incidentally if you think my use of the term slavery is ridiculously inaccurate, outright tinfoil hat-ery or merely a rhetorical device to draw attention to some trivial issue then think again. if you believe in the advantages of technological, scientific and industrial progress then please explain why you will be working harder, longer and for less than your immediately preceding generation. comparatively you will have a smaller house, full of flimsier shit you dont need and you will have less time with your family. the reason for this is the state. you are feeling the effects of coercion. if you feel so suicidally inclined why not sit down and actually add up your income tax, personal and employer's NIC's, VAT on everything you buy for a year, and other duties, taxes and direct licenses. this ignores the inflated prices that come from cartels protected by coercive 'regulation', artificial scarcities (land/housing!) and other exploitative costs. nevertheless it WILL be more than 50% of your sweat.
ive arbitrarily plucked that random figure because even the most hardened stalinist would find the idea of working for less than half to be deeply wrong. it is this deep sense of injustice that each and every single one of us does feel. as children we struggle to reconcile infant lessons in right and wrong with later discoveries regarding 'the way the world works'. that an 8 year old cant understand the concept of taxation does not indicate the stupidity of 8 year olds. they know right from wrong and they have the fundamental understanding of property rights. what they dont have is the 'sophisticated' doublethink that comes with 'maturity' that allows the compromise of what should be absolute ethics that they have been taught. when im talking to normal people who dont read political blogs for fun and who dont bother with even television news i often find that their common sense view is so much more accurate and truthful than the 'nuanced' bullshit that their supposed betters have swallowed and blinded themselves with. (arrogance alert) these supposed 'naive' individuals have a clearer understanding of the world than anyone who regularly buys a 'newspaper'. their reaction to the arrest of someone who hasnt broken the non aggression axiom (has contravened no natural/common law) is frequently "he wasnt hurting anyone". these people havent read the ethical origins of the non aggression principle in objectivist philosophy and they dont have to because like the socialist-statist baulking at his income tax bill or the confused infant struggling to reconcile the instruction from authority not to snatch even whilst authority snatches her toys right from her grasp, they have a deep, inherent sense of what is right and wrong. the child knows that "finders are keepers." if this isnt a natural expression of the inherrence of property rights and homesteading as instinctive human behaviours i dont know what is. the 'ill-informed' yob can see there isnt any need to invade a country that hasnt invaded us and even the do-gooder socialist can see that little of the money taken from his earnings will reach the poor and needy.
anyways i digress, back to what i wanted to ramble about;
there are a few major concepts that are so ingrained from thousands of years of human history that, for the majority, they pass without examination. individually and cumulatively these falsehoods constitute the control mechanisms that keep you enslaved.
religion
you cannot be free if you accept the legitimacy of religion. irrational belief in supernatural forces is not only illogical but it is down right evil. religion is nothing more than a control mechanism dreamed up by the fathers of 'civilisation'. im sure that in deepest Sumeria this tool of enslavement was consciously designed in a genuine conspiracy. a family/tribal leader conceived a greater consolidation of power and privilege and devised the position of king. such a nakedly evil hierarchy would be obvious and unsustainable without some form of obfuscatory justification. the king would conspire with a chosen individual who would become his priest. the priest would pretend to be the sole guardian of knowledge that would explain all the aspects of their world that mystified these early civilisations - the sky, stars, sun and moon, the seasons, what 'really' happened when old people stopped moving and the weather upon which they were so dependent. with the ultimate power derived from these fears and lack of understanding the priest could justify the irrational position of the king. in exchange im sure the priest was excused labouring in the fields and given a special house from which to further consolidate his master's privilege.
beyond these oppressive origins religion expanded its illiberal control. freedom is based entirely upon self-ownership. i once had a fruitless argument at the libertarian alliance in a blog comment thread. i was responding to some 'libertarian' article about religious freedom and simply pointed out that religion has been the source of almost all oppressions in history. then all the mysticist 'libertarians' came crawling out of the woodwork. their version of the sky pixie was right and what did i know. i was pelted with 'relevant' quotes from ancient books that were apparently 'true'. no argument was needed - they just were. but i do have a point. interestingly one god-botherer responded like an almost open mind to my assertion of the principle of self ownership being the only possible basis for liberty. this chap reaffirmed that he 'hated' the state but conceded that he consciously believed he did not own his body! as a practicing religious-ist he was actually aware of this concept unlike the 'i suppose im a christian' masses. he had the quotes from the magic guide book that told him he was property of another. yes this does not necessarily preclude anti-statism. one could believe in god in a stateless society but one would not be free. if you believe you are owned by god then you have to do what he tells you to. and since it is quite tricky hearing what he is saying you have to rely on interpretation and instruction from his intermediaries. thus empirically you end up being owned and controlled by them. bingo - a new coercion. the coercive state relies upon threats to you in the real world but the religious controllers rely on threats to you in the after-life. do as we say or unprovable things may happen to you in an invisible and possibly non existent world after all this whooooooo.
