By COLIN DONOGHHUE | UNPLUGGEDMOM.com | AUGUST 7, 2012
“Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”
– Albert Einstein
There is a simple reason why the political process continues to do more harm than good, and those engaging in it to better society find themselves in an exercise of futility. In order to discover this one must look deeper into our social and historical reality, through the political theater, to what is operating beneath the surface. This is just like with human psychology: if someone had experienced something traumatic as a child and the event was suppressed within their subconscious, it will most likely operate as the originator of destructive & fearful (or at the very least unproductive) behavior, and until that deeper issue is resolved, treating the symptoms of the behavior through medication and so on will never bring about a real cure; the irrational negative concept and belief created alongside the trauma must be rooted out in order for there to be real progress.
Back to the social realm, we have all been subjected to a trauma early on in our lives, actually it was already waiting for us before we were born: the trauma of being forced to assimilate to unnatural social-systems. These social-systems drastically shape our lives everyday, and indoctrinate us with the belief that they are beneficial, that we need them for our survival, and so are therefore principled. We are also indoctrinated to accept the self-concept that we are “citizens”, rather than sovereign humans, and that there is no choice in the matter. And just like within the personal realm, these irrational root beliefs and self-concepts create fearful & destructive behavior, except on a much larger scale.
The simple reason the political process is unproductive in producing lasting peace & justice is that it is fundamentally unprincipled; it is based on force and exploitation, which are in turn based on irrational beliefs, and you can’t build a principled society on a foundation of violence and lies. And so this unprincipled root negative cause will always create disturbing effects; we will never see a truly just and free society using that process, we will continue to see unproductive actions towards the goal of world peace & justice, with fear and destruction remaining widespread.
To ignore the root problem is to ensure the continuance of negative consequences that stem from it; constantly fighting against those consequences rather than their origin can never lead to lasting progress; more of the same will karmicly follow; if you only treat the symptoms of a disease you will never be fully cured. So when we get upset at a corrupt politician, or some uncaring CEO, we aren’t really being effective activists. These powers that be are just inevitable products of a virulent social factory. Yelling at them is like yelling at toxic products coming out on a conveyor belt, it’s short-sighted and a waste of energy; we need to shut down the factory, we need to eliminate the unprincipled social-system that is the real heart of the darkness.
Political reformers say the fundamental flaw is lack of democracy, that if we could just “take back the power” from the corporations, or the crown, or the federal reserve, or whoever, then we could have a better world. There is truth to that of course, what we see growing around us is fascist globalization of power, and so it makes sense that it’s opposite, democratic localization of power, would be the solution to that problem.
This reasoning is not taken to its logical conclusion by reformers however; if it were, if we were to take the ideal of democratic localization to its most pure form, we would be left with no social-system at all, we would be left with sovereign families not subject to any outside human authority. And that’s anarchy, which the reformer believes equates to chaos (due to propaganda exposure), so that’s not a preferable option in their mind. Therefore the conclusion of this pro-democracy reasoning is that the solution is simply a social-system that is more democratic than the one we currently have. They may even call it, like I used to, a “true” democracy; the ideal social-system, the best that human civilization can achieve.
Democracy, defined as government by the people, either directly or through representatives, is certainly a better model than a fascist dictatorship, no doubt. The problem with this model is that it’s actually impossible to maintain on a large scale. In fact it can’t be maintained on a moderate, or even regional scale. What do I mean by this? Take for instance, the largest protests in American and world history in February 2003, those against the proposed invasion of Iraq by the U.S. Military.
Polls at the time confirmed the obvious: the majority of Americans were against this invasion; millions marched, and millions more wrote and called their representatives telling them not to go ahead with this violent plan. None of it stopped the invasion; hundreds of thousands of innocent people were killed, including countless babies born dead or deformed from radiation poisoning caused by the depleted uranium weaponry used. And why did this horror occur despite the public outcry? Lack of democracy, yes, but if we had simply had more democracy (like through paper ballots, instant run-off voting, public financing, etc.) would that prevent the possibility of government officials from making unpopular and destructive decisions, like illegally invading other nations? Well, they don’t take national polls before making every decision now do they? How could they? Isn’t that an impossibility? Since that is the case, every few years a few politicians we are allowed to choose from tell us what they will do when they are in office, we get an idea of their outlook on many issues, and then we may vote for the one we think is the lesser of the evils, and hope they will keep their word.
News-flash: they often don’t keep their word. The list of broken campaign promises by politicians is endless. On top of the problem of deception and betrayal, this example is assuming you vote for the winning candidate; if you vote for the candidate that loses, or you find no candidate you want to vote for, you are even more obviously not being represented. And also since you have to be rich to afford the costs of being a viable candidate, the lie of representation is further exemplified by the upper class always being presented as representatives of those that live lives and have perspectives and interests nothing like theirs, namely the lower class and poor. Additionally, since voter turn-out is usually only an undersized percentage of the population, how can we possibly say those votes represent the wishes of everyone the policies and laws will effect? And so for all these reasons we must conclude that this is not real representation, nor could it ever be.
