Stupid or Evil? The Automatism of the System
After the last three years, NO 'conspiracy theory' is far-fetched.
In yesterday’s post, we discussed possible underlying reasons why the left in this country would want to make it easier for criminals to victimize peaceful people. States throughout the country have engaged in so-called “bail reform,” a practice that, contrary to the smokescreens being thrown up in its defense, clearly puts innocent humans at risk. States like California have made it easier to shoplift, and are on the brink of making it much harder for people to defend their property. Soros-backed DAs are shockingly soft on crime.
When someone does something, it is because they intend to do it. Actions may sometimes produce unintended results, but actions themselves are generally not accidental. These things are being done by people who intend to do them. Yesterday, we talked about possible motivations behind these actions…
To degrade property rights, both under the law and in human psychology,
To condition impotent passivity in the face of crime,
To create anarcho-tyrannical conditions that punish the law-abiding rather than criminals, to condition fear and acquiescence to the state.
If all of that sounds excessively ‘conspiratorial,’ then consider the last three years…
We were subjected to economic, psychological, and medical warfare. There was ample evidence even before they began, and mounting evidence thereafter, that masks, lockdowns, mRNA vaccines (and more) would be ineffective and were likely to cause terrible damage. They did them anyway. When it became obvious that they were causing the predicted damage, they didn’t let off the gas—they doubled down. They attacked people for even speaking a word of dissent.
One of the most shocking occurrences—which, frankly, does not get nearly the discussion it should—is the case of ivermectin. As I noted on Monday, “Ivermectin has been around for decades. It has practically eliminated the dread disease river blindness. Its creators won a Nobel Prize. It has potential as a cure for cancer. It has been called a miracle cure and a ‘wonder drug’ for decades. It is an effective treatment for covid. They eat it like candy in Africa. It is safer than aspirin and has been administered four billion times across planet Earth. It was widely and easily available in the West…until we needed it the most. Then they made it impossible to get. Virtually all doctors stopped prescribing it. Pharmacies stopped filling what few prescriptions one could still get. Medical organizations, the media, and the rest of the Matrix demonized it.” Suddenly, through some mysterious top-down process that spread through the whole system, for mercenary reasons or worse, a medicine that could have saved loved ones was simply yanked from our reach.
After our recent tumble down the dystopian rabbit hole, how can anyone take anything they say or do at face value anymore?
A question usually arises when government does something stupid and damaging: was it well-meaning ignorance or intentional evil? I have come to believe that in many cases, it is both at the same time…
A small group at the top with a sinister agenda can easily transmit that agenda down through a system, and then the hierarchical nature of the system implements that agenda. People throughout the system may be well-meaning…ignorant…protecting their jobs…ideologically possessed…engaged in petty corruption…venally self-interested…engaged in preening virtue-signaling…and a host of other conditions and behaviors that leave them unaware of the underlying agenda. The agenda gets implemented nonetheless, through what Vaclav Havel defined, in part, as “blind automatism which drives the system.”1
Ayn Rand notes the same thing in Atlas Shrugged, when one of her characters laments that there is no one person driving her world’s descent into totalitarianism and failure—no head of the snake that can be chopped off.2 The phenomenon ends up being a self-reinforcing social process that, once going, is difficult to stop. (Some people find Atlas Shrugged to be ponderous and preachy, but if you look at it as both a novel and as a work of philosophy, and appreciate it as both simultaneously, it works a lot better. I recommend it. The picture Rand paints of America’s descent into self-inflicted doom is instructive, and will seem all-too-familiar if one thinks of it in the context of the last three years.)
Even more so, I recommend Havel’s essay “The Power of the Powerless.” It is short, but just long enough to draw an effective sketch of how 20th century totalitarianism worked in the real world. The similarities between late-Cold-War Czechoslovakia and the West today are truly chilling.
*Chris now spots an opportunity to climb onto his hobby horse…*
This is a strong argument that government—even the best “democratic” kind of government—is inherently dangerous. It gives everyone power over the lives of everyone else. That will sound appealing to control freaks, and to people who are tempted by inherent personality traits towards anything that smacks of “togetherness” (from mawkish co-dependence to forced collectivism). But it is actually a very bad thing.
The individual should have power over his own life—over his body, choices, and actions. Those with whom he is close, with whom he voluntarily chooses to associate, will of course have an influence. That is normal and natural. A giant system in which automatism and power subject him to the various aims, whims, and flaws of a million other people, is not natural at all. And notice, please, how it can happen in a democracy just as easily as it can in a classic totalitarian state.
The switch from monarchy (hereditary rule) to democracy (majority rule) may have been a necessary step in our evolution, but it was not actually that much of an improvement. We must evolve further, to the point where the individual human person is ruled by no one but himself, and is ONLY subjected to force if he has first initiated force upon another. The individual must be set free from any system that allows him to become the victim of blind automatism.
I challenge you, in the name of goodness and intellectual inquiry, to make a case to the contrary.
Havel, Vaclav, “The Power of the Powerless,” §IV
I am pretty sure it was Dagny Taggart, but I don’t remember the exact quote and I am not going to go skim through 600,000 words to find it.