church and state are symbiotic. they should be considered one and the same. in our blissful and perfect never-rock-the-boat world of 'liberal democratic' 'freedom' religion is supposedly decedent. this is bullshit. explicit ad overt religion has done its job as a control mechanism and now that operation can be wound up. the human slave farm is a business like any other and the managers want to minimise costs. if better control mechanisms become available then the old ones can be left. even some atheists have talk about having a strong work ethic. why? why would anyone work really really hard? is this not a leftover from our days toiling in the fields to fill the Lord's tithe barn? there is no objective justification for working harder than you need to or want to. instead such slave motivation comes from our rulers. they have always creamed off the product of our labour and the more we labour the more they can take. simple as that. even without big pointy stone buildings and big pointy hats religion still has a hold on you and keeps you from freedom.
most of us in britain cannot be unaware of the effects of puritanism. im abusing this term to refer to the general sense that you can have too much fun and life isnt really for enjoyment. ive read about hedonism and epicureanism and it makes way more sense than the prohibitionist crap we receive from our totalitarian state. there is no objective reason why 'healthiness' is 'good' and indulgence of human desires is 'bad'. pleasure and happiness are subjective. the powers that be, no matter how hard they try cannot calculate what is 'best'. likewise not all individuals desire happiness. but this puritanism comes from religion. keep the flock strong healthy and productive.
ages ago i read an article criticising John Lennon's Imagine as being nihilistic. being a contrarian i thought this was a very clever view. 'yeah all the sheep who voted it track of the millennium dont realise that it advocates the destruction of religion and the state that do so much good and charitable works.' i now have a better understanding of human nature and can see that empathy, charity and mutualism are not dependent upon religion or the state. people who claim religion invented charity are falling into the trap of that which is unseen. just because religion has always accompanied human altruism does not mean that altruism could not exist without religion.
more recently i was reminded of this by a striking image.
this could equally be a picture of some long destroyed building in the middle east that was targeted during 'our' religious crusades. im not a moral relativist but i thought it necessary to point out that unlike the subtext of this poster i am not against 'their' religion. 'ours' fucks up just as many things.
under the same search were t-shirts bearing the motto 'religion - the accepted insanity' which i liked. but also what i imagine are religious rebuttals in defence - posters bearing the same caption 'imagine no religion' but with images of hitler, mao and stalin. as i have said if it wasnt for these deluded, dangerous, mystical fuckers who hide their insanity under the legitimsing cloak of 'religion' then there would likely be no coercive state for tyranical dictators to take over. without a history of religious enslavement humanity would not allow itself to be ruled at all let alone by dicks in uniforms. it is the original evil of religion overriding the natural and self evident objective truth of self ownership that has led to this world of no freedom. if god owns you and god 'appoints' a man in a shiny hat to tell you what to do and take all of your money then religion has alot to answer for. this idea is so ingrained that even now most people dont give a flying fuck about god or religion they still believe it entirely natural that we carry on as if we are all god fearing serfs who must fill our master's tithe barn. there's at least two thousand years of human history to overturn but the message must be that you own yourself. not the beardy man in the sky and not the beardy man in the big fancy dress in the big fancy building.
on the subject of contemporary 'religious terrorism' i blame anyone with an acceptance of any religion. by accepting the irrational belief in supernatural forces, each and every religious person in the world is legitimising such idiotic martyrdom. if it is clearly insanity for some brown men to believe that an invisible person in the sky is telling them to kill themselves then surely it is no less mental to make jam and knit scarves to raise funds for the glorification of your own sky fairy? rather than trying to walk the impossible tightrope of cognitive dissonance that is the 'well their religion is wrong' argument we should all point to the insanity of any religion.
if you want to be free you must reject your belief in the legitimacy of coercion (im looking at you minarchists) and you must reject any acceptance of the insanity of 'religion'.
next week on my 'negative' tirade i might lay into dominant attitudes to relationships and how they all just so happen to resemble control mechanisms for a productive populace of slaves.
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