Wow Christopher this chapter is so powerful! Great choice of quotes, I did not know of that "gem" from Obama.
I so much appreciate your wonderful powerful Conclusion:
"If hereditary authority (monarchy) was HumanGovernance 1.0, and majority authority (democracy) was 2.0, it is time to evolve to 3.0—the authority of each person over him or herself. It is time for genuine consent to replace the tawdry fiction of the tacit “social contract.” It is time to end the tyranny of the group over the individual.
We must find a way to enjoy the benefits of community while avoiding the horrors of collectivism…or even just the foibles of democracy. We may not be able to take everyone with us, and that is fine.
Indeed—that is part of the point: everyone must find their own way, by their own lights, and with their own consent. But those of us who can evolve should evolve.
And it begins (as we will discuss in our next installment) with the simple decision to
Thanks, AV. Your support has a powerful effect on my energy to keep rolling.
As I was just saying to Kris, We can have community without violating rights. People have come to believe that that is impossible, but I think if we cannot figure out a way, then we don't deserve the title of sentient beings! We can do it. There must be a way!
We can, you have done the heavy lifting. I believe the biggest issues are: The hidden snakes, the overly ambitious whose real agenda is to be the despot and the government.
If we try to escape and sidestep them as much as possible, it gets us part of the way. Once enough of us do it, and we have strength in numbers, we will be able to go the rest of the way.
Reading all that cringeworthy socialist/communist hype was agonizing! Indeed We are social, and We commune in AGGREGATE, contrary to what the power-lusting psychopaths would have Us believe.
Thank You for this look at the twisted perspectives the moneyed psychopaths in control on Our planet's view and efforts. And thank You for the suggestions for how We get out of Their mess.
“And it begins (as we will discuss in our next installment) with the simple decision to Stop caring what other people think.”
Epictetus summed up that thought when he said, “If you are ever tempted to look for outside approval, realize that you have compromised your integrity. If you need a witness, be your own.”
But that is the conundrum of living with so many of those who want to conform (but don’t ponder about their own integrity) and if Solomon Asch is correct, only 10-30% of the population have the courage to speak out (like you). I don’t like those odds…
“If you are ever tempted to look for outside approval, realize that you have compromised your integrity. If you need a witness, be your own.”
—Great quote. This is a part of the equation, for sure. Shared intentionality is wonderful, but so is personal intentionality. Isn't the group better off if each individual is also rocking it as an individual?
"But that is the conundrum of living with so many of those who want to conform"
—So that is a hint as to an objective. We stop living with them. Obviously that is easier said than done. But ultimately, the panarchic ideal is that they can live under whatever system they wish, and we can be next door to them and live under a different system. And that way their nonsense doesn't impact us as much. We don't have to care as much what they think, want, believe, or say—so long as it does not trespass or initiate force.
This ideal is a long way off, but the paradigm shift has to come first. We have to stop thinking that we "have to find ways to live together" and start looking at ways that we can CHOOSE to live how, and with whom, we wish.
most people prefer to be a herd. I think that is why so many jump on the jab wagon - herd immunity ! They have not even checked what the real scientists mean with that.
Thankfully I moved from a very crowded, suffocating place to a cabin in the woods. Not really a hermit, but very keen on my privacy. A bee but not one from the hive LOL
Yes, most people want to be in the herd. So let them! That is the key. Somehow, we all must figure out that collective solutions are not needed. They should be free to live how they want, and we how we want, and neither should force anything upon the other.
Bang on Christopher. Whenever discussing anarchism with the average person who sees it as an impossibility, I always make the point that anarchism is something we 'evolve' towards. When we all become more accountable as individuals the need for enforcement of rules should, by nature, become less and less necessary.
To most people, this notion will sound quite naive, they will say that human nature is violent and selfish and we will always need some form of rule and policing to keep order. I believe that we should hold anarchism as the ideal and constantly be striving towards it, at this point in our evolution that is going to take the form of individuals living by example, sharing ideas (like you are so generously doing) and experimenting with small communities of like minded folk. Human 3.0 is a grand idea.
"To most people, this notion will sound quite naive, they will say that human nature is violent and selfish and we will always need some form of rule and policing to keep order."
—So let them have it. And if we use force against them, then their system can respond appropriately. But that does not mean that we need to submit to their force ex ante.
But part of the paradigm shift is for us to accept that and to arrange for a separation from them. They can and should be free to do what they wish. We need to begin moving towards an attitude and condition in which we do not concern ourselves with what they think or do.
Of course, that is difficult because we live in a stupid "democracy," in which what they believe can be imposed upon us by force through their votes, so in a practical way, it makes sense to care what they think and believe.
BUT…we have to stop doing so anyway, and then work towards escaping the system that imposes their views on us by force.
At first blush, it seems like the opposite would be the case—change the system first, so that we don't have to care. But that
A) isn't working, and shows no sign of working anytime in the next few thousand years,
B) perpetuates that system,
C) perpetuates the socio-psychological error that perpetuates the system.
So we have to make the move even though the system is still there and others who cannot get beyond the system are still there.
Thank you for the care you took in phrasing that. Given the nature of online textual communication, it is a wise precaution.
To say that this is a long story and then punt you over to all the writing I have done on the subject would no doubt be an annoyance. But it is a long story! 🤣
Simply put, the consent of the individual human person is the fundamental unit of moral concern, and no system that involves majorities, voting, representatives, taxation, and laws imposed by force can be consensual in any way. (Note: protective force deployed against those who have themselves initiated coercive force IS legitimate. But governments initiate coercive force {taxation, invented laws, etc.} in order to impose their so-called "protection." Not entirely unlike a mafia protection racket.)
The alternative would be a condition in which consent is actually respected. For me, that would be market anarchism. This can be described as follows:
Instead of a single entity claiming a monopoly to forcibly impose security and justice within a given territory and upon a captive people, private agencies can peacefully compete in a free and open market to provide security and justice to willing customers.
However, some people might wish to live differently. The Amish, for example, want to live according to their beliefs, and the systems they use to actualize those beliefs in the real world. Respect of consent would require that they be free to do so on their own property. Others will want to live in other ways. Some might even wish to continue living under a "stupid democracy" :-) All should be free to do so.
The solution, then, is panarchism: a condition in which people are free to choose their own way of life on their own property, or to select from any number of jurisdictionally coterminous governance providers, or providers of governance-like services.
That is as short a summary as possible of a very complex topic. But if you are interested, we can go deeper.
I like what you are saying here, though I have a hard time seeing how it could actually work. How do you get the people (government) who have control over so much force, to give it up?
If there was an answer somewhere, I'm not aware of it but I haven't been following you all that long...
After some reading this afternoon I was musing over the idea of non-government, precious metals coinage as a way to do business and starve the beast simultaneously but I seem to remember someone coining their own money (I think it was in silver) not that long ago and ending up in federal prison; sort of reminiscent of that fellow back in Tudor England who translated the bible into English and got burned at the stake as a thank you for his effort, though his work did end up becoming the basis for the King James Bible...
The phrase that I came up with is social cohesion without violating the individual!
Consent is key or I can go somewhere else. That checks the out of control aspect of collective tyranny!
Polarity Management says we must learn to dance with the polar opposites or we get the darkness of one side or the other.
