Anarchy

In August 2022, Netflix released a documentary unveiling the rock festival disaster known as Woodstock ‘99. Envisioned as a sequel to the Woodstock extravaganza that took place in 1969, this updated version was an attempt to recapture the original rebel spirit of counter-culture vibes, liberated consciousness, unbounded freedom, and the dreamer’s delirium that comes with naïveté. The documentary was called Trainwreck but some media outlets considered a more appropriate title was Clusterf**k.

An estimated 400,000 people attended the event in Rome, New York that featured over 100 bands and performers. The venue was the grounds of a former Air Force base that had more asphalt than grass and almost no trees. With July temperatures approaching 100˚ the environmental challenges facing the festival quickly overran logistical preparations relating to water and waste. Attendees were prohibited from bringing any food or beverages into the site and thus were forced to purchase water that sold for $4 a bottle, the equivalent of $7 today. Bags of ice sold for $15 onsite while the same bag in downtown Rome sold for $1.40.

Portable toilets, showers with no drains, and water fountains were all located in the same general vicinity. By the end of the first day runoff from the showers mixed with the overflow from the porta-johns and severed water lines to create raw sewage mud pits that became playgrounds. This scene would only get worse as the festival dragged on.

Alcohol was available for purchase from onsite vendors. Illegal drugs were easily obtained. Nudity was commonplace. Public sex was casual. By day two festival-goers were varied combinations of hot, hungry, drunk, drugged, pissed, and pumped. The amalgamated physical and psychological orientation of this mass of humanity would deteriorate rapidly by the end of the third day.

At the close of the last musical act, tens of thousands of candles that had been distributed earlier were lit and waved in the air as some kind of demonstration of peace and solidarity. Yet no sooner had they been lit when a small bonfire emerged along the back of the mainstage plaza. Quickly other bonfires were kindled, fueled by empty plastic water bottles and pieces of plywood torn from the perimeter peace wall fencing. At least a dozen bonfires were started across the grounds each attended by hundreds of dancers and agitators. Eventually the fires spread to engulf several tractor trailers and multiple vendor tents. Sound and control towers were toppled. Gang rapes occurred. Looting was widespread. ATM machines were vandalized. Woodstock ‘99 became a war zone.

On Monday morning the catastrophe the festival had become was evident. The putrid-smelling sludge, the massive amount of trash, the burned-out vehicles, the damaged vendor booths, and the scorched asphalt and ash heaps all pointed to an appalling collapse of order. Over the course of just three days, anything resembling civilization had disappeared leaving humanoids acting like rabid animals. Only with the arrival of hundreds of New York state police dressed in riot gear was the chaos suppressed.

As I watched this orgasm of lawlessness progress I couldn’t help but think of the book Lord of the Flies and the breakdown of humanity when all order is overthrown. In the absence of restraint, anarchy has an appeal that attracts the worst kind of antagonistic selfishness where every man becomes a law unto himself. In this total subversion of authority and control, the renegade is the hero and rebellion the goal.

I also wondered what would have happened if Woodstock ‘99 had simply kept on going for several more days or even weeks. If three days of unhindered self-expression created the conditions for the complete demise of customary social constructs, what could be the outcome if that moral freefall had continued unabated? I suspect the level of violence would have increased dramatically resulting in far more rapes, assaults, and even murders. The descent into ever-darker depravity might be cause for greater celebration and even ecstasy.

Fresh off the graphic, full-frontal onslaught Trainwreck afforded, I dove into the six-part HBO docuseries called The Anarchists. Set in idyllic Acapulco, Mexico, the series tells the story of a small group of American contrarians devoted to the idea that government is an evil infringement on personal freedom and ought to be abolished. They launch a conference called Anarchapulco that attracts a small crowd the first year but grows significantly in subsequent years. The gathering becomes so consequential that even Ron Paul shows up to speak.

Against the backdrop of all this blathering about an autonomous utopia actualizing in the future, the lives of the featured players are impacted by the annoyances and hardships common for people who are supremely self-focused. A principal organizer gets pushed out and succumbs to depression, alcoholism, and death. A young man is murdered, presumably by the cartel, because it was rumored he was dealing drugs. His girlfriend can’t go to the local police because she is a fugitive from the United States and fears extradition. A crazed, loose-cannon kind of man foments all kinds of discord and eventually takes his own life. For these anarchists and those like them a world without law is a Shangri-La that would never contain the kind of chaos universally associated with lawlessness – or anarchy.

To be fair, there is a polarity with anarchy and it must be addressed. On one end is the state of mayhem that comes from the absence of civil authorities who can constrain human behavior. On the other end is the state of voluntary union and cooperation that exists without political supervision. The anarchists at Anarchapulco are not opposed to order. They just want that order to be self-imposed and directed without the superintendence of institutionalized controls.

Whether we like it or not, we live in a universe governed by law. The physical cosmos is controlled by the law of cause and effect. The animate creation is regulated by the law of instinct. The moral world is directed by the laws of right and wrong. As moral governor of all created reality, God has an obligation to promulgate truth and uphold justice for all moral beings, the living and the dead.

Imagine what God must do with a man who lives in a Woodstock of his own making that never ends for his entire life. He is a man who refuses to submit to any moral authority other than his own will, living in a perpetual state of lawlessness. His mind is utterly at war with objective standards of right and wrong, disregarding the moral requirements of truth while reveling in the continuous violation of his conscience. While he’s alive on earth he would be subject to laws that would restrain his behavior even to the extent of lifelong incarceration. When such a man dies a similar option to prison exists and it is called hell.

This is the irony of law and liberty. We are born into a world given by God to the human race to do with it as our freedom and appetites might decide. If we follow fundamental precepts of living rightly gleaned from conscience and revelation, then we enjoy a measure of inner spiritual liberty that can affect the degree to which our lives require the influence of external regulation of law and government. Yet, when the human will inclines increasingly to the insanity of selfishness and repulses divine overtures toward moral rectitude, internal liberty degrades to a state of enslavement and external regulation intensifies to curb licentiousness. Bliss without law is the promise of anarchy, but the opposite is true. Without law there cannot be liberty.

Modern hedonism thinks otherwise, of course. Those at Woodstock ‘99 and Anarchapulco believe absolute freedom is the ultimate principle against which there should be no law because its goal is the highest possible happiness of every human being. Why would anyone or any government want to limit happiness? Why should riot-equipped New York state police intervene at a rock concert and shut down a bacchanalia of individualism and pleasure? The police weren’t killjoys dispatched by evil statists to suppress some kind of projection of a global revolution moving toward libertarian nirvana. The police were mobilized to remind everyone that when law disintegrates to anarchy, the only real outcome is hellish misery.