Comment: A welcome reminder...
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Showing posts with label Anarchism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anarchism. Show all posts
Wednesday, 2 July 2014
Friday, 25 April 2014
The Bundy Ranch Standoff: The Bad and the Ugly
"So what we see on the Bundy ranch is really just a fight between bad guys: A corrupt state in league with corrupt economic interests, versus a rogue member of those same corrupt economic interests." - Kevin Carson
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Kevin Carson
The Bundy ranch saga has been the
subject of heated good guy/bad guy framing by both mainstream liberals
and mainstream conservatives, who differ only on which roles to assign
to Bundy and the feds, respectively. But I can’t really see any good
guys in this.
The respective echo chambers for the
two sides differ on whether the land in question was originally federal
property from the time of acquisition or originally property of Bundy’s
ancestors and then taken over by the government. There’s disagreement
over whether Bundy attempted to pay the fees and there was some
bureaucratic snafu about who to make the check out to, or he’d just
flat-out refused from the beginning.
The claim that Bundy’s family owned the
land since the 1880s seems rather tenuous, given that one condition for
Nevada’s admission as a state was the recognition of all federal land
claims dating to the acquisition of the land from Mexico. And Bundy
doesn’t object to the idea of vacant land acquired in war passing into
the public domain – he just believes, on constitutional grounds, that
it’s the State of Nevada or Clark County, and not the U.S. government,
that’s the rightful owner he should be paying taxes to.
And the Paiute Nation included the
whole area of Nevada that Bundy’s ranch sits on, before the Paiute were
driven into reservations on a minuscule fraction of that land. So they
really ought to be shooting at Bundy.
But regardless of all that, there’s some stuff we should be able to agree on.
Thursday, 24 April 2014
The Gnosticism of Power
Center for a Stateless Society
Those in power regularly reveal themselves to be oblivious
to conditions in the real world, and to material constraints on
transforming their commands into reality. There’s good reason for this:
Their power insulates them from direct experience of the material world,
and from direct experience of the constraints offered by material
reality.
For example, earlier this month the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that a judge could rightly weigh a police officer’s memory of events, as recalled in testimony, more heavily than video evidence. That’s right: When a video recording of events contradicts the subjective recollection of a police officer, so much the worse for what actually happened. A cop’s “experience” and “superior observational skills” should carry more weight even when what the cop observed didn’t happen.
As ridiculous as this sounds, it’s really not that unusual. Back in the 1960s systems theorist Kenneth Boulding observed that “the larger and more authoritarian the organization, the better the chance that its top decision-makers will be operating in purely imaginary worlds.” The system of information flow in a hierarchy is designed to filter out messages from below that contradict the carefully constructed images of the world in the minds of those at the top. Advancement in a hierarchy is predicated on being a “team player,” which means reinforcing the image of reality held by those at the top and protecting them from exposure to any, you know, actual reality that might contradict it. So naturally when those in authority inadvertently come into contact with real-world information that undermines their official worldview, they dispose of it as quickly as possible using all available Hazardous Materials protocols.
At the same time, those at the tops of hierarchies make decisions, and issue endless decrees to those below them, in utter disregard of the actual resources required to carry them out effectively or possible material constraints on their implementation. The Pharaoh of Egypt anticipated the very best practices of today’s corporate CEOs in the age of downsizing when he said “Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore: let them go and gather straw for themselves. And the tale of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, ye shall lay upon them; ye shall not diminish ought thereof.”
When the implementation of the Studer Group’s idiotic management gimmicks was at its peak frenzy a few years ago, we all got (as “gifts” for “Employee Appreciation Day”) little inspirational booklets full of all kinds of sayings from Gandhi and Mother Theresa about giving endlessly without expecting anything in return, out of the sheer fulfilling joy of doing good for others. “Take no care for thy paycheck or staffing ratios. Behold the lilies of the field: Even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these.” They also reassured us in a newsletter that we could provide “extraordinary patient care” despite our “abundance or lack of resources.”
Oddly enough though our management, despite their seeming belief that we lived in a world of pure light and spirit beyond the concerns of the physical world, were not similarly immune from the requirements of the material realm. Our corporate CEO made an $18 million salary that same year, plus a $3.6 million bonus. And management constantly poor-mouths us about the need to economize on staffing because “nursing staff is our biggest cost” (even though the salaries in our hospital’s C-Suite are probably the same general order of magnitude as hourly wages for all nursing staff). I had to wonder why management couldn’t just miraculously multiply its funds to hire enough staff, like Jesus did with the loaves and fishes. That’s apparently what they expected us to do when it came to providing adequate care with the dangerous and criminally negligent staffing levels they provided us with.