The other thought I have is Jonathan Haight’s Ted talk on universal values we all hold dear but to different degrees. I don’t agree with his policy advocacy re: smartphones. Anyway…
We can have community without violating rights. People have come to believe that that is impossible, but I think if we cannot figure out a way, then we don't deserve the title of sentient beings! We can do it. There must be a way!
Sure. I was just talking about the top-level dichotomy of continuing with involuntary governance or trying something else. There are many many ways within the something else!
Nice article man! Lots of good stuff in there! I cracked up at the Obama quote, I've got a find the source and citation for that (unless you've got it handy and can share). #Just because you have an individual right (only one?) doesn't mean the government can't take it away whenever they want.# Wait! I thought human rights were inalienable? That would be some pretty powerful shit, being able to alienate the inalienable -- if it were real.
I do disagree that "evolving" is the answer to the falsely predicated individual vs. collective faux-paradox and the real-world near-certainty that one way or the other the collective will overrule the individual (i.e., we're talking about a cult.)
When humans are free from existential dread, there is no paradox, there is no overruling of the individual, because they're not trying to control each other, let alone a few control the rest.
When plagued by existential threat and operating under existential dread, we're forced into our most crude and rudimentary mental and relational modes and literally lose much of our capacity to behave humanly anymore, because those parts of our psyches get shut off in survival mode.
The illusion of tension between individual and collective is not essential, but an artifact of chronic survivalism.
I'm not saying we shouldn't evolve or don't need to evolve. I'm saying that evolution isn't the answer to our problems.
The answer to our problems is to eliminate the delusion of existential threat and with it the hallucination of existential dread, beginning in childhood.
Outside of war zones and poverty and natural disasters, very few children would experience existential dread if it weren't for their parents. Despite war zones and poverty and natural disasters, the vast majority of children encounter existential dread for the first time in their own families, usually from parents but sometimes from siblings.
Lloyd deMause, Alice Miller, and Judith Herman are great resources on this staunchly and vigorously avoided/denied topic.
"The illusion of tension between individual and collective is not essential, but an artifact of chronic survivalism. I'm not saying we shouldn't evolve or don't need to evolve. I'm saying that evolution isn't the answer to our problems."
—I think the problem-solution you offer has power to explain (and hopefully fix) much of what is going on.
You will see much more of what I mean by "evolve" if you read some of the rest of my work. Humans have many presuppositions about how we are supposed to interact and be governed, which have developed over millennia. It is understandable why they are there, but there are some that we are ready to move beyond. Some that we need to move beyond. But they are so longstanding and ingrained, and require enough of a leap, that the term "evolution" is appropriate.
I understand that well. The surprise for me that what looked like a big deal that would involve a lifetime of change (and a lot of deprogramming) turned out not to nearly be so involved. Typical outside seen from the cave vs. cave seen from under an open sky. Yeah, I'll be reading.
All her sisters are married LOL. But I actually met her on a dating site 24 years ago, so those can actually work!
That said, philosophical discussions are not something she would do as much as I, if left to her own devices. But she's married to me, so she does it. Sometimes it's to humor me, but sometimes she really gets into it!
"That would be some pretty powerful shit, being able to alienate the inalienable -- if it were real."
—Oh, rights are real, and morally inalienable.
But that doesn't stop government officials, criminals, and @$$holes (but I repeat myself) from using force to alienate one from the _enjoyment_ of one's rights.
I found an excerpt that isn't too long and will give you an idea of where I'm coming from when it comes to rights. Way more to say than what's included, but don't want to dump on ya. Don't know how to attach a file here or embed screen shots, so here ya go: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QlYrnEvIrlbfOkGvBvgBb-R9q-CikGIB/view?usp=sharing
This is probably a point we should correspond/chat/talk about. I’m busy writing/editing my book, Law Itself Is the Violation. My strategy is to look at rights, then use that discussion as a parallel to look at law. I’d started writing about rights (Liar’s World: The Rights Scam) in 2019 (mothballed now). Most of the material went into the Rights section of the current book. I began occasional correspondence with Bob Black in 2020, and he shared a draft of his now-published, The Myth of Human Rights. I tried engaging with him on aspects of the “myth” that are more essential than the ones he critiqued, but he’s a pretty basic, concrete thinker. Things fell off once he responded, “I am unable to follow any of these steps,” to material in one of the chapters I shared with him.
I read your Google doc above. Interesting perspective!
I don't know if it would be possible for us to convince each other, but I do understand the gist of where you're coming from. And I respect it as a position worthy of defending!
In my other book, I write probably close to 100,000 words demonstrating (or attempting to demonstrate) that rights are a real phenomenon. Not real like something you can put on a shelf or photograph, nor real like a magic force field, but real nonetheless. As real as love or truth or any other such concept, and demonstrably an outcome of natural realities. I am in the process of releasing installments of that book, and I have just reached that part of the book.
As such, we might be at the task of attempting to convince each other for a long time, LOL!
But I do get where you are coming from. I guess I would just say this. I defend rights as a natural phenomenon in a number of ways, but included among them are references to ontological facts that would be true even in we were to eliminate human wrongdoing. (As you describe in the Google doc.) In other words, the right would exist independent of whether or not any violations were occurring or likely to occur.
We might be able to reach the point to which you aspire—the elimination of those acts that we currently call "rights violations." I can stipulate to that. But in a free universe, occupied by beings with free will, the possibility remains. One could not eliminate the possibility without eliminating freedom itself. And that would be a crime worse than any specific rights violation.
What I am saying, in other words, is that rights can exist even if there are no violations occurring to justify reference to rights.
(Of course, accepting that also requires accepting the ethical naturalist position on rights that I espouse. But stipulating that, I don't think that rights cease to exist even if violations do. We may cease caring about them, or referencing them, but they do not cease to exist.)
For me, it's not about convincing you or anyone else. It's about working together to figure out what the fuck is really going on in you and me and everyone else, too. I'm not a propagandist. I'm a provocateur. I'm not trying to get people to think a certain way -- I'm trying to get them to fucking think for themselves, period. It's a rare art form.
I'll read your article. I have no clue what facts or evidence on which you base your belief that rights are a real phenomenon. As a human act of imagination and construction, sure, those are real. But the rights themselves which we imagined and coined and declared? That our conception of right or the rights so conceived refer to actual phenomena in the non-imaginary world? I've never seen any and never seen anyone put them forward. I'll see whatchya got, that's for sure! 😁
Anyways, I'm less interested in that question than I am the more salient question, as stated in that excerpt. Even if rights are a real and natural phenomenon, what difference does it make if what happens without knowing them, declaring them, legislating them, or anything else turns out to be exactly what would happen if we knew them, declared them, legislated them, etc? If they make no difference in a world where we've solved the problem that they were conceived/found to only *mitigate*, what difference would it make whether they were a human construct or a real phenomenon? Specifically, what difference would the distinction make?
//
But in a free universe, occupied by beings with free will, the possibility remains. One could not eliminate the possibility without eliminating freedom itself. And that would be a crime worse than any specific rights violation.
