
Philosophy
We have a vision for how we believe society should work. This includes meaningful community, voluntary interaction, moral behavior, mutual assistance, natural practices, and other positive aspects of a thriving society.
However, our modern culture is far from these ideals and corruption can be found in every mainstream facet. This ranges from political to education to health to religion and beyond. Instead of fixating on these issues, we prefer to take action. When assessing how to deal with a corrupt system, an immoral culture, or some other societal issue, there are many strategies one could employ.
- Some choose to “fight” the system through protests, sabotage, rebellion, etc.
- Some choose to “join” the system with hopes of changing it from the inside through reform.
- Some choose to do “nothing” and relegate themselves to research, discussion, complaining, and armchair philosophy.
We choose none of these common approaches but rather take the parallel society strategy. While there can be practical reasons to fight or reform or stand aside, we believe there are moral issues with these stances as well as issues of effectiveness. Instead of taking on the leviathan head on, we are building our own systems and operating as much in the parallel society as reasonably possible. This is the strategy of the original Church under the Roman Empire. It was the method used by Vaclav Benda, Vaclav Havel, and others with Charter 77 under the communist Soviet Union. It is the approach used today by many agorists, libertarians, integrated communities, and other like minded groups.
The system is broken. We aim to build something better. While the vast majority of people will choose to continue along in the current milieu or advocate for change within that paradigm, we desire to provide another option for those few who want to operate outside of those systems.
The Agora Food Club is modeled after the original Church and takes the same general approach with its operations. The attempt is to avoid the line between submission and support as much as possible. We submit to authorities over us as principle and morality allow but at the same time we don’t support the corrupt systems we find ourselves in. We do nothing illegal or outright defiant. However, we also recognize the corrupt systems and culture we live in. We do our best to create alternative options and operate within these alternative parallel systems. As with the original Church, outreach and ministries are not strictly for church members nor are they reserved strictly for Christians. They are for all in the community for the betterment of society, the acknowledgement of the value of all life, and to fulfil the call for Christians to be salt and light in a decaying world full of darkness.