So people in authority are completely out of touch with reality. What does that mean for us? The good news is voluntary self-organization, like horizontal networks, is running circles around the old government and corporate hierarchies and eating them alive, like piranha skeletonizing a cow. Over twenty years ago John Gilmore said “The Net treats censorship as damage and routes around it.”
Self-organized networks and other voluntary associations, similarly, treat the intrusions of irrational authority as damage and route around them. We’re building a world in which the irrational interference of those in authority is becoming less and less relevant to our lives and their stupid commands are becoming unenforceable. Maybe you’d like to join us?
For example, earlier this month the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that a judge could rightly weigh a police officer’s memory of events, as recalled in testimony, more heavily than video evidence. That’s right: When a video recording of events contradicts the subjective recollection of a police officer, so much the worse for what actually happened. A cop’s “experience” and “superior observational skills” should carry more weight even when what the cop observed didn’t happen.
As ridiculous as this sounds, it’s really not that unusual. Back in the 1960s systems theorist Kenneth Boulding observed that “the larger and more authoritarian the organization, the better the chance that its top decision-makers will be operating in purely imaginary worlds.” The system of information flow in a hierarchy is designed to filter out messages from below that contradict the carefully constructed images of the world in the minds of those at the top. Advancement in a hierarchy is predicated on being a “team player,” which means reinforcing the image of reality held by those at the top and protecting them from exposure to any, you know, actual reality that might contradict it. So naturally when those in authority inadvertently come into contact with real-world information that undermines their official worldview, they dispose of it as quickly as possible using all available Hazardous Materials protocols.
At the same time, those at the tops of hierarchies make decisions, and issue endless decrees to those below them, in utter disregard of the actual resources required to carry them out effectively or possible material constraints on their implementation. The Pharaoh of Egypt anticipated the very best practices of today’s corporate CEOs in the age of downsizing when he said “Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore: let them go and gather straw for themselves. And the tale of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, ye shall lay upon them; ye shall not diminish ought thereof.”
When the implementation of the Studer Group’s idiotic management gimmicks was at its peak frenzy a few years ago, we all got (as “gifts” for “Employee Appreciation Day”) little inspirational booklets full of all kinds of sayings from Gandhi and Mother Theresa about giving endlessly without expecting anything in return, out of the sheer fulfilling joy of doing good for others. “Take no care for thy paycheck or staffing ratios. Behold the lilies of the field: Even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these.” They also reassured us in a newsletter that we could provide “extraordinary patient care” despite our “abundance or lack of resources.”
Oddly enough though our management, despite their seeming belief that we lived in a world of pure light and spirit beyond the concerns of the physical world, were not similarly immune from the requirements of the material realm. Our corporate CEO made an $18 million salary that same year, plus a $3.6 million bonus. And management constantly poor-mouths us about the need to economize on staffing because “nursing staff is our biggest cost” (even though the salaries in our hospital’s C-Suite are probably the same general order of magnitude as hourly wages for all nursing staff). I had to wonder why management couldn’t just miraculously multiply its funds to hire enough staff, like Jesus did with the loaves and fishes. That’s apparently what they expected us to do when it came to providing adequate care with the dangerous and criminally negligent staffing levels they provided us with.
So people in authority are completely out of touch with reality. What does that mean for us? The good news is voluntary self-organization, like horizontal networks, is running circles around the old government and corporate hierarchies and eating them alive, like piranha skeletonizing a cow. Over twenty years ago John Gilmore said “The Net treats censorship as damage and routes around it.”
Self-organized networks and other voluntary associations, similarly, treat the intrusions of irrational authority as damage and route around them. We’re building a world in which the irrational interference of those in authority is becoming less and less relevant to our lives and their stupid commands are becoming unenforceable. Maybe you’d like to join us?