//
The possibility would only remain if we managed to eliminate all the bad stuff but never got any smarter about how it arises, develops, gains traction, overwhelms, etc. That would be dumb, wouldn't it? But what if we got smarter about how bad shit starts and develops and used those smarts to figure out how to prevent it and make our thinking, culture, collective knowledge, society, and norms *caustic* to its emergence? Figuring that out is the only sensible "reason for our existence" I've ever heard: *solve the problem of evil*, in other words -- in reality, not in theory. Sure, if you let the wolf cub grow to 150 lbs before you do anything about it, yeah, your options will be limited. But what about making friends? Shaun Ellis, Werner Freund, and Jean Craighead George (all of whom had some success being accepted by a wolf pack) would probably have some great ideas about that. Ever see the guy who sits down by horses and aggressive dogs and other animals, and they feel so safe, comfortable, chill, and attracted to him that they walk over and lie down next to him? All he does is sit there. We haven't even begun to learn the possibilities yet. We're so sure we know already, *we avoid the ways and places that would lead us to them before we even try*. It's nuts.
I regret already that I used that term. 😅 I was so steeped in Christianity for so long, I can't help but think of theodicy every time I see it.
To answer, let me make the assumptions I see in your question explicit, and you tell me if/where I get it wrong:
1. Resolving the problem will take the form of an agenda that can be transformed into a proposable plan.
2. Any one or small number of people are capable of devising a resolution and constructing a proposal.
3. The resolution of the problem will be confined to the kinds of things that:
a. can be understood beforehand,
b. can be designed top-down,
c. are amenable to the management/control of a subset of human beings (usually quite small),
d. are directly applicable to the problem **within the confines of human awareness and competence**,
e. are implementable and operable **within the confines of human awareness and competence**,
e. and can be sufficiently evaluated before implementation by a subset of human beings (usually quite small).
I don't find any of those assumptions credible or defensible.
When we do resolve the problem of existence of evil (I like that better), we'll look back and see that neither any nor all of us could have anticipated what it took, let alone conceived a way to implement it. Why do I think so? Because every natural process from daily living to evolution works in ways that we barely see, let alone have a workable grasp on.
I don't mean we have no grasp. I mean that the grasp we do have is so myopic and weak that we cannot tell what the results will be in a day's time from doing XYZ now. We can reasonably estimate some of them, or even the bulk of them (or we'd end up as Darwin awardees), but the butterfly effects a month, year, decade, lifetime later? The generational effects? Not a hope in hell.
No one proposed, planned, implemented, and directed evolution, and yet... here we are.
I've got lots I could say about those assumptions, but in a nutshell: we've had 10,000 - 15,000 years to get top-down, hierarchically organized, expertise-driven design and development right and -- with respect to the psycho-sociological phenomena we could call "evil" -- we've not only failed miserably but, for all intents and purposes, we've **capitulated**. How many people are there in the world who not only sincerely believe that evil can be eradicated, but they've committed to actively pursuing its eradication? The effective, universal belief across humankind is that evil **cannot be eradicated** -- so, the problem of the existence of evil not only *cannot* be solved, but rather, **it will never be solved**.
My response to that is: that's a cynical, dumbshit belief that doesn't even pass the sniff test. No one knows that. It's no more epistemically valid than any other superstition. We can't say "can't" if we've never tried, and we can't say "can't" even if we've tried for generations: all we can say with honesty and integrity is "couldn't". I despise the hubris inherent in cynicism.
All that said, it's not like I have no ideas, lol. Here's what I see at this point.
The resolution will come from all of us together putting our heads together, imagining the world we **want** to live in, then coming to consensus, and then at each juncture, planning together the next steps as best we understand them. But there are prerequisites involving attitude and honesty. We are in no position attitudinally to even take the first step if we:
1. Are not supremely honest with both ourselves and everyone else and committed to remaining honest, no matter what. In other words, **we love honesty and being honest**. Does this mean we'll "never tell a lie"? No. It's not as naive or simplistic as that, because honesty is far more than mere mechanical correspondence between statement and referent.
2. Think futilistically, implicitly prefacing what we think, say, and do with, "It will never work, but..."
3. Have not made up our minds. Making up our minds can be a process or simply a decision: whatever it takes to get to the place where we know what we want, we're going to do whatever it takes to get it, and we're all in.
4. Have an escape plan. We're not committed if we're not all in, and if we're not all in we'll never quite be in a position to do what it will often take. Kinda like marriage is for someone who actually takes their vows seriously, or like a parent determined to find treatment for their terminally ill child in spite of all the "can't" and "thou shalt not" that confront them.
We must have made up our mind that evil will be eradicated, no question except how.
Then we start talking about it, all together.
That's my plan. 😁 It's actually a plan for a plan (as we used to say in IT in the 90s.)
No one on Earth (or in history, for that matter) is/was in a position to make the proposal you asked about. But, if we decide and commit to eradicating evil, then *corporately* we'll be able to *discover* how to eradicate it, whether it's in the form of a top-down plan, a bottom-up emergence, or what's more likely, a mix of both.
Something I'd like to mention that isn't directly responsive:
Top-down approaches are **always** deplorably less efficient and less effective than collaborative approaches. The comparison is actually a ruse, because the only way that top-down approaches *ever* work is via collaboration **that has been seized and controlled "from above"**. So the very predication and structure of top-down efforts inherently involve considerable, unavoidable dysfunctionality.
Especially when it comes to psycho-social shifts -- despite that we love to pick "heroes" and "saviors" out of the mix of phenomena that induced the shifts and pretend they were the causes when, for the most part, they were just in the right place and time doing the right things -- minds and cultures don't shift because a gaggle of geniuses figured out how to make them happen, but because the weight/mass of players and forces for and against reached a tipping point from one side to the other. After that, woe to them who stand in the way, lol.
What we need to do is implement ways at a granular level that induce and enable the changes we want to see **at that level** -- **both** within ourselves and in others -- see where it goes, decide what we want to do next, repeat. This is the **only** way, all things considered, that **anything** ever gets done. In a nutshell: instead of limiting ourselves to processes we have control over, we need to tap into the far more powerful processes that can only be accessed as a matter of **trust**. Trust-phobia is largely what got us in such a fucked up situation in the first place.
Individuality alone is toxic. It's the definition of tyranny, of "a tyrant," an individual tyrant. "The collective" is an individual: "the," as in "the tyrant." The collective, alone, is toxic.
Individuals gain power and insight when they function together in communities - not "the collective". Communities gain power and insight when they form larger communities.
But if they try form one community, "the collective" the individual communities must disappear.
Healthy communities consist of individuals (and individual communities) in cooperation and in competition, each of which is unhealthy, toxic, without the other.
I definitely agree that we need community, that community is good, and that the collective is toxic and bad. Indeed, I agree with all, though I am not sure I would describe individuality as toxic. Solitude, though, certainly seems like a disaster for the human person. We're not made for it.
I am just wary of anything that starts to edge closer to "the individual needs the group; therefore, the individual is just a cell of the group." I am not saying that you are doing that, but that is where leftists took, and inevitably take, the fact that we are social beings. So I try to avoid giving them ammo. And calling "individuality" tyrannical seems like something they would use as ammo.
For sure. That is (and perhaps ought to be called) the Frankl Formulation.
But also, they're not beating us now. They may never beat us. Or the beating may be years or decades away. But if we live in that space all the time, then aren't they, in a way, beating on us all the time?
"From our earliest years, the average frowns upon the outliers. Conformity is enforced. The unique and different are “weird.""
This part jumped out at me more than anything else, since it reminded me of a trilogy I read a couple years back - Beyond by Kate L. Mary. In it, the main character, Drea, becomes that outlier, asking questions when questions in her "Society" are forbidden. Of course, she's collectively frowned upon.
