A Warning From Seaside Heights

Governments love a good crisis. In the chaotic, confused moments following a tragedy, people are thrown into a stressed state that undermines their abilities to think and act for themselves. They cry out for someone to come along and help, and the government is normally that “someone” charged with leading the way out of whatever mess was created. No one seems to remember the vast failings of past government relief and recovery efforts, and all seem to believe (or at least hope) that the government will get it right this time. More tragically, no one seems to notice that this state of confusion is exactly what those in power use to their advantage to push “solutions” that are presented to the public as genuine humanitarian endeavors, but in reality only serve to increase the power and wealth of the governing class. Witness Seaside Heights.

SUPPORT THE TROOPS!

You hear it all the time – “I don’t approve of the war, but I support the troops.” This “support” group, just as cancer awareness groups, identifies itself with little yellow ribbons displayed on home windows and minivan bumpers. This is fitting, as the increase in numbers of talented young men and women filling the ranks of our military is a cancer upon our nation, and the world. In contrast to the cancer awareness movement, those who display the ribbons do not want to see the numbers of those afflicted with the disease of military indoctrination eliminated or even reduced in number; in fact, many of these ribbon-wearers actually advocate for the continued growth and vitality of this cancer. They call for more money, more weapons, more material, and more vehicles to be sent to the front to provide the troops with the greatest advantage possible on the battlefield. Rarely do you hear one mention the only way to actually support the troops and to ensure their safety from enemy weapons (sold to the enemy by American arms dealers) – BRING THEM ALL HOME. NOW.

Lysander Spooner on Voting

“In truth, in the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of consent, even for the time being. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, without his consent having even been asked a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practice this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further, that, if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot, he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave. And he has no other alternative than these two. In self-defence, he attempts the former. His case is analogous to that of a man who has been forced into battle, where he must either kill others, or be killed himself. Because, to save his own life in battle, a man takes the lives of his opponents, it is not to be inferred that the battle is one of his own choosing. Neither in contests with the ballot – which is a mere substitute for a bullet – because, as his only chance of self-preservation, a man uses a ballot, is it to be inferred that the contest is one into which he voluntarily entered; that he voluntarily set up all his own natural rights, as a stake against those of others, to be lost or won by the mere power of numbers. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, in an exigency into which he had been forced by others, and in which no other means of self-defence offered, he, as a matter of necessity, used the only one that was left to him.

“Doubtless the most miserable of men, under the most oppressive government in the world, if allowed the ballot, would use it, if they could see any chance of thereby meliorating their condition. But it would not, therefore, be a legitimate inference that the government itself, that crushes them, was one which they had voluntarily set up, or even consented to.”

Ideas Are Not Scarce Resources

“I invented nothing new. I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. Had I worked 50 or 10 or even 5 years before, I would have failed. So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready, and then it’s inevitable. To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense.” – Henry Ford

Everything that exists – products, processes, ideas, philosophies, and life itself – is a copy, transformation, or combination of any one or a number of preexisting products, processes, ideas, philosophies, or lifeforms. Even so-called “original” ideas would not be possible were it not for the existing body of knowledge at the time. Ray Charles began his career adapting melodies from preexisting gospel songs. Just about every British rock band to come out in the 60’s and 70’s started off performing covers of American blues musicians. Early (and modern) rap music heavily sampled beats and riffs from existing rock songs to provide their backing tracks. George Lucas drew from countless influences including Westerns and the Japanese filmmaker Kurosawa when creating Star Wars. Thomas Edison’s incandescent light bulb was an adaptation of an existing design with a different substance used for the filament. The typewriter’s design was borrowed from that of the piano. Henry Ford took existing manufacturing methods and combined them to create his assembly line. The printing press was a collection of many parts combined and rearranged for a specific purpose. The influences themselves were not possible if not for some earlier invention. The idea to write this came from a conversation I had with my fiancée in which she rightly claimed that most of my writing is inspired and sometimes ripped right from our nightly conversations.

The concept of “creation” as pulling something completely nonexistent from the ether and bringing it to existence is a myth that keeps the vast majority of us from fully exploring the great amount of knowledge that exists in the world. Every new thing created today contains within it pieces of prior knowledge gained and shared over millennia that have been copied, adapted, and/or combined into a new arrangement. Any attempt to alter this vast accumulated knowledge from its natural, freely accessible state is an attempt to kill the innovative spirit of each and every human being, the very spirit that spurs us to seek alternatives to the force-fed, destructive “solutions” provided to us by the very creators of the problems we seek to solve. Creativity isn’t magic; it’s simply an ability to draw certain pieces of accumulated knowledge and copy or transform them into a new arrangement. Barriers prohibiting access to any part of the knowledge gained over the millennia must simply be removed. The concept of intellectual property and all laws and regulations that enforce it must die.

