I come to anarchism from two directions: an academic study of the classic literature, and, much more important, experience on the ground among people in various societies, social and political arrangements, political persuasions and environmental activism.
I'm a bit of an anomaly these days, eschewing the black bandana, the clenched fist, the emblazoned circle-A. My anarchism is much more about "freedom to" rather than "freedom from." I concentrate on community, the interrelationships among people living in place, discovering reinhabitory strategies, muddling through to a social relationship that allows maximum personal freedom and limits opportunities for the concentration of political and economic power to coerce and oppress others.
I take the long view, the realization that some time soon, in the next 50 to 100 years, this society, this destructive megamachine, will inevitably collapse as we reach the end of the Age of Oil. The imperialist government of the United States will ultimately fail, as it is now constituted as an industrial corporate oligarchy. The people will be left to their own resources, as government becomes more and more concerned with maintaining a failing economy based on industrial capitalist expansion in a world of finite resources.
So we might as well start now, turn our backs on the ruling elite,withdraw our support from centralized rule, build a local, truly sustainable economy and polis. Let's forget about the "global economy" for while, say a thousand years or so, just for the hell of it, and live like the animals we are, in close, intimate relationship with the land, our true home. Lets reinhabit this land, grow our own food, make our clothes, build our houses of materials in the local roundabout, thus firmly cementing our connection to the land that sustains us.
After a few hundred years of this, we might just come to like it, once the distractions of modern technocratic society are but a distant unpleasant memory. We'll build our own mythology, stories of living in harmony with the land, as one of many species making up the fervent biodiversity of this whirling mud ball. We'll mine the mineral and metal dumps thoughtfully provided for us by our ancestors, and craft a soft technology that provides the small bit of energy we need where we need to use it.
This will require of course a reduction in the sheer numbers of human beings currently afflicting the land. The next twenty-five years or so will do much to take care of this, as our governments struggle to keep their collective heads above water, as what we optimistically refer to as "civilization" drags them under. Wars, famine and disease, reduction in human fertility as a result of widespread pesticide use, disruption of existing social systems, plus a small but significant continuing institutionalized population control program coupled with increased education and elevated social status for women, will all contribute to a general reduction in population growth, and even, inevitably, decline. It's hard but it's fair.
I'm an optimist about the future, as pessimistic and cynical as I am about the present. Mother nature always bats last. Though humans are capable of much damage in our present incarnation, inevitably, unavoidably, as is right and proper, we will learn to take our place in the grand biological scheme of things, or follow the dinosaur and the dodo into evolutionary obscurity. Either way, life will continue, with or without us.
It would be nice to think of humans living the "Ecotopian Solution" in the Epilogue of R. Crumb's "Short History of America."