Her love interest, Jerick, is one they could classify among the "unique and different," and "weird" was a good way to describe him.
But Jerick also knew how evil and corrupt the Society was from a young age, even if those living in it were wired to be happy and compliant at all times, even when their entire lives were pre-planned ahead of time, 24/7, 365.
We may not quite be there just yet, but sometimes I wonder just how close we are unless we can reverse course.
Most definitely. I'd say the genre is young adult dystopian, set about 200 years into the future. Kate L. Mary found a way to insert Orwell's 1984 into the work, too. Book I's called Beyond the Wall.
The notion of "common good" has long bothered me. It lacks evidence, and if you dig below the shallowest surface level, the very hypothesis lacks sound logic.
It suffers from the same problem as phrases like "the public interest" and "world opinion." As you say, it falls apart under a cursory logical assault!
A litmus test of individualism versus collectivism asks whether the individual believes in tax payer funded education. Virtually all democrats support this. When a significant percentage of Republicans no longer support tax payer funded education we will be well on our way to where you want to go.
That's why I tend to try to speak to conservatives rather than to leftists. The gap is just to great with leftists. Indeed, their fundamental premises run counter to where I want to go.
But conservatives begin with most of the same core premises, and many can get to where we need to be.
At the age of 60+ years I have clear memories of the early 1970s where men, women, children were not endlessly suffocating and being soul-eaten and poisoned by the Tyrannical Nazi-S&M black-boot head kicking feminized West, baby-murdering family-fatherhood-childhood-self mutilating and murdering safety-first, libertyless constant monitoring males to suppress and allow only numbness or feminine-expressions, Safety non-hurtieness of VagFeelies Mind Body with never allow healthy impulsive masculine expressions without punishment, no more of our Joy-and-Love of Life splashing out to hug us all, because it is threatening to the testicle soul torturing GreatSatan Witch-filled Level of Hell, here where they make sure you never laugh that full rich God-Loving laugh because they Joy-murdered our souls.
--
After many back-and-forth interactions with ChatGPT AI it made clear the social, family, nation powerful roll that older women in families have, and used for most of mankind's earthly existence to share and encourage traditions, ethical and moral standards, family and tribe histories, guidance of the young and older family members and others, .., etc.
They were like a safe filled with Goodness and Wisdom, lovingly sharing till death covers and silences her in old-age.
So, I started to ask ChatGPT what damage could they do if they somehow became Toxic & poisonous to others and her loved, pushing corruption and death where Wisdom once flowed, and unable to realize the slow sowing of suicide self-hating endless psychological suffering and more - all carried and expressed as if it were True, Just, right-Ordered, Wise, and Good.
Let's image that whatever that Sickness she spreads constantly, it rapidly harms, make failures the normal, deep confusion, frustration, growing death all wrapped up in her hugs and loving expressions, and perhaps kills the males the quickest, and almost all the females carry it and spreads it until old age and death cover her.
Perhaps we can give this Satanic Poison a name .. say, maybe Feminism. Or something else.
Now I spent a lot of thinking effort in the thought-experiment that somehow this became true and spread and amplified and grew through the generations, killing most men, early, childless and kills their gene-lines stretching back to Adam & Eve, and Yet the females' health seem unaffected for all the soul-Love-Life-Culture murdering poisons she carries and spreads.
How could that evil be ripped free with the roots and burned-out to harmlessness; Earth, Earth, Ashes, Ashes, Dust, to Dust?
--
Well, I thought of one solution for God to use in His infinite Love of Man that would likely work if it be His Will.
Imagine God sends a Real pandemic that only kills women at menopause when most become death-spreading machines-from-Hell poisoning all near or close, for her remaining 40 years. Let's Imagine to God that it stays and killing the Infection for all long as womanhood started scratching and ripping and killing their way over man-benefactors, Providers, Protectors, Truth Justice Order spreading for God, Church, Man, Family, Nation, and futures of Love-Joy-Service to life and God.
So, let's figure the generational time between the day that The Tender Years Doctrine came into effect, to God's first Loving Correcting spreading pandemic poisoner is removed. 1873 AD to about later this year, 2025 AD.
152 years of Holy Cleansing of Sickening poisonous women from Mankind. Till year 2177 AD.
I image that society would reOrganize so young women would marry at around age of adulthood - 15 and the couple's two mothers would do most of the child raising, and if God Smiling Blessing on her and others near, then she would hold her grandchildren before she Holy Cleansed away.
It's the most likely chain of events that would be effective. And let's face it soul-sucking grasping free-loading putrid horrors, you and your mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, .. have forced those men and older boys to often horrible screaming deaths in your vote supporting endless wars, so it seem Just that you smile for the Mercy God may cover you with before death, and if you lack the virtue to Go with a loving smile than perhaps you are not worth the salty urine to piss on your corpse.
My wife turns 60 soon, and I am really glad she is still by my side. And she is nothing like what you describe.
That said, stipulating to the problems you enumerate, it is clear that any one person cannot alter society’s trajectory. But each person can attempt to change him/herself, advocate ideas to those close to him/her, and attempt to escape, to the greatest degree possible, the social infrastructure that created the problem…and to build something new. What else can one do?
My views have evolved since we last worked together, AB.
I do not believe that the system can be reformed or should be imposed upon anyone who does not give their explicit, voluntary, informed, transparent, and revokable consent. Since none of us ever gave that, the American system, and every other system of involuntary governance on the planet, is morally impermissible.
Thus, while I believe that we are better off with a Trump in the White House than with a Biden, I do not believe that the answer lies there.
You have a point Chris. And I suppose my IDEOLOGY-FREE ZONE that constitutes VIEWS ASKEW is on the same track. I've had it with ideology-driven politics and policy, so yeah, we are on the same track.
Nothing at all if one's senile. These are the senior moments that are memorable. Forever imprinted on my mind are ice cream images from 2020-2025 and double masked elderly men playing president.
Wow Christopher this chapter is so powerful! Great choice of quotes, I did not know of that "gem" from Obama.
I so much appreciate your wonderful powerful Conclusion:
"If hereditary authority (monarchy) was HumanGovernance 1.0, and majority authority (democracy) was 2.0, it is time to evolve to 3.0—the authority of each person over him or herself. It is time for genuine consent to replace the tawdry fiction of the tacit “social contract.” It is time to end the tyranny of the group over the individual.
We must find a way to enjoy the benefits of community while avoiding the horrors of collectivism…or even just the foibles of democracy. We may not be able to take everyone with us, and that is fine.
Indeed—that is part of the point: everyone must find their own way, by their own lights, and with their own consent. But those of us who can evolve should evolve.
And it begins (as we will discuss in our next installment) with the simple decision to
Stop caring what other people think."
Thanks, AV. Your support has a powerful effect on my energy to keep rolling.
As I was just saying to Kris, We can have community without violating rights. People have come to believe that that is impossible, but I think if we cannot figure out a way, then we don't deserve the title of sentient beings! We can do it. There must be a way!
That's a great attitude and I believe it is possible.
If we can't figure it out, then we're just lame.
We can, you have done the heavy lifting. I believe the biggest issues are: The hidden snakes, the overly ambitious whose real agenda is to be the despot and the government.
If we try to escape and sidestep them as much as possible, it gets us part of the way. Once enough of us do it, and we have strength in numbers, we will be able to go the rest of the way.
