Fear Begets Fear

READER NOTE: The first installment of Radio Far Side will be up this week.  Keep checking back...

Si Pitung

Here's the thing: ALL governments everywhere and at all times have been, are and shall ever be corrupt.  Period.

We have spent the past 5,000 years of documented history trying one form or another of government, only to watch it completely turn on us and eat us alive until we rise up in bloody indignation and slaughter the beast we created.  Then we turn right around and create more governments.

Why is it, in 5,000 years, no one has ever questioned the underlying assumption that we need governments at all?  I suppose we are all eternal optimists who while away our lives hoping and praying that THIS king's inbred progeny will be good, or the NEXT elected leader will have principles and integrity.

Whatever the cause, we haven't learned in all this time that concentrating power of any kind and amount will only attract megalomaniacs and psychopaths whose sole aim is to accumulate more power and protect it with the military might of the nation.

In America, no one seems to get that Homeland Security has nothing to do with Joe the Plumber.  The bespoke 'homeland' is THEIR power base, and the 'security' is for THEM, not us.  We are the threat from which THEY need to secure themselves.

You will notice that the US Constitution begins with three simple words: We the People.  Most folks don't stop to consider that in the English language, upper case letters only precede first words in sentences, proper nouns, and words with special definitions within the context of the document in which they are used.  Of those options, only the last one explains the capital 'P' in "People".  That means the word is not the common one used in daily speech, but a specially defined term.  In this case, it refers to the 55 men that met in secret to create the document.

The American federation is no more viable or special than any other attempt to force diverse people into a single cubby hole.  Other notable examples include the EU, the Venetian mercantile state, the Holy Roman Empire, the UK's colonies, or any of several dozen other examples.

Robin Hood

What we really should do is create a special, cordoned off area somewhere on Earth, preferably the Gobi desert, and anyone who thinks they have the moral authority to rule or judge other people should be sent there, where they can rule over and judge each other to their heart's delight.  The only rule is that they can never leave that area, since thoughts like those never go away.  It's a fault of their genetic make-up.

In this way, the rest of us can get on with our lives in peace, without governments, taxes, militaries, or corporate persons.  And without fear.

At their most basic levels, all governments operate on one basic principle: Fear.  Fear of boogymen.  Fear of the unknown.  Fear of the government itself.  It's all based on fear.  They create fear, thrive on fear and manipulate fear symbols.

Any student of the human condition knows that people instinctively rally when threatened.  It's not difficult to use this instinct to create and centralize power.  Almost every meme propagated by government-controlled media involves fear.  Whether it is fear of personal crime to justify police forces, or fear of outside attack to justify militaries, in the end, the fear is used to create and maintain control systems that ultimately work against the very people who pay for the supposed protection.

What's interesting to note is that folk heroes usually represent anarchy and the impulse to throw off fear and the control structure.  Look at Robin Hood, or the pirate legends, or the gangsters of the 1930s America, or Si Pitung here in Indonesia.  All of these romanticized characters share the common notion that the protectors of the common man fight power and control structures.  They represent our basic desire for freedom, not only from control structures, but from fear itself.

Ultimately, we must realize that no outside control will ever truly save us from outside threats.  We have police, but still have crime.  We have the military, but still get attached.  We have laws, but still have corruption.  We have to come to grips with the fact that we are no worse off, and in many cases are better off, without government.  In most countries, government sucks better than half of the wealth and labor of their subjects into slush funds that are used to propagate more government, which sucks more wealth and labor until the subjects are either destitute or rise up and slaughter the controllers.

This cycle hasn't changed for thousands of years, and obviously is not changing now.  If anything, the only outcome is greater and greater centralization of power and force.

History proves two things, greater centralization of power always ends in disaster, while those times when individuals controlled their own lives and destinies exhibited the greatest levels of peace and industriousness.  The more we pay for government, regardless of the perceived benefit, the more that government will turn on us and become the enemy from which we thought it was supposed to protect us.

As ever major philosophy has taught, the beginning of wisdom and the liberation of Self begins with the conquering of Fear.  Once we have liberated ourselves from Fear, there is no need for government.  We realize that nothing can protect us from the unknown and unexpected, except our prepared minds and willingness to work on our own behalf.

Death ultimately takes us all.  The measure of the life that precedes it is the degree of fear with which we face that simple truth.  Death is the root of all fear, and by coming to grips with it, we conquer fear and no longer require protectors.  If we don't need protectors, there is no justification for government.  And without government, we are free individuals able to pursue our best course in life.

In the end, anarchy works because most people are busily pursuing their lives.  They instinctively know that chaos serves no good purpose, and so don't create any and actively rebel against it.  In fact, chaos only reigns when fear takes large groups of people, who then react without reason or conscious thought.  Once again, fear is the root cause.

Blackbeard

Consolidation of wealth and power is the cause of corruption.  Governments, by their very nature, is consolidation, and thus are always corrupt.  We create government to protect us from the unknown.  Because of corruption, governments always end up protecting themselves, and thus become the cause of the unknown.  Conquering our fear of the unknown negates the need for government, and thus there is no consolidation of wealth and power, thus no corruption.  Therefore, anarchy is the best and most natural state of being, and rather than being chaos, is in fact based on the lack of fear.  So it stands to reason that only through enlightened self-interest can we hope to be free of corruption, coercion and force.

Our fear drives us to create governments.  The governments ultimately turn on us and become the cause of fear.  It is a vicious circle and one that has plagued humanity for all of its recorded history.  Until we change ourselves, we can not hope to change the world.