Thursday, 17 April 2014
The Network Economy as New Mutualism
What kinds of economic arrangements does anarchism, as
such, want? An old question given new vitality in an age in which
networks of autonomous individuals and groups have become more and more
relevant and difficult for overlords in capital and in the state to
control. In many ways, the new economy of networks, horizontal and
decentralized, is the quintessence of the ideas of anarchists such as
Benjamin Tucker, who thought that free competition would be “perfect”
enough to wipe out profit in exchange, rent on land, and interest on
lent credit. That is because monopolization, the source of these kinds
of exploitative income, is rendered impossible (or nearly so) by an
economy in which a PC and relatively little capital can make each
individual her own capitalist business (See Kevin Carson‘s The Homebrew Industrial Revolution and The Desktop Regulatory State).
We simply no longer need our overseers. We can employ Josiah Warren’s
Cost Principle as a tool for analyzing the network economy and the kinds
of hopes we may have for it as libertarians.
Tucker in particular constantly reiterated his position that if the Cost Principle (which he regarded as the definitive principle of socialism and which would necessarily mean the absence of usury) could not be realized by libertarian means, by free competition and the demise of privilege, that it was not to be realized at all. In the individualist anarchist free market, people, credit and resources would move so freely and fluidly, price signals would become so timely and clear, that before long selling goods or services significantly above cost would be rendered impossible. (Few free market libertarians of today share Tucker’s antipathy to “usury,” as such, but many now share his view of capitalism, placing it in opposition to free markets and competition.) It was thus privilege, restrictions on competition of all kinds, that allowed a capitalist/monopolist class to underpay labor and to overcharge for their products. But new technologies and the networked economy they yield are making the monopolies of old impossible by leaving regulatory and legislative attempts to limit competition powerless.
Read more
Tucker in particular constantly reiterated his position that if the Cost Principle (which he regarded as the definitive principle of socialism and which would necessarily mean the absence of usury) could not be realized by libertarian means, by free competition and the demise of privilege, that it was not to be realized at all. In the individualist anarchist free market, people, credit and resources would move so freely and fluidly, price signals would become so timely and clear, that before long selling goods or services significantly above cost would be rendered impossible. (Few free market libertarians of today share Tucker’s antipathy to “usury,” as such, but many now share his view of capitalism, placing it in opposition to free markets and competition.) It was thus privilege, restrictions on competition of all kinds, that allowed a capitalist/monopolist class to underpay labor and to overcharge for their products. But new technologies and the networked economy they yield are making the monopolies of old impossible by leaving regulatory and legislative attempts to limit competition powerless.
Read more
The Black Market Correction
Center for a Stateless Society
It’s intriguing to see the progressive Left
uniting against drug prohibition. They’re not with us in spirit, nor
should they be, but they’ve laid the groundwork for its critique, and in
a way that is sewn with the same threads of our passing commonalities.
Many hold that only ”hard” drugs should be combated with force and other
“safe” drugs regulated in their consumption. This is certainly
disappointing, but we, the decentralist Left, can exploit this opportunity.
Despite progressive’s claim to command a substantive critique of social and systemic power, they will celebrate governmental structures of plutocracy. They see plutocracy as an externally constituted force that can combat diffused power hierarchies while failing to be a part of them. As if it were a “neutral” force, a blank executive slate upon which a rational justice can be inscribed and effectively commanded by the intended rationality of the prescribed justice itself. Exposing the modern progressive’s ignorance of the structures of oppression is another opportunity.
We’ve all seen this mantra, “Legalize it, regulate it, tax it!” Notice the awkward position they place themselves in. The difference between regulation and prohibition, for there to be a distinction at all, is that regulation makes exceptions for the privileged – that’s little comfort when you’re the one effectively prohibited in either case. While heavy-handedness has resulted in calamity, they’re confident that a moderate application of forceful regulation is workable. Public policy writing, it seems, isn’t equivalent to playing whack-a-mole while wearing a blindfold.
“Unregulated” Black Markets? Where?
It’s often implied that the dangers of criminal drug markets are a result of their “unregulated” character. If we just legalized drugs and let the government regulate their quality and consistency, everyone would be safer. I agree that everyone would be safer under legalization, but regulation has nothing to do with it. Far from it, because the existing harm is spawned from the failures and faults of the regulatory state. Not just because outright banning the production, distribution and consumption of a good is the highest form of regulation imaginable, but because it disempowers consumers by fostering hierarchy and violence on a structural level.