That's a great strategy.
Reading all that cringeworthy socialist/communist hype was agonizing! Indeed We are social, and We commune in AGGREGATE, contrary to what the power-lusting psychopaths would have Us believe.
Thank You for this look at the twisted perspectives the moneyed psychopaths in control on Our planet's view and efforts. And thank You for the suggestions for how We get out of Their mess.
More suggestions to come!
(Feel free to add yours.)
Mine is always, get free energy tech out in the open and obsolete Their only tool to power. Haha! And withdraw consent, of course.
“And it begins (as we will discuss in our next installment) with the simple decision to Stop caring what other people think.”
Epictetus summed up that thought when he said, “If you are ever tempted to look for outside approval, realize that you have compromised your integrity. If you need a witness, be your own.”
But that is the conundrum of living with so many of those who want to conform (but don’t ponder about their own integrity) and if Solomon Asch is correct, only 10-30% of the population have the courage to speak out (like you). I don’t like those odds…
“If you are ever tempted to look for outside approval, realize that you have compromised your integrity. If you need a witness, be your own.”
—Great quote. This is a part of the equation, for sure. Shared intentionality is wonderful, but so is personal intentionality. Isn't the group better off if each individual is also rocking it as an individual?
"But that is the conundrum of living with so many of those who want to conform"
—So that is a hint as to an objective. We stop living with them. Obviously that is easier said than done. But ultimately, the panarchic ideal is that they can live under whatever system they wish, and we can be next door to them and live under a different system. And that way their nonsense doesn't impact us as much. We don't have to care as much what they think, want, believe, or say—so long as it does not trespass or initiate force.
This ideal is a long way off, but the paradigm shift has to come first. We have to stop thinking that we "have to find ways to live together" and start looking at ways that we can CHOOSE to live how, and with whom, we wish.
most people prefer to be a herd. I think that is why so many jump on the jab wagon - herd immunity ! They have not even checked what the real scientists mean with that.
Thankfully I moved from a very crowded, suffocating place to a cabin in the woods. Not really a hermit, but very keen on my privacy. A bee but not one from the hive LOL
This is an absolutely great article!
I love bees!
Yes, most people want to be in the herd. So let them! That is the key. Somehow, we all must figure out that collective solutions are not needed. They should be free to live how they want, and we how we want, and neither should force anything upon the other.
Only in recognizing the individual does the whole evolve and become brighter like facets of a diamond.... adding facets to the brilliance.
Nicely said.
Bang on Christopher. Whenever discussing anarchism with the average person who sees it as an impossibility, I always make the point that anarchism is something we 'evolve' towards. When we all become more accountable as individuals the need for enforcement of rules should, by nature, become less and less necessary.
To most people, this notion will sound quite naive, they will say that human nature is violent and selfish and we will always need some form of rule and policing to keep order. I believe that we should hold anarchism as the ideal and constantly be striving towards it, at this point in our evolution that is going to take the form of individuals living by example, sharing ideas (like you are so generously doing) and experimenting with small communities of like minded folk. Human 3.0 is a grand idea.
"To most people, this notion will sound quite naive, they will say that human nature is violent and selfish and we will always need some form of rule and policing to keep order."
—So let them have it. And if we use force against them, then their system can respond appropriately. But that does not mean that we need to submit to their force ex ante.
Let my people go!
That last sentence is the key, and the greatest hurdle for most people to get beyond...
Right!
But part of the paradigm shift is for us to accept that and to arrange for a separation from them. They can and should be free to do what they wish. We need to begin moving towards an attitude and condition in which we do not concern ourselves with what they think or do.
Of course, that is difficult because we live in a stupid "democracy," in which what they believe can be imposed upon us by force through their votes, so in a practical way, it makes sense to care what they think and believe.
BUT…we have to stop doing so anyway, and then work towards escaping the system that imposes their views on us by force.
At first blush, it seems like the opposite would be the case—change the system first, so that we don't have to care. But that
A) isn't working, and shows no sign of working anytime in the next few thousand years,
B) perpetuates that system,
C) perpetuates the socio-psychological error that perpetuates the system.
So we have to make the move even though the system is still there and others who cannot get beyond the system are still there.
I'm genuinely curious. This isn't a "set-up" question. What would be your alternative the "stupid 'democracy'" we live in?
Thank you for the care you took in phrasing that. Given the nature of online textual communication, it is a wise precaution.
To say that this is a long story and then punt you over to all the writing I have done on the subject would no doubt be an annoyance. But it is a long story! 🤣
Simply put, the consent of the individual human person is the fundamental unit of moral concern, and no system that involves majorities, voting, representatives, taxation, and laws imposed by force can be consensual in any way. (Note: protective force deployed against those who have themselves initiated coercive force IS legitimate. But governments initiate coercive force {taxation, invented laws, etc.} in order to impose their so-called "protection." Not entirely unlike a mafia protection racket.)
The alternative would be a condition in which consent is actually respected. For me, that would be market anarchism. This can be described as follows:
Instead of a single entity claiming a monopoly to forcibly impose security and justice within a given territory and upon a captive people, private agencies can peacefully compete in a free and open market to provide security and justice to willing customers.
However, some people might wish to live differently. The Amish, for example, want to live according to their beliefs, and the systems they use to actualize those beliefs in the real world. Respect of consent would require that they be free to do so on their own property. Others will want to live in other ways. Some might even wish to continue living under a "stupid democracy" :-) All should be free to do so.
The solution, then, is panarchism: a condition in which people are free to choose their own way of life on their own property, or to select from any number of jurisdictionally coterminous governance providers, or providers of governance-like services.
That is as short a summary as possible of a very complex topic. But if you are interested, we can go deeper.
I like what you are saying here, though I have a hard time seeing how it could actually work. How do you get the people (government) who have control over so much force, to give it up?
I could swear that I answered this somewhere, but I don’t see it here. Did I answer it in Notes or something?
If there was an answer somewhere, I'm not aware of it but I haven't been following you all that long...
After some reading this afternoon I was musing over the idea of non-government, precious metals coinage as a way to do business and starve the beast simultaneously but I seem to remember someone coining their own money (I think it was in silver) not that long ago and ending up in federal prison; sort of reminiscent of that fellow back in Tudor England who translated the bible into English and got burned at the stake as a thank you for his effort, though his work did end up becoming the basis for the King James Bible...
The phrase that I came up with is social cohesion without violating the individual!
Consent is key or I can go somewhere else. That checks the out of control aspect of collective tyranny!
Polarity Management says we must learn to dance with the polar opposites or we get the darkness of one side or the other.
The other thought I have is Jonathan Haight’s Ted talk on universal values we all hold dear but to different degrees. I don’t agree with his policy advocacy re: smartphones. Anyway…
Chris, I love your work!
Thank you, and right on.
We can have community without violating rights. People have come to believe that that is impossible, but I think if we cannot figure out a way, then we don't deserve the title of sentient beings! We can do it. There must be a way!
There is a way! We just have to figure it out with those we engage with and scale it for those who want that way.
💯🔥
Actually there are many many many ways, never a one size fits all. Humans are all different
Sure. I was just talking about the top-level dichotomy of continuing with involuntary governance or trying something else. There are many many ways within the something else!
"I don’t agree with his policy advocacy re: smartphones."
—I don't know anything about this.