Crisis and the March Toward Totalitarianism

“Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.” – Milton Friedman

“Never let a good crisis go to waste” – Rahm Emmanuel

People do not generally allow infringements upon their liberties; they will vehemently oppose any action which directly affects their ability to think, speak, and act as they wish. Our bodies and minds are ours alone, and we’d be damned if we were to allow anyone take take them from us. In fact, our governmental system was supposedly created to ensure that these rights would never be constrained. However, since the inception of the Constitution, the United States government has steadily increased its power and influence over nearly every aspect of our lives. This is the result of over 200 years of (mostly) gradual changes that alone were not enough to convince the majority of the people of their perniciousness; a tax would be implemented regarding a particular product or service, and only those directly affected by the new law are those who would complain and/or protest. Because the number of those affected is comparatively small to the population at large, their cries reach very few, and even less are convinced of the indirect damage that will come to them as a result of said law. This gradualist approach is effective in that the elite’s agenda continues to inch forward, but it takes far too long for their liking. Luckily for them, most people are easily manipulated by their emotions, especially fear, and moments of crisis are the perfect opportunity for a government to grab a much larger piece of the liberty pie than they normally would be allowed to take at one time.

In Praise of Slavery

“And I’m proud to be an American
Where at least I know I’m free
And I won’t forget the men who died
Who gave that right to me

And I gladly stand up next to you
And defend her still today
‘Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land
God Bless the U.S.A.”

– “God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood

We are enslaved. We are not physically chained to one another, forced at the crack of a whip to keep producing for the benefit of our masters. Rather, we dutifully obey the arbitrary whims of those in power, and willingly submit to the regular denials of Liberty that increase with every piece of legislation and executive order forced upon us by those who control us. While most modern slaves will vehemently deny this, it does not change the facts of the case.

Grief and The Awakened

“All truth passes through three stages. First is is ridiculed. Second, it violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident” – Arthur Schopenhauer

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s 5 Stages of Grief is one of the most widely known psychological models. Kubler-Ross’s aim was to help explain the process of death and dying. When one’s eyes become opened to the truth – that all politics is smoke and mirrors designed to keep the masses distracted while the power brokers continue unabated toward their ultimate goal of total dominance over every man, woman, and child – that person goes through a similar grieving process. The death is not a physical, but a paradigmatic one. One must toss aside a lifetime’s worth of indoctrination so complete and thorough that it has influenced nearly every decision he has made, and the process can feel a bit like the death of the person himself.

Cognitive Dissonance and Quasi-Intellectuals

“The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system, and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.” – Morpheus, The Matrix

Cognitive Dissonance is the feeling of discomfort that coincides with holding two disparate views simultaneously in one’s mind. It occurs most often when one takes an action that is counter to his internal beliefs. The action cannot be taken back, yet it runs so counter to one’s beliefs that one doubts his inherent “goodness” or self-worth. This creates turmoil in a person’s mind, and the person in turn will search for a way to bring the action and belief into accord to relieve the mental stress. This most often occurs through the use of justifications or rationalizations. An oft-cited example is the cigarette smoker – his desire to live a long, healthy life is undermined by smoking, yet the smoker will have a number of reasons why he continues smoke. The idea of cognitive dissonance was introduced by Leon Festinger in his 1956 work When Prophecy Fails, which chronicled the events within an Apocalyptic cult that had to confront the reality that their prophesy was not coming true. Once the prophesied Apocalypse did not come to pass, many members rather than leaving the cult became convinced that it was their actions that spared the world from complete annihilation. Rather than leave the cult, they adopted this new belief and set about proselytizing even more fervently than before.

Psychopaths Among Us

We are surrounded by psychopaths. Recent statistics indicate that roughly 4% of the population – about 78 million in the United States – meet the criteria for being labeled a psychopath. When one thinks of a psychopath, images of John Wayne Gacy, Theodore Kazinsky, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, and most recently James Holmes. While some psychopaths will commit one or a number of violent crimes, most never do, and those who do engage in mass violence frequently do not meet the personality traits of the common psychopath. For the most part, the psychopath is able to integrate himself within society and never commits a violent act, instead satisfying his narcissism through manipulation and control of other people. The actions of the psychopath tear away at the very fabric of our liberty and undermine peaceful, loving efforts to unleash the individual from the chains of modern slavery. These “successful” (the “unsuccessful” ones being those who have acted violently and are incarcerated) psychopaths are far greater in number among the population, and yet so few show themselves as such, so how can one spot the true psychopaths among us?

Where’s the Outrage?

Why do we seem to naturally suppress any emotion outside the realm of socially-acceptable behavior? Why are those unafraid to emote exiled to the outskirts of popular society, their impassioned entreaties to the hearts and souls of every free-born individual reaching none of their intended targets? How have we come to not only embrace, but to unwittingly enforce among ourselves, the artificial limits on human behavior imposed upon us in the name of country? Why do we accept daily infringements against our humanity, just because we are told that it will make our society “fair” or “secure”? Why are we so willing to accept large-scale theft, enslavement, and murder in when done under the guise of governmental authority and are yet so willing to demonize those who commit such acts individually and on a much smaller scale – are these acts not equally worthy of our vitriolic derision, regardless of scale and whether the actors wear a uniform? What will it take to reverse this trend? How can one awaken the spirit that still burns, however faintly, inside each and every one of us and reclaim our freedom? How can this spirit help us to remain nonviolent when faced with an enemy that was born, raised, and sustains itself through the unchecked use of violence? How can we ensure that this collective spirit does not turn violent in return and destroy itself before affecting any real change?