Category: Uncategorized

Across the political spectrum, there seems to remain only a single shared belief: the government is the enemy.

Center-right ideology claims to want the smallest possible government, maximizing individual liberty at the expense of social safety. Center-left ideology claims to want a robust government that protects and provides for people, but rejects every aspect of the existing system and has failed to reform even a fraction of it to match their vision (In the United States, at least. Many other countries seem to have made decent progress). Centrists are statists only because they have a naive and incomplete understanding of the world.

Of course, far-right ideology is also statist in its authoritarianism, and far-left ideology is ultimately anarchist and seeks to eliminate the state completely. Real political ideology is not a line or a horseshoe or even a compass, but generalizations about left-wing or right-wing dominate the debate. Such is the messy reality of a system that has been reduced to a two-party us-versus-them duopoly by politicians and mainstream media.

The point is that virtually everyone agrees that the system is broken, although the solution to the problem differs drastically. The only people that are satisfied with the current system are those that are served by the state: the wealthy, and those that wield the power of the state itself.

By most historians’ accounts, the state was established to protect property rights. Those that accumulated great resources or wealth– usually through exploitation or violence– established a system that gave a veneer of legitimacy to their conquest and subjugation of the less fortunate. Whether the state took the form of kings, emperors, democracies, or republics, it has always been a tool of the powerful to preserve their power and wealth.

With the rise of modern “liberal democracy,” the elite learned that it could give people the illusion of agency and equality, so that they would believe that the state serves them instead of serving the powerful.

But there has never been a government where this has been true. Every state is corrupt, manipulated by the wealthy elites that are the enemy of true democracy, because they know that in any real democracy, the masses would destroy them without hesitation.

The state exists to preserve itself, because it is a tool of the rich and powerful to maintain order and obedience among the population. The left knows this; the right knows this.

The state does not serve you. All systems of government exist to maintain roughly the status quo, which is that a handful of people remain at the top and control 98% of the wealth, and hundreds of millions of us spend our lives toiling away for their scraps, and fighting one another when one person’s crumb is larger than the other’s.

The truth is that there can be no civilization without a state. Even the staunchest libertarian or the most radical anarchist will take great pains to describe their vision of a stateless society, one in which humans enter into personal contracts or they cooperate by consensus. But as they are pressed for details on the specifics of how these systems will work, they will begin to describe systems that sound increasingly like some version of a centralized governing body.

But this is not a justification for tolerating the modern state as it exists today. Under this system, we are all slaves. Many of us do not realize we are slaves; many others lack the imagination to envision an alternative. The rest of us participate in the charade because we feel powerless to change it. And only a select few reject the system completely and fight for either a far-left or far-right vision of liberation. They are often called the “lunatic fringe.”

But if we were to set aside our political identities and our prescribed ideologies, we would see that virtually all of us across the horseshoe or the compass want the same thing. And if we all stopped fighting each other to shift the state an inch to the right or to the left to pretend that we’ve “won,” we could work together to eliminate this corrupt and oppressive system and build something new that works for all of us.

Stop fighting for crumbs. Start fighting the real enemy.

Look at the world around you. What is good in it, and what is poison? Which are the things that humans are responsible for?

The world that we have built is a marvel. We have conquered every inch of this planet and are pushing beyond it. But while this may be some stunning accomplishment for humankind, it has been a disaster for humanity. We have all been dragged along this march of progress, convinced by the prevailing powers that this is the path back to Eden, that coal power plants and air conditioning and freeways and faraway slave labor mining will salve the pain of this existence.

Why, throughout history, have we waged wars? Because we want more. Why have we built miserable factories that pollute our skies and streams? Because we want more. Why do we enslave ourselves to lifetimes of debt and most of our lives spent in jobs we hate? Because we want more. Why do we spend countless hours bingeing television or mindlessly scrolling empty content?

More. More. More. That is the answer to our unhappiness. More is the driving force of our economy. More is the justification for genocides in distant lands. More is the salve for our anger, our fear, our discontent.