Here’s the link to his Ted talk: https://youtu.be/vs41JrnGaxc?si=-WNGa2rVBm7yDChn
He wrote the Anxious Generation and advocated policy chg.
Halfway through, but headed to dinner :-)
Nice article man! Lots of good stuff in there! I cracked up at the Obama quote, I've got a find the source and citation for that (unless you've got it handy and can share). #Just because you have an individual right (only one?) doesn't mean the government can't take it away whenever they want.# Wait! I thought human rights were inalienable? That would be some pretty powerful shit, being able to alienate the inalienable -- if it were real.
I do disagree that "evolving" is the answer to the falsely predicated individual vs. collective faux-paradox and the real-world near-certainty that one way or the other the collective will overrule the individual (i.e., we're talking about a cult.)
When humans are free from existential dread, there is no paradox, there is no overruling of the individual, because they're not trying to control each other, let alone a few control the rest.
When plagued by existential threat and operating under existential dread, we're forced into our most crude and rudimentary mental and relational modes and literally lose much of our capacity to behave humanly anymore, because those parts of our psyches get shut off in survival mode.
The illusion of tension between individual and collective is not essential, but an artifact of chronic survivalism.
I'm not saying we shouldn't evolve or don't need to evolve. I'm saying that evolution isn't the answer to our problems.
The answer to our problems is to eliminate the delusion of existential threat and with it the hallucination of existential dread, beginning in childhood.
Outside of war zones and poverty and natural disasters, very few children would experience existential dread if it weren't for their parents. Despite war zones and poverty and natural disasters, the vast majority of children encounter existential dread for the first time in their own families, usually from parents but sometimes from siblings.
Lloyd deMause, Alice Miller, and Judith Herman are great resources on this staunchly and vigorously avoided/denied topic.
"The illusion of tension between individual and collective is not essential, but an artifact of chronic survivalism. I'm not saying we shouldn't evolve or don't need to evolve. I'm saying that evolution isn't the answer to our problems."
—I think the problem-solution you offer has power to explain (and hopefully fix) much of what is going on.
You will see much more of what I mean by "evolve" if you read some of the rest of my work. Humans have many presuppositions about how we are supposed to interact and be governed, which have developed over millennia. It is understandable why they are there, but there are some that we are ready to move beyond. Some that we need to move beyond. But they are so longstanding and ingrained, and require enough of a leap, that the term "evolution" is appropriate.
I understand that well. The surprise for me that what looked like a big deal that would involve a lifetime of change (and a lot of deprogramming) turned out not to nearly be so involved. Typical outside seen from the cave vs. cave seen from under an open sky. Yeah, I'll be reading.
I was just out to dinner with my wife and we were talking about your concept of "chronic survivalism." But then the food came and we got distracted!
YOU HAVE A WIFE YOU CAN TALK WITH ABOUT THESE THINGS! HOLY SHIT MAN! YOU’RE FUCKING BLESSED!!!
does she have an older sister?
😆
All her sisters are married LOL. But I actually met her on a dating site 24 years ago, so those can actually work!
That said, philosophical discussions are not something she would do as much as I, if left to her own devices. But she's married to me, so she does it. Sometimes it's to humor me, but sometimes she really gets into it!
"That would be some pretty powerful shit, being able to alienate the inalienable -- if it were real."
—Oh, rights are real, and morally inalienable.
But that doesn't stop government officials, criminals, and @$$holes (but I repeat myself) from using force to alienate one from the _enjoyment_ of one's rights.
I found an excerpt that isn't too long and will give you an idea of where I'm coming from when it comes to rights. Way more to say than what's included, but don't want to dump on ya. Don't know how to attach a file here or embed screen shots, so here ya go: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QlYrnEvIrlbfOkGvBvgBb-R9q-CikGIB/view?usp=sharing
Let me know if you can't get to it.
This is probably a point we should correspond/chat/talk about. I’m busy writing/editing my book, Law Itself Is the Violation. My strategy is to look at rights, then use that discussion as a parallel to look at law. I’d started writing about rights (Liar’s World: The Rights Scam) in 2019 (mothballed now). Most of the material went into the Rights section of the current book. I began occasional correspondence with Bob Black in 2020, and he shared a draft of his now-published, The Myth of Human Rights. I tried engaging with him on aspects of the “myth” that are more essential than the ones he critiqued, but he’s a pretty basic, concrete thinker. Things fell off once he responded, “I am unable to follow any of these steps,” to material in one of the chapters I shared with him.
I plan to read, “Your Rights Are Real” (https://christophercook.substack.com/p/your-rights-are-real?utm_source=publication-search).
I read your Google doc above. Interesting perspective!
I don't know if it would be possible for us to convince each other, but I do understand the gist of where you're coming from. And I respect it as a position worthy of defending!
In my other book, I write probably close to 100,000 words demonstrating (or attempting to demonstrate) that rights are a real phenomenon. Not real like something you can put on a shelf or photograph, nor real like a magic force field, but real nonetheless. As real as love or truth or any other such concept, and demonstrably an outcome of natural realities. I am in the process of releasing installments of that book, and I have just reached that part of the book.
As such, we might be at the task of attempting to convince each other for a long time, LOL!
But I do get where you are coming from. I guess I would just say this. I defend rights as a natural phenomenon in a number of ways, but included among them are references to ontological facts that would be true even in we were to eliminate human wrongdoing. (As you describe in the Google doc.) In other words, the right would exist independent of whether or not any violations were occurring or likely to occur.
We might be able to reach the point to which you aspire—the elimination of those acts that we currently call "rights violations." I can stipulate to that. But in a free universe, occupied by beings with free will, the possibility remains. One could not eliminate the possibility without eliminating freedom itself. And that would be a crime worse than any specific rights violation.
What I am saying, in other words, is that rights can exist even if there are no violations occurring to justify reference to rights.
(Of course, accepting that also requires accepting the ethical naturalist position on rights that I espouse. But stipulating that, I don't think that rights cease to exist even if violations do. We may cease caring about them, or referencing them, but they do not cease to exist.)
For me, it's not about convincing you or anyone else. It's about working together to figure out what the fuck is really going on in you and me and everyone else, too. I'm not a propagandist. I'm a provocateur. I'm not trying to get people to think a certain way -- I'm trying to get them to fucking think for themselves, period. It's a rare art form.
I'll read your article. I have no clue what facts or evidence on which you base your belief that rights are a real phenomenon. As a human act of imagination and construction, sure, those are real. But the rights themselves which we imagined and coined and declared? That our conception of right or the rights so conceived refer to actual phenomena in the non-imaginary world? I've never seen any and never seen anyone put them forward. I'll see whatchya got, that's for sure! 😁
Anyways, I'm less interested in that question than I am the more salient question, as stated in that excerpt. Even if rights are a real and natural phenomenon, what difference does it make if what happens without knowing them, declaring them, legislating them, or anything else turns out to be exactly what would happen if we knew them, declared them, legislated them, etc? If they make no difference in a world where we've solved the problem that they were conceived/found to only *mitigate*, what difference would it make whether they were a human construct or a real phenomenon? Specifically, what difference would the distinction make?
//
But in a free universe, occupied by beings with free will, the possibility remains. One could not eliminate the possibility without eliminating freedom itself. And that would be a crime worse than any specific rights violation.
