of her papers discussed how teenagers rebel against their parents. Rebellion starts when teens accuse parents of double standards their parents taught them, like being kind, loving your neighbor as yourself, and being a good citizen. At that point, these teens haven't really figured out who they are or what they believe in, but they're still playing by their parents' rules, just pointing out the hypocrisy. It's only later when they start questioning everything that they become who they want to be.

During the pandemic as a Christian, I came to a place before becoming agnostic where I actually asked where right and wrong come from. So when we say it's wrong to have pets or rage at cat and dog owners in comment sections for filming pets to get likes and comments on social media without feeding them, I wonder if we're just metaphorically using the same moral playbook the system has given to us, but playing a different game? Maybe we're not actually questioning rules and morality in the game itself, just the moves we make in response to morals and rules.

I used to believe that everyone knows right from wrong. I used to think that just telling Christians to stop supporting Donald Trump, stop being a racist, and stop blaming poor and disabled people for their circumstances would actually wake people up and make them more accountable to what Jesus or the bible says. I was wrong. I was very very wrong.

I had to figure out that right and wrong aren't like math equations that are the same for everyone. Morals are more like faith (or to Biblically put it, evidence of the "things unseen"). I figured out that believing in moral law or enlightenment is just like believing that the earth was created in seven literal days. Besides Christians thinking autistic people are demon-posessed, the idea that good and evil are just out there in the universe like gravity just didn't seem logical to me. These two things, along with mom screaming at my wife and I to have children or we're disobeying God, got me to quit believing in evangelical Christianity and going to church.

When people talk about universal moral truths or when conservatives talk about "common sense," I feel like those people are trying to sell us something. And I certainly fell for that sales pitch from Pastor Danny or Pastor Leon while attending Springs Church. "You've got to believe in these moral laws," they say, "or else chaos will reign and you'll go to hell!" But if we have to believe in these laws by faith and not by sight, why should we care about them? It's like saying Ashura is the reason we shouldn't litter — if Ashura isn't real or just a totem poll, then littering is okay, right? That's the kind of logic that just didn't add up the more I thought about it.

Am I saying we should just do whatever we want? Should we go out and assasinate a politician we don't like, go to Walmart and steal food and clothes, squat in an apartment, or be selfish jerks? Absolutely not at all. What I'm saying is that a large part of conforming to the system is embracing the idea that there's some moral rulebook out there that everyone has to follow (doesn't matter if we're talking about the Bible, the US Constitution, The Charter of Rights and Freedoms, or the laws of whatever country we live in).

I came to the conclusion that our evolving values help us individually determine what's right and wrong over time. We all have to figure out what we value and stick to those values, because the values we have are what will help us be more fair and just much better than written or moral law ever could. And many times, those values will be different from our friends and families or from what we were brought up with. I don't even have the same values or priorities as my wife. Determining what you value should be like making your very own exclusive playlist on Spotify with lots of variety, except with morals and priorities instead. Sure, part of suffering in life is navigating value or moral differences when people disagree, but at least we're being who we really are as long as we don't physically hurt or kill eachother.

I need to also note that in history, the idea of moral law (even to regulate other people's spirituality) has been used to justify wars, slavery, Jim Crow, Residential Schools, purity culture, ending Roe V Wade, and even the use of tariffs and "buying Canadian." We're all fighting over whose ruler is the coolest while whose imaginary friend is cooler. You'd think by living in a democratic society we'd have moved past that by now. Nope. This is the suffering we get from trying to make sense of the world while living our lives without injuring our fellow people too much. Maybe it's about time we start making our own decisions about what's good and what's bad, based on what feels right to us, not on ancient set of rules, random podcasts, legacy journalism, pastors, or celebrities that nobody can agree on anymore.

So let's just love and respect each other because we want to, not because this whole moral law thing tells us to. The reason people are sharing memes that say "no one is born racist" or "no one is born a fascist" is because becoming a murderous psychopath is taught by evil murderous psychopaths who became evil from trying to survive in the first place. We were not born in sin. The most evil thing that murderous psychopaths can teach is that doing good things for one's personal survival (rather than harming others) is actually the most evil thing to do because they want to gaslight or control the people beneath them.

Where do these evil people come from? Where does the need to control others come from? It doesn't matter and that's why I'm an agnostic. It doesn't matter because what matters is that we all deeply believe that we don't need some invisible moral police watching us. We all subconciously think on some level that we can still be good people without conforming to the status quo. We can still be friendly and fight for what we think is right without getting all preachy about it or telling those who are outside to do the Romans 10:9 thing. If we really are about power to the people, then even the rules have to be ours. And who knows, maybe without all the fighting over who's got the one true set of moral laws, we'll actually start making a difference.