Representation is fundamentally a lie, it is a technical impossibility; and even it were possible, majority-rule is still tyrannical to those that vote otherwise, or didn’t vote. The well known saying “No taxation without representation” is a good one, but since representation is not possible, that means we should have no taxation! This truth is not looked at by reformers, the blinders of indoctrination keeping the focus straight ahead on a delusional social dream. They believe, as I used to, that “if just more people participated in the political process” then we could have proper representation of the public by government. Reformers therefore see anarchism as the worst idea for attaining social-justice, and they look upon anarchists, as I used to, as immoral and ignorant. This perspective is not based in reality however. The truth about who is ultimately supporting immorality and ignorance turns out to be the opposite.
During the Nuremburg Trials of Nazi leaders one of the Nazis (Herman Göring) actually admitted the truth that all social-systems are corrupt and immoral, and that representation is a lie, whether called “democracy” or not:
Goring: Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.
Interviewer: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.
Goring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
– published in Gilbert’s Nuremberg Diary, (1947)
If you look at history, like the history of the United States, you find that the original colonies actually began as companies themselves; government and corporate/industrial power are really one and the same, this supposed battle between the two is really just theater to keep you complacent, to keep you in subservience. We send letters to our “representatives,” saying things like “Please don’t allow this corporation to destroy this natural area”, “Please stop killing women and children in Afghanistan and Pakistan” or “Please don’t let this corporation contaminate our whole food supply with GMO’s,” and even if the local politician her/himself happens to be an ethical individual that somehow temporarily got in office (like the late Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota) and agrees with you, there is little they can do since the system itself is there to protect and serve corporate interest, not the public interest.
“Democracy, the destin’d conqueror, yet treacherous lip-smiles everywhere,
And death and infidelity at every step.”
-Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
And what can the citizen-activist do? Spend every free minute of her life trying to counter the evils of corporatism? Is that the ideal for humanity? Is that realizing one’s full potential as a human on the Earth? It is rather a prescription for burnout and depression. Though much activism, from gathering signatures for a ballot initiative to some forms of direct action, is very commendable, if it doesn’t address the root problem/cause, which is the system as a whole, it will always be ultimately unsuccessful; the system will inevitably keep producing the destruction and tyranny that is being protested against; In addition, activists “fighting the system” cannot even address all of the bad things that governance does, since we of course don’t, and can’t, know all of the bad things they do. (Though some of the worst is known: CIA terrorism, School of the Americas training and funding the most evil torture and killing of women and children imaginable, as has been documented happening in Colombia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, etc.).
One could spend a lifetime researching, documenting and trying to educate others about all of it, which still continues on, and that would be a life of great integrity, no doubt. But if we really want to end these sickening acts we need to recognize that all this evil has the same root cause (social-systems which concentrate immense power in the hands of the few, who inevitably commit atrocities with that power), and that the right strategy isn’t to fight these systems, but to reject and abandon them through mass non-compliance. The reason these activists don’t see much (or any) fruit for their labors is because they are not employing the right strategy; they are missing that claiming our birthright to our fair share of the Earth’s resources is the only truly effective action against the military-industrial-complex social-system of control and destruction.
“Power Corrupts, Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely.”
- Shakespeare, Macbeth
The only way to remove the structural capacity for this unnatural power, authoritarianism, fascism and war (i.e. mass-violence in its many forms) is to end our support for social-systems and establish sovereign homesteads, making up voluntary communities. This may seem like an odd solution to the reformer, but it would not seem that odd to the Indigenous peoples and rural “poor” of the world, who know very well the crucial importance of having a personal connection with the land in order to be free from exploitation and tyranny. We must embrace the true root solution (becoming free and natural women & men of the Earth), in order to effect true and lasting positive change. And because there are systemic restraints to achieving that ultimate localization and sovereignty (namely land cost, control & taxation), the system itself needs to be rejected.
A healthy society based on inequity and force, like the idea of a healthy and sustainable city, is an oxymoron. There is a lot of talk nowadays of “greening” cities, but the fundamentals are not changed: cities require the importation of resources, create landfills of toxic waste and massive amounts of very harmful air and water pollution, along with highly disturbing light and noise pollution; veganic homesteads can be zero-waste and produce little to none of those pollutants. Cities, like governance, have directly caused incalculable amounts of environmental and health destruction; it’s time we stop trying to “green” something that is inherently toxic. Governments and cities are actually intrinsically linked with one another, just as governments and war are co-dependent:
”Urban reality is primarily about trade and commerce, with a nearly total dependence on support from external areas for continued existence. To guarantee such an artificial subsistence, city fathers turn inevitably to war, that chronic civilizational staple.”