//
The possibility would only remain if we managed to eliminate all the bad stuff but never got any smarter about how it arises, develops, gains traction, overwhelms, etc. That would be dumb, wouldn't it? But what if we got smarter about how bad shit starts and develops and used those smarts to figure out how to prevent it and make our thinking, culture, collective knowledge, society, and norms *caustic* to its emergence? Figuring that out is the only sensible "reason for our existence" I've ever heard: *solve the problem of evil*, in other words -- in reality, not in theory. Sure, if you let the wolf cub grow to 150 lbs before you do anything about it, yeah, your options will be limited. But what about making friends? Shaun Ellis, Werner Freund, and Jean Craighead George (all of whom had some success being accepted by a wolf pack) would probably have some great ideas about that. Ever see the guy who sits down by horses and aggressive dogs and other animals, and they feel so safe, comfortable, chill, and attracted to him that they walk over and lie down next to him? All he does is sit there. We haven't even begun to learn the possibilities yet. We're so sure we know already, *we avoid the ways and places that would lead us to them before we even try*. It's nuts.
The heavy rights arguments are mostly in the other book (https://christophercook.substack.com/t/thefreedomscale), installments of which I am still pumping out. It's 250K words and I'm only halfway through.
So let's focus on your main question. How do you propose to solve the problem of evil?
I regret already that I used that term. 😅 I was so steeped in Christianity for so long, I can't help but think of theodicy every time I see it.
To answer, let me make the assumptions I see in your question explicit, and you tell me if/where I get it wrong:
1. Resolving the problem will take the form of an agenda that can be transformed into a proposable plan.
2. Any one or small number of people are capable of devising a resolution and constructing a proposal.
3. The resolution of the problem will be confined to the kinds of things that:
a. can be understood beforehand,
b. can be designed top-down,
c. are amenable to the management/control of a subset of human beings (usually quite small),
d. are directly applicable to the problem **within the confines of human awareness and competence**,
e. are implementable and operable **within the confines of human awareness and competence**,
e. and can be sufficiently evaluated before implementation by a subset of human beings (usually quite small).
I don't find any of those assumptions credible or defensible.
When we do resolve the problem of existence of evil (I like that better), we'll look back and see that neither any nor all of us could have anticipated what it took, let alone conceived a way to implement it. Why do I think so? Because every natural process from daily living to evolution works in ways that we barely see, let alone have a workable grasp on.
I don't mean we have no grasp. I mean that the grasp we do have is so myopic and weak that we cannot tell what the results will be in a day's time from doing XYZ now. We can reasonably estimate some of them, or even the bulk of them (or we'd end up as Darwin awardees), but the butterfly effects a month, year, decade, lifetime later? The generational effects? Not a hope in hell.
No one proposed, planned, implemented, and directed evolution, and yet... here we are.
I've got lots I could say about those assumptions, but in a nutshell: we've had 10,000 - 15,000 years to get top-down, hierarchically organized, expertise-driven design and development right and -- with respect to the psycho-sociological phenomena we could call "evil" -- we've not only failed miserably but, for all intents and purposes, we've **capitulated**. How many people are there in the world who not only sincerely believe that evil can be eradicated, but they've committed to actively pursuing its eradication? The effective, universal belief across humankind is that evil **cannot be eradicated** -- so, the problem of the existence of evil not only *cannot* be solved, but rather, **it will never be solved**.
My response to that is: that's a cynical, dumbshit belief that doesn't even pass the sniff test. No one knows that. It's no more epistemically valid than any other superstition. We can't say "can't" if we've never tried, and we can't say "can't" even if we've tried for generations: all we can say with honesty and integrity is "couldn't". I despise the hubris inherent in cynicism.
All that said, it's not like I have no ideas, lol. Here's what I see at this point.
The resolution will come from all of us together putting our heads together, imagining the world we **want** to live in, then coming to consensus, and then at each juncture, planning together the next steps as best we understand them. But there are prerequisites involving attitude and honesty. We are in no position attitudinally to even take the first step if we:
1. Are not supremely honest with both ourselves and everyone else and committed to remaining honest, no matter what. In other words, **we love honesty and being honest**. Does this mean we'll "never tell a lie"? No. It's not as naive or simplistic as that, because honesty is far more than mere mechanical correspondence between statement and referent.
2. Think futilistically, implicitly prefacing what we think, say, and do with, "It will never work, but..."
3. Have not made up our minds. Making up our minds can be a process or simply a decision: whatever it takes to get to the place where we know what we want, we're going to do whatever it takes to get it, and we're all in.
4. Have an escape plan. We're not committed if we're not all in, and if we're not all in we'll never quite be in a position to do what it will often take. Kinda like marriage is for someone who actually takes their vows seriously, or like a parent determined to find treatment for their terminally ill child in spite of all the "can't" and "thou shalt not" that confront them.
We must have made up our mind that evil will be eradicated, no question except how.
Then we start talking about it, all together.
That's my plan. 😁 It's actually a plan for a plan (as we used to say in IT in the 90s.)
No one on Earth (or in history, for that matter) is/was in a position to make the proposal you asked about. But, if we decide and commit to eradicating evil, then *corporately* we'll be able to *discover* how to eradicate it, whether it's in the form of a top-down plan, a bottom-up emergence, or what's more likely, a mix of both.
Something I'd like to mention that isn't directly responsive:
Top-down approaches are **always** deplorably less efficient and less effective than collaborative approaches. The comparison is actually a ruse, because the only way that top-down approaches *ever* work is via collaboration **that has been seized and controlled "from above"**. So the very predication and structure of top-down efforts inherently involve considerable, unavoidable dysfunctionality.
Especially when it comes to psycho-social shifts -- despite that we love to pick "heroes" and "saviors" out of the mix of phenomena that induced the shifts and pretend they were the causes when, for the most part, they were just in the right place and time doing the right things -- minds and cultures don't shift because a gaggle of geniuses figured out how to make them happen, but because the weight/mass of players and forces for and against reached a tipping point from one side to the other. After that, woe to them who stand in the way, lol.
What we need to do is implement ways at a granular level that induce and enable the changes we want to see **at that level** -- **both** within ourselves and in others -- see where it goes, decide what we want to do next, repeat. This is the **only** way, all things considered, that **anything** ever gets done. In a nutshell: instead of limiting ourselves to processes we have control over, we need to tap into the far more powerful processes that can only be accessed as a matter of **trust**. Trust-phobia is largely what got us in such a fucked up situation in the first place.
" I've got a find the source and citation for that (unless you've got it handy and can share)."
—2008 Philadelphia primary debate, Apr 16, 2008
Individuality alone is toxic. It's the definition of tyranny, of "a tyrant," an individual tyrant. "The collective" is an individual: "the," as in "the tyrant." The collective, alone, is toxic.
Individuals gain power and insight when they function together in communities - not "the collective". Communities gain power and insight when they form larger communities.
But if they try form one community, "the collective" the individual communities must disappear.
Healthy communities consist of individuals (and individual communities) in cooperation and in competition, each of which is unhealthy, toxic, without the other.
I definitely agree that we need community, that community is good, and that the collective is toxic and bad. Indeed, I agree with all, though I am not sure I would describe individuality as toxic. Solitude, though, certainly seems like a disaster for the human person. We're not made for it.
I am just wary of anything that starts to edge closer to "the individual needs the group; therefore, the individual is just a cell of the group." I am not saying that you are doing that, but that is where leftists took, and inevitably take, the fact that we are social beings. So I try to avoid giving them ammo. And calling "individuality" tyrannical seems like something they would use as ammo.