Read more
Despite progressive’s claim to command a substantive critique of social and systemic power, they will celebrate governmental structures of plutocracy. They see plutocracy as an externally constituted force that can combat diffused power hierarchies while failing to be a part of them. As if it were a “neutral” force, a blank executive slate upon which a rational justice can be inscribed and effectively commanded by the intended rationality of the prescribed justice itself. Exposing the modern progressive’s ignorance of the structures of oppression is another opportunity.
We’ve all seen this mantra, “Legalize it, regulate it, tax it!” Notice the awkward position they place themselves in. The difference between regulation and prohibition, for there to be a distinction at all, is that regulation makes exceptions for the privileged – that’s little comfort when you’re the one effectively prohibited in either case. While heavy-handedness has resulted in calamity, they’re confident that a moderate application of forceful regulation is workable. Public policy writing, it seems, isn’t equivalent to playing whack-a-mole while wearing a blindfold.
“Unregulated” Black Markets? Where?
It’s often implied that the dangers of criminal drug markets are a result of their “unregulated” character. If we just legalized drugs and let the government regulate their quality and consistency, everyone would be safer. I agree that everyone would be safer under legalization, but regulation has nothing to do with it. Far from it, because the existing harm is spawned from the failures and faults of the regulatory state. Not just because outright banning the production, distribution and consumption of a good is the highest form of regulation imaginable, but because it disempowers consumers by fostering hierarchy and violence on a structural level.
Read more
Wednesday, 16 April 2014
Political and Economic Disenfranchisement: Two Sides of the Same Coin
The connection between political and economic disenfranchisement is little understood — or perhaps more accurately misunderstood
— in the United States. The astounding inequality of wealth in the
nation is considered to be the result of free and fair competitive
markets, so one must not ask whether there has been foul play. The
question of a class system, contained in both political and economic
institutions, is certainly not to be broached.
Nevertheless, celebrity academic Cornel West has the utter impudence (thank goodness) to introduce some of the more unnerving realities of extreme inequality (“Cornel West Calls Obama a ‘Rockefeller Republican in Blackface,’” Nonprofit Quarterly, November 13).
Here is another one percent datum: The lower fifty percent of households in the U.S. hold a mere one percent of the total wealth. Professor West says such a condition threatens an arbitrary, autocratic “crypto-fascist America.” He may be right, or else we may in fact have such an authoritarian state, one in which democracy and social mobility are used cynically to mollify the people.
The very idea of economic freedom has been tainted by the deceitful rhetoric of government and corporate overlords. The free market that anarchists have in mind, the one scarcely ever defended by these statesmen and bosses, is nothing if not egalitarian. It means equal access — guaranteed by the absence of privilege — to the horn of plenty that is the natural world, which we now find cornered behind the patronage of the state. And the state (government, as it were) is the great minion of the capitalist class, its custodian, preserver and raison d’etre. Economic domination and political domination are fastened, indeed require one another, for the simple reason that there is naturally a profusion of the things human beings actually need to live and thrive, particularly so in a world as technologically sophisticated as our own. The wretched poverty that defines contemporary life is the progeny of the authoritarian idea made manifest.
Anarchist Henry Addis treated the straitening of economies over one hundred years ago: “Imagine a condition of freedom, a condition in which every one has an equal opportunity with every one else.
Superabundance of the requisites of life, culture and refinement, would soon exist.” A facile, naive explanation it may seem, utopian almost, but it only stands to reason if we should investigate the economics of the day even at all. From a practical, utilitarian standpoint — independent of the fact that individuals should be regarded and treated as individual sovereigns — competitive markets are equitable and “spread the wealth.”
Free access to capital and free movement of people and goods would assure the widest dissemination of resources compatible with liberty. While an honestly free, competitive system would not promise absolute equality of material conditions for all (nothing but the most totalitarian dystopia could), it would raze the profit system as we now know it. The high, extractive profits of the monopoly economy of privilege are of course the mirror image of the pauperdom it occasions. Lofty mounds of accumulated wealth for some obviously means miserable impoverishment for most.
An economic system that exalts the reciprocal aspects of human relationships, abolishing special privilege, is a fair system of trade and harmonious coordination — really, it is hardly to be called a “system” at all. Only violent, arbitrary stockades can hold up such unstable heaps of wealth. Remove the barriers, allow competition fully, and wealth will surge forth and circulate as a natural and inevitable result.
Nevertheless, celebrity academic Cornel West has the utter impudence (thank goodness) to introduce some of the more unnerving realities of extreme inequality (“Cornel West Calls Obama a ‘Rockefeller Republican in Blackface,’” Nonprofit Quarterly, November 13).
