Thanks! Yeah, they don’t handle explanations well. LOL.

I always liked this definition from “The Anarchists Tool Chest” (free PDF download):

https://lostartpress.com/products/the-anarchists-tool-chest

"Anarchy from a Woodworker’s Perspective

I hesitated to use the word “anarchy” in the title of this book because it means so many bad things to so many good people. In my high school, the “anarchists” wore “Bad Brains” leather jackets, black make-up (that was the boys) and had questionable hygiene.

They weren’t anarchists. They called themselves anarchists, but they knew as much about anarchism as they did about flossing.

Anarchy is the precise and correct word for my situation. And if you’ll bear with me, I think you’ll understand why a boring guy from the Mid-west who likes blue jeans and button-down shirts is a quiet anarchist.

For me, it’s quickest to explain what anarchy isn’t. It’s not about violence, the overthrow of governments, the dismantling of corporations or even the smoking of a mild hallucinogen made from boiling banana peels (actually, I tried this. I don’t recommend it or the searing headache it brings). Instead, anarchism is the realization that all large institutions – governments, corporations, churches – have divided up the tasks we do in our jobs to the point where these institutions do wasteful, dehuman-izing and stupid things.

Eunice Minette Schuster states in the book “Native American Anarchism” that American aesthetic anarchy is “the isolation of the individual – his right to his own tools, his mind, his body, and to the products of his labor.”

It’s a desire to work for yourself and to run in social and economic circles made up of other individual artisans.

Hey, that’s me. Heck, I have to believe that Schuster’s description applies to most woodworkers I know. We generally labor alone, producing objects that are the result of just our tools, our minds and our hands. These objects are a slap in the face of the cheap, mass-manufactured termite-diarrhea furniture in the discount stores. And we’re proud of the fact that our furniture is better than the stuff force-fed to the masses.

Though woodworking might seem a traditional, old-time skill, it is rare and radical stuff in this age."