Two kinds of tyranny. Physical abuse and mental abuse. As they beat you to death, at least you do not have to surrender your mind to these thugs.
For sure. That is (and perhaps ought to be called) the Frankl Formulation.
But also, they're not beating us now. They may never beat us. Or the beating may be years or decades away. But if we live in that space all the time, then aren't they, in a way, beating on us all the time?
"From our earliest years, the average frowns upon the outliers. Conformity is enforced. The unique and different are “weird.""
This part jumped out at me more than anything else, since it reminded me of a trilogy I read a couple years back - Beyond by Kate L. Mary. In it, the main character, Drea, becomes that outlier, asking questions when questions in her "Society" are forbidden. Of course, she's collectively frowned upon.
Her love interest, Jerick, is one they could classify among the "unique and different," and "weird" was a good way to describe him.
But Jerick also knew how evil and corrupt the Society was from a young age, even if those living in it were wired to be happy and compliant at all times, even when their entire lives were pre-planned ahead of time, 24/7, 365.
We may not quite be there just yet, but sometimes I wonder just how close we are unless we can reverse course.
It's a reasonable question.
Do you recommend the book?
Most definitely. I'd say the genre is young adult dystopian, set about 200 years into the future. Kate L. Mary found a way to insert Orwell's 1984 into the work, too. Book I's called Beyond the Wall.
The notion of "common good" has long bothered me. It lacks evidence, and if you dig below the shallowest surface level, the very hypothesis lacks sound logic.
💯
It suffers from the same problem as phrases like "the public interest" and "world opinion." As you say, it falls apart under a cursory logical assault!
A litmus test of individualism versus collectivism asks whether the individual believes in tax payer funded education. Virtually all democrats support this. When a significant percentage of Republicans no longer support tax payer funded education we will be well on our way to where you want to go.
That's why I tend to try to speak to conservatives rather than to leftists. The gap is just to great with leftists. Indeed, their fundamental premises run counter to where I want to go.
But conservatives begin with most of the same core premises, and many can get to where we need to be.
At the age of 60+ years I have clear memories of the early 1970s where men, women, children were not endlessly suffocating and being soul-eaten and poisoned by the Tyrannical Nazi-S&M black-boot head kicking feminized West, baby-murdering family-fatherhood-childhood-self mutilating and murdering safety-first, libertyless constant monitoring males to suppress and allow only numbness or feminine-expressions, Safety non-hurtieness of VagFeelies Mind Body with never allow healthy impulsive masculine expressions without punishment, no more of our Joy-and-Love of Life splashing out to hug us all, because it is threatening to the testicle soul torturing GreatSatan Witch-filled Level of Hell, here where they make sure you never laugh that full rich God-Loving laugh because they Joy-murdered our souls.
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After many back-and-forth interactions with ChatGPT AI it made clear the social, family, nation powerful roll that older women in families have, and used for most of mankind's earthly existence to share and encourage traditions, ethical and moral standards, family and tribe histories, guidance of the young and older family members and others, .., etc.
They were like a safe filled with Goodness and Wisdom, lovingly sharing till death covers and silences her in old-age.
So, I started to ask ChatGPT what damage could they do if they somehow became Toxic & poisonous to others and her loved, pushing corruption and death where Wisdom once flowed, and unable to realize the slow sowing of suicide self-hating endless psychological suffering and more - all carried and expressed as if it were True, Just, right-Ordered, Wise, and Good.
Let's image that whatever that Sickness she spreads constantly, it rapidly harms, make failures the normal, deep confusion, frustration, growing death all wrapped up in her hugs and loving expressions, and perhaps kills the males the quickest, and almost all the females carry it and spreads it until old age and death cover her.
Perhaps we can give this Satanic Poison a name .. say, maybe Feminism. Or something else.
Now I spent a lot of thinking effort in the thought-experiment that somehow this became true and spread and amplified and grew through the generations, killing most men, early, childless and kills their gene-lines stretching back to Adam & Eve, and Yet the females' health seem unaffected for all the soul-Love-Life-Culture murdering poisons she carries and spreads.
How could that evil be ripped free with the roots and burned-out to harmlessness; Earth, Earth, Ashes, Ashes, Dust, to Dust?
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Well, I thought of one solution for God to use in His infinite Love of Man that would likely work if it be His Will.
Imagine God sends a Real pandemic that only kills women at menopause when most become death-spreading machines-from-Hell poisoning all near or close, for her remaining 40 years. Let's Imagine to God that it stays and killing the Infection for all long as womanhood started scratching and ripping and killing their way over man-benefactors, Providers, Protectors, Truth Justice Order spreading for God, Church, Man, Family, Nation, and futures of Love-Joy-Service to life and God.
So, let's figure the generational time between the day that The Tender Years Doctrine came into effect, to God's first Loving Correcting spreading pandemic poisoner is removed. 1873 AD to about later this year, 2025 AD.
152 years of Holy Cleansing of Sickening poisonous women from Mankind. Till year 2177 AD.
I image that society would reOrganize so young women would marry at around age of adulthood - 15 and the couple's two mothers would do most of the child raising, and if God Smiling Blessing on her and others near, then she would hold her grandchildren before she Holy Cleansed away.
It's the most likely chain of events that would be effective. And let's face it soul-sucking grasping free-loading putrid horrors, you and your mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, .. have forced those men and older boys to often horrible screaming deaths in your vote supporting endless wars, so it seem Just that you smile for the Mercy God may cover you with before death, and if you lack the virtue to Go with a loving smile than perhaps you are not worth the salty urine to piss on your corpse.
Man-up cnt!
My wife turns 60 soon, and I am really glad she is still by my side. And she is nothing like what you describe.
That said, stipulating to the problems you enumerate, it is clear that any one person cannot alter society’s trajectory. But each person can attempt to change him/herself, advocate ideas to those close to him/her, and attempt to escape, to the greatest degree possible, the social infrastructure that created the problem…and to build something new. What else can one do?
The answer is found in THE FIRST HUNDRED DAYS Chris.
https://andrewgbenjamin.substack.com/p/the-first-100-days
My views have evolved since we last worked together, AB.
I do not believe that the system can be reformed or should be imposed upon anyone who does not give their explicit, voluntary, informed, transparent, and revokable consent. Since none of us ever gave that, the American system, and every other system of involuntary governance on the planet, is morally impermissible.
Thus, while I believe that we are better off with a Trump in the White House than with a Biden, I do not believe that the answer lies there.
You have a point Chris. And I suppose my IDEOLOGY-FREE ZONE that constitutes VIEWS ASKEW is on the same track. I've had it with ideology-driven politics and policy, so yeah, we are on the same track.
Panarchism FTW
TERRIFIC. A good analysis.
Socialism = Tyranny.
NAZI is socialist by nature. Leftwing.
Leftwing = Tyranny.
One cannot negotiate peace with maniacs who want to leave behind the legacy of Catherine the Great.
There's a time for every season.
Let's make WAR, not Ice Cream!
Thank you, Andrew.
Wait…what's wrong with ice cream?
Nothing at all if one's senile. These are the senior moments that are memorable. Forever imprinted on my mind are ice cream images from 2020-2025 and double masked elderly men playing president.
Oh, THAT ice cream.