Here is another one percent datum: The lower fifty percent of households in the U.S. hold a mere one percent of the total wealth. Professor West says such a condition threatens an arbitrary, autocratic “crypto-fascist America.” He may be right, or else we may in fact have such an authoritarian state, one in which democracy and social mobility are used cynically to mollify the people.
The very idea of economic freedom has been tainted by the deceitful rhetoric of government and corporate overlords. The free market that anarchists have in mind, the one scarcely ever defended by these statesmen and bosses, is nothing if not egalitarian. It means equal access — guaranteed by the absence of privilege — to the horn of plenty that is the natural world, which we now find cornered behind the patronage of the state. And the state (government, as it were) is the great minion of the capitalist class, its custodian, preserver and raison d’etre. Economic domination and political domination are fastened, indeed require one another, for the simple reason that there is naturally a profusion of the things human beings actually need to live and thrive, particularly so in a world as technologically sophisticated as our own. The wretched poverty that defines contemporary life is the progeny of the authoritarian idea made manifest.
Anarchist Henry Addis treated the straitening of economies over one hundred years ago: “Imagine a condition of freedom, a condition in which every one has an equal opportunity with every one else.
Superabundance of the requisites of life, culture and refinement, would soon exist.” A facile, naive explanation it may seem, utopian almost, but it only stands to reason if we should investigate the economics of the day even at all. From a practical, utilitarian standpoint — independent of the fact that individuals should be regarded and treated as individual sovereigns — competitive markets are equitable and “spread the wealth.”
Free access to capital and free movement of people and goods would assure the widest dissemination of resources compatible with liberty. While an honestly free, competitive system would not promise absolute equality of material conditions for all (nothing but the most totalitarian dystopia could), it would raze the profit system as we now know it. The high, extractive profits of the monopoly economy of privilege are of course the mirror image of the pauperdom it occasions. Lofty mounds of accumulated wealth for some obviously means miserable impoverishment for most.
An economic system that exalts the reciprocal aspects of human relationships, abolishing special privilege, is a fair system of trade and harmonious coordination — really, it is hardly to be called a “system” at all. Only violent, arbitrary stockades can hold up such unstable heaps of wealth. Remove the barriers, allow competition fully, and wealth will surge forth and circulate as a natural and inevitable result.
Thursday, 23 January 2014
Psychopaths in power: The Parasite on the Human Super-organism
Comment: excellent article by Mr. Bradley. He lays out the problems exactly as they are. This is why any "-ism" which has kernel of truth to it - including anarchism - is only ever going to work for no more than a second because authoritarian followers will ensure that such a new tide will have the seeds of psychopathy within it. This is why we must all IGNORE the Powers that Be rather than actively engage and give them the revolutionary energy they seek.
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Niall Bradley
I was reading another devastating commentary by American author Chris Hedges on the overbearing tyranny of the State, and it got me to thinking about this popular notion of "rising up against" oppressors. Hedges' analysis is on target, but I feel that his conclusion that we must "tear it down" in order to escape it is lacking something important.
To 'rise up against our oppressors', to 'take back the country', and to 'overthrow the ruling class' assumes that they are 'up there' to begin with. Yes, in many ways they are. Through their domination of industry, government, media, education and so on, they invariably influence - control even - just about everything material in our world; they possess most of the wealth, work in high-rise buildings, live in elevated suburbs and generally look down from their rarefied vantage point on the masses slumming it out below.
But when it comes to the important things - moral character, worldly experience, creative abilities, and basic intelligence - what do they really possess? Few, if any of these things. In fact, I think we can make the case that, psychologically-speaking, they are actually pretty far 'down there' on the scale of haves and have-nots.
Ok, so they certainly set no moral example to follow. Well, what then do we need the State for? Standard political theory teaches that the State is the final arbiter of contracts between people, without which there would be lawless chaos. Left unto themselves, claimed schizoids like Thomas Hobbes, life for humans would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." I'm not so sure. In fact, I'm beginning to think it's the other way around: life is brutish for most because of the State.
Although based on research that is some 80 years old, Political Ponerology by Andrew Lobaczewski is the classic text for understanding how psychopaths and other assorted character-disturbed people infect society from the 'top' down, not least through their crazed theories that reveal a barely disguised contempt for human nature. Studies have found that the 'intelligentsia' are actually much less intelligent than the average citizen they 'lead'.