As we consume more of the outer world, we lose more of our inner world. We may become more materially rich, but we are all more spiritually empty. We ignore the suffering of our fellow man, across the planet and even across the street. We deny the destruction of our planet in the face of hard evidence. We are less connected than ever to our communities and our kin, a war of all against all to simply survive and possibly feel a moment of security.

Those in power will tell you that this is some recent development, that all the world was joyous and happy until the “others” came and ruined it. They will tell you that we can go back to this great era if you believe them, if you submit your will to their command, if you hate the “other” and destroy them.

This is a lie.

For the vast majority of human civilization, the system has only ever served a tiny fraction of humanity, a fortunate few who either took power through violence and force, or who preyed on our natural decency to convince us to give it to them. At its best, this system maintained a sense of comfort for a lucky few million inhabitants, while the rest of our species has been exploited, slaughtered, and made to live in squalor.

A few million people congregated around the centers of power, where they are told that it is “liberty” and “democracy” and “free trade ” and “hard work” that have afforded them such comfortable lives. In reality, we are shielded from the true cost of our consumer comfort, and if we ever catch a glimpse of it we are so appalled that most of us try to forget it anyway.

Even in this comfort, how happy are you, really?

Do you spend the majority of your hours sitting in traffic, and dealing with bills, and shopping for unnecessary distractions? Do you spend the majority of your days working at a job that offers no meaningful value to society– and in fact probably does some degree of harm? Do you spend the majority of your years waiting for the privilege of a few days’ vacation, or a chance to reunite with your family for the holidays, or the chance to retire when you are nearing your final chapter and then you’ll get to enjoy this life?

Who told you that this is the only way to live, or the best one?

Why did you believe them?

There is no generosity in power. The structures that create power and the people that seek power both exist outside of moral behavior. Any morality they portray is only a means of accumulating more power.

Do not be deceived. The celebrity does not care about deforestation. The billionaire does not care about freedom of speech. The politician does not care about you.

The pursuit of power and wealth is a disease. It is not moral behavior. It is an aberration of the human spirit. Human beings just want to live their lives. We want peace and security and a little bit of comfort for ourselves and the ones we love. We do not seek conflict. We are willing to suffer greatly to avoid it.

And this is the weakness that the sociopaths exploit. Those that crave power, those that amass obscene wealth, they exploit us and manipulate us and enslave us because they know that we will do anything to avoid challening their power. As long as they leave us just enough to continue existing, we will suffer their tyranny. We will wait for some other great power to come save us.

We are a submissive species. But this is not a flaw; in fact, it is the source of all the love in this world. It is the love preached by Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha, although it has been corrupted by the charlatans that have hijacked their teachings to create religions of hate and conquest. To be passive, to reject our savage instincts and cooperate instead of fight, to love instead of hate, these are the true hallmarks of what makes human beings exceptional.

The only flaw is our tolerance for those that harm us. The compassion is too great. They indoctrinate us to believe that they deserve their power, that this is the natural order.

They are liars.

Do not trust the billionaire who tells you how to get rich. He needs you poor so that he can be rich.

Do not idolize the celebrity that flies their private jet to multi-million dollar galas for protecting the ocean.

Do not believe the righteous who claim to protect children from predators. They only seek to divert attention from their own fangs.

Do not listen to the propagandist who tells you that the other side is evil and seeks to harm you, and that only his side can protect you. This is a false dichotomy and is meant to manipulate you.

Do not believe the strongman who tells you that only he can fix everything, if you put your faith in him and support him without question. He will use your obedience to enrich himself and laugh at your gullibility.

Do not believe anyone in power.

When did you choose to become a slave? When were you given the choice to sacrifice your self-determination in the service of a god, of a ruler, of tradition?

Do you not remember when? That is because the choice was never given. You were taught from childhood that this is how it is. We must worship our Lord and abide by his Word. We must obey our fathers and our mothers. We must bend a knee to those that claim power over us.