One study, cited in Robert Kirkconnell's excellent American Heart of Darkness, a revision of U.S. history through the lens of Ponerology, found that 58% of Americans are more intelligent than the average U.S. president. And in terms of moral character, most presidents were found to have next to none, relative to the national average. No doubt there are variations and exceptions to the rule through time and space, but I think this supports the contention that we don't actually need the State, and certainly not in its Leviathan form, which begins with the assumption that man is inherently evil and so must rely on the State to bestow objective morality on him from the outside.
[By the way, you can listen to our recent interview with Kirkconnell on SOTT Talk Radio here.]
I acknowledge that sweeping generalizations are generally too simplistic; the world and human psychology is complex, and so 'simple', 'final' solutions have been instrumental in getting us into this mess. Of course some individual PhDs really are experts in their chosen field; some individual bureaucrats really are good administrators; some individual military men are natural warriors; heck, some individual bankers are excellent accountants.
All of these roles can and do have a productive place within society. But I suspect that, in general, the ruling classes' importance to any given society - and I'm including roughly the 'top' 10-20% here, though the percentage undoubtedly varies from place to place, and their negative impact probably diminishes the further you move down the power/wealth scale - is grossly inflated, in much the same way the casino stock market doesn't add anything productive to the real economy of labor and capital - it just distorts everything and interferes with efficient distribution.
Check this video out:
Pretty astonishing, eh?
Note the part where the narrator says:
Uhm, remind us again, what do we need leaders for?...
Maddening, isn't it, to think that the psychopaths in power then used 9/11 to create (or massively advance in any case) a global Big Brother on the pretext that We the People need them to protect us! But when it comes down to it, all their plans, security measures, and safety protocols are actually useless in the 'heat of the moment'. We protect ourselves, we protect each other. We adapt to changes in our reality, while our leaders fantasize that reality bends to their whims. And this basic distinction has substantially remained the case in spite of most still being consciously unaware of where the terrorist threat really comes from...
And so I submit that, in general, the ruling classes obstruct, retard and - in the worst cases, as we've clearly seen since 9/11 - destroy society far more often than they actually contribute to its harmonious functioning, most of which appears to happen naturally according to 'higher', as yet unconscious, laws. Like that ant colony, humanity functions as one super-organism, and it does so independently of the corrupt elites' decrees, their mad scientists' ridiculous theories, their insane enforcers' medieval habits, their greedy bankers' usurious rates, and so on.
Society, the economy, civilization, etc. don't work because of leaders and their underlings; they work in spite of them!
Part of the problem with "rising up against" the ruling classes is that there will be those whose actual underlying motivation was to replace the existing leaders and thus be in a position to take more for themselves. Psychopaths and other pathologicals will inevitably be carried along by the tide because, as history has repeatedly shown, in no time at all do they subvert a social or revolutionary movement into its opposite. But if we recognise that the masses have had - all along - the creativity, common sense, ingenuity, self-motivation and skills that they need to naturally and autonomously govern as a collective, we realize we don't need 'the State' and we don't need 'leaders'.
Is all this really designed and led by certain people? Or does it form part of a single super-organism that is intelligently-informed despite being infected with a parasite?
As things stand, however, most people cling to the illusion that they need leaders, an illusion that the elites who think they rule the rest of us are only too happy to sustain. Maybe I'm kidding myself here though about it being mere illusion. It seems that many people do need some kind of authority in their lives, to take the important decisions on behalf of the community so they can get on with the work of living their daily lives. But the problem arises when any authority structure in human affairs becomes infected with psychopaths. In this situation you have a parasite that remains firmly attached to its more intelligent, productive, and vital host: the masses of ordinary man, and to which ordinary man misguidedly gives his allegiance and respect. As long as a delicate equilibrium is maintained, where the host remains sufficiently healthy while the parasite is kept in check, as a species we get by without catastrophic 'colony collapse disorder'. There's still war, slavery, oppression, injustice and so on, but it's always competing with - or mitigated by - public education, social welfare, job creation, innovation, creative expression, sharing, democratic improvements, unionization, human rights, demand for higher wages, etc. - the impetus for which always comes up from the masses 'below'.
But what we see happening all over the world today is the worst case scenario - the parasite destroying its host, complete imbalance where the psychopathic parasite is ravaging the physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual well-being of the host. It's particularly pronounced in certain Western countries, but no corner of the planet is immune. People are 'losing their minds' in ever-greater numbers, just as the bees are abruptly disappearing. The 'common sense' of ordinary people, of a higher intelligence than that of their ruling classes, has been eroded as they become sicker. Their dis-ease manifests as climatic stress, which feeds back into more human stress until...
Well, until the slate is wiped clean and the parasitic symbiosis between host and parasite is re-established, I guess. As Lobaczewski wrote in Ponerology:
So, I say we try something different than 'rising up and taking back control of the governing institutions'. Forget new personnel to run those institutions: we don't need those institutions at all. Rather than engaging in battle with the tyrant, whose very thought processes are so completely alien to us that we always emerge drained from direct encounters, I say we essentially just ignore it. Not by pretending that it isn't there, but by inwardly distancing ourselves from it and outwardly seeking communion with others doing likewise.
I know that's hard for people to even begin contemplating when they're presently under financial or other duress, but the beauty of it is that the more you understand how the psychopaths rule our world, the more you free yourself from the illusion that they have any power over you; the more freedom - of the real inner kind - you'll obtain; the more you'll have to give to other humans and less to the parasites...
See your world, see yourself, see your world, see yourself...
As Joe Baegent put it, the way out is the way in.
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sott.net
Sott.netNiall Bradley
I was reading another devastating commentary by American author Chris Hedges on the overbearing tyranny of the State, and it got me to thinking about this popular notion of "rising up against" oppressors. Hedges' analysis is on target, but I feel that his conclusion that we must "tear it down" in order to escape it is lacking something important.
To 'rise up against our oppressors', to 'take back the country', and to 'overthrow the ruling class' assumes that they are 'up there' to begin with. Yes, in many ways they are. Through their domination of industry, government, media, education and so on, they invariably influence - control even - just about everything material in our world; they possess most of the wealth, work in high-rise buildings, live in elevated suburbs and generally look down from their rarefied vantage point on the masses slumming it out below.
But when it comes to the important things - moral character, worldly experience, creative abilities, and basic intelligence - what do they really possess? Few, if any of these things. In fact, I think we can make the case that, psychologically-speaking, they are actually pretty far 'down there' on the scale of haves and have-nots.
Ok, so they certainly set no moral example to follow. Well, what then do we need the State for? Standard political theory teaches that the State is the final arbiter of contracts between people, without which there would be lawless chaos. Left unto themselves, claimed schizoids like Thomas Hobbes, life for humans would be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." I'm not so sure. In fact, I'm beginning to think it's the other way around: life is brutish for most because of the State.
Although based on research that is some 80 years old, Political Ponerology by Andrew Lobaczewski is the classic text for understanding how psychopaths and other assorted character-disturbed people infect society from the 'top' down, not least through their crazed theories that reveal a barely disguised contempt for human nature. Studies have found that the 'intelligentsia' are actually much less intelligent than the average citizen they 'lead'.
One study, cited in Robert Kirkconnell's excellent American Heart of Darkness, a revision of U.S. history through the lens of Ponerology, found that 58% of Americans are more intelligent than the average U.S. president. And in terms of moral character, most presidents were found to have next to none, relative to the national average. No doubt there are variations and exceptions to the rule through time and space, but I think this supports the contention that we don't actually need the State, and certainly not in its Leviathan form, which begins with the assumption that man is inherently evil and so must rely on the State to bestow objective morality on him from the outside.
[By the way, you can listen to our recent interview with Kirkconnell on SOTT Talk Radio here.]
I acknowledge that sweeping generalizations are generally too simplistic; the world and human psychology is complex, and so 'simple', 'final' solutions have been instrumental in getting us into this mess. Of course some individual PhDs really are experts in their chosen field; some individual bureaucrats really are good administrators; some individual military men are natural warriors; heck, some individual bankers are excellent accountants.
All of these roles can and do have a productive place within society. But I suspect that, in general, the ruling classes' importance to any given society - and I'm including roughly the 'top' 10-20% here, though the percentage undoubtedly varies from place to place, and their negative impact probably diminishes the further you move down the power/wealth scale - is grossly inflated, in much the same way the casino stock market doesn't add anything productive to the real economy of labor and capital - it just distorts everything and interferes with efficient distribution.
Check this video out:
Pretty astonishing, eh?
Note the part where the narrator says:
Everything looks like it has been designed by an architect: a single mind. This colossal and complex city was created by the collective will of the ant colony: the super-organism.You get a clear glimpse of the human super-organism at work from time to time. One of the least reported aspects of 9/11, which was in fact also the single biggest event that day, was the evacuation of about one million people from lower Manhattan by water "in an emergent network of private and publicly owned watercraft." It wasn't part of any government or local authority drill, it wasn't organized or ordered by any 'established authorities', in fact it wasn't planned at all. While New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani was busy talking to the press, ordinary people on the ground sought information from one another, made inquiries and then just spontaneously engaged in collective decision-making and helped one another to safety in a calm and orderly manner. Their 'established' societal and hierarchical roles - banker, garbage man, foreigner, Port Authority guard, lawyer, nurse, policeman - pretty much went out the window while, in an act of collective self-preservation, they tapped into the true bonds that connect social animals. Far from being a fear-based response of 'the mob', it was the society of man responding to chaos with order.
Uhm, remind us again, what do we need leaders for?...
And so I submit that, in general, the ruling classes obstruct, retard and - in the worst cases, as we've clearly seen since 9/11 - destroy society far more often than they actually contribute to its harmonious functioning, most of which appears to happen naturally according to 'higher', as yet unconscious, laws. Like that ant colony, humanity functions as one super-organism, and it does so independently of the corrupt elites' decrees, their mad scientists' ridiculous theories, their insane enforcers' medieval habits, their greedy bankers' usurious rates, and so on.
Society, the economy, civilization, etc. don't work because of leaders and their underlings; they work in spite of them!
Part of the problem with "rising up against" the ruling classes is that there will be those whose actual underlying motivation was to replace the existing leaders and thus be in a position to take more for themselves. Psychopaths and other pathologicals will inevitably be carried along by the tide because, as history has repeatedly shown, in no time at all do they subvert a social or revolutionary movement into its opposite. But if we recognise that the masses have had - all along - the creativity, common sense, ingenuity, self-motivation and skills that they need to naturally and autonomously govern as a collective, we realize we don't need 'the State' and we don't need 'leaders'.
Is all this really designed and led by certain people? Or does it form part of a single super-organism that is intelligently-informed despite being infected with a parasite?
But what we see happening all over the world today is the worst case scenario - the parasite destroying its host, complete imbalance where the psychopathic parasite is ravaging the physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual well-being of the host. It's particularly pronounced in certain Western countries, but no corner of the planet is immune. People are 'losing their minds' in ever-greater numbers, just as the bees are abruptly disappearing. The 'common sense' of ordinary people, of a higher intelligence than that of their ruling classes, has been eroded as they become sicker. Their dis-ease manifests as climatic stress, which feeds back into more human stress until...
Well, until the slate is wiped clean and the parasitic symbiosis between host and parasite is re-established, I guess. As Lobaczewski wrote in Ponerology:
Germs are not aware that they will be burned alive or buried deep in the ground along with the human body whose death they are causing.The whole thing is just really tragic. The elites believe they're shepherding the flock toward Great Things. The flock is in fact dying because it's not really a flock; it's a super-organism that can no longer sustain the barrage of psychopathic inroads into its 'collective will'.
So, I say we try something different than 'rising up and taking back control of the governing institutions'. Forget new personnel to run those institutions: we don't need those institutions at all. Rather than engaging in battle with the tyrant, whose very thought processes are so completely alien to us that we always emerge drained from direct encounters, I say we essentially just ignore it. Not by pretending that it isn't there, but by inwardly distancing ourselves from it and outwardly seeking communion with others doing likewise.
I know that's hard for people to even begin contemplating when they're presently under financial or other duress, but the beauty of it is that the more you understand how the psychopaths rule our world, the more you free yourself from the illusion that they have any power over you; the more freedom - of the real inner kind - you'll obtain; the more you'll have to give to other humans and less to the parasites...
See your world, see yourself, see your world, see yourself...
As Joe Baegent put it, the way out is the way in.
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Niall Bradley - Editor and researcher for SOTT.net, Niall Bradley co-hosts the weekly SOTT Talk Radio show with fellow SOTT.net editor Joe Quinn. Niall's SOTT Focus articles on the elites' shenanigans and so-called climate change are cross-posted on his personal blog, NiallBradley.net.
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