– John Zerzan, from his book Twilight of the Machines, p. 41
Cities disallow a natural lifestyle living off the land, they disallow individual sovereignty, privacy and true freedom, and so they are perfectly complimentary to social-systems. Social-systems and the cities they create are unnatural control-grids, they constitute intensive farming, of humans. This is clearly seen with the cruel and tyrannical criminalization of sleep; homeless people are often harassed by police just for sleeping in a public place, even though they are disturbing no-one.
I have seen this first-hand many times at the public library, wherein a homeless person has fallen quietly asleep in front of their book at a nearly empty large table, and a security guard always comes by and wakes them up! As long as your eyes are open you can stay, but god forbid you should rest, or meditate for a short while! This despotic control of natural life takes on many other forms too, like cops and security guards knocking on your window if you fall asleep in an empty parking lot in your car, etc. Not being an active consumer, not paying someone for your time on this planet, is criminalized, just as sharing food with your neighbors has been criminalized. We can’t have people sharing now can we? There’s no corporate profit in that!
Modern technology too goes hand-in-hand with this control-culture; it is the main tool of modern governance, using it for invasive surveillance and personal data collection. And of course the latest tech always goes to the development of various forms of weaponry first; that is the priority of its use: violence, not aid. It is also the main tool of industries that are destroying our environment through intensive resource extraction (clear-cutting forests, massive mining operations, over-fishing, etc.).
“We cannot have fast cars, computers the size of credit cards, and modern conveniences, while simultaneously having clean air, abundant rainforests, fresh drinking water, and a stable climate. This generation can have one or the other, but not both. Humanity must make a choice. … Gadgetry or nature? Pick the wrong one and the next generation may have neither.”
- Mark Boyle, The Moneyless Man: A Year of Freeconomic Living, p. 196
This unnatural combination of social-systems, cities, and modern technology keeps us from realizing a natural synergy of natural-freedom, natural-living and natural-community
Some denounce agriculture and call it the root of all of our social problems, and yes, large-scale agriculture does coincide with hierarchy, the accumulation of wealth in few hands, environmental destruction, etc. but it is not the root source of those problems! The key word is large-scale agriculture; how did there get to be such huge farms in the first place? It is the control of the land by the few that allows for it, and this is the real source of all those problems. To think agriculture should be altogether abandoned ignores the existence of sustainable localized agriculture, i.e. veganic homesteading horticulture/permaculture.
Also, hunting & gathering is not the answer; foraging for wild plants and killing wild game as a viable solution for most people is irrational and no sustainable model; there is not enough public lands with enough wildlife and edible plants to sustain the population, besides, depleting the little that remains of wildness is immoral. Additionally, even if there was enough animals to kill and plants to forage, where will these wandering hunter & gathers do such activity? Wont they end up in competition with other wandering tribes over the same territory? Doesn’t this competition inevitably lead to war? Human centralization beyond community cooperation/solidarity, in this case for the purpose of hunting, informatively may lead to war; actions founded on violence and lack of individual/family sufficiency and sovereignty appear to be linked to social and ecological disharmony.
Others say socialism is the answer, and that capitalism is the fundamental problem, but they seem to miss where capitalism comes from in the first place: social-systems, founded on the true root injustice: land control (land cost & monopolization of ownership, zoning restrictions, permitting restrictions, etc.) and monetary-slavery (mainly via taxation). Socialists believe that if they elect socialist politicians they can create a just world, and though it might be better in some ways than what we have now, ignoring the faults of all social-systems and the falsehood and violence of “representation”, makes this perspective and strategy a failure from the start.
Focusing on single issues, like employment, more government funding of social programs, ending the drug war, etc. is well-intentioned, but this strategy has two major flaws: 1) It ignores the root of all of those problems, namely social-systems based on land control and monetary-slavery, and 2) It believes that social-systems of true representation can exist, and that social-systems of control are necessary and good, when in fact they are unnecessary and unprincipled. Social-systems, even socialist ones, have the seeds of concentrated power within them. In the excellent essay “Anarchism: Against Capitalism, Against Socialism” by Chris Wilson, he says:
“Socialists should consider the possibility that the proposed command structure of socialism might possess certain inherent properties that necessarily lead to such ghastly forms of authoritarianism. Every attempt to realize socialism has always resulted in a totalitarian society in which the population is used as an expendable resource for the enrichment of a handful of elites. These failed attempts are a direct consequence of the innate hierarchy of socialist organization combined with a refusal to realize that power always corrupts, even when delegated democratically.”
Socialists also see the harmful “privatization” (i.e. corporate control) of public resources in many countries, usually encouraged or demanded by the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade Organization as just the fault of capitalism and lack of democracy as well. This perspective assumes that 1) if all the natural resources of the nation were under “public ownership” (i.e. government ownership) and 2) if all tax dollars were kept in the “public treasury” (i.e. centralized government control), for social programs like better health care, education and quality job-creation, then we could avoid the mass exploitation by globalist trans-national corporations which have increased poverty and environmental destruction in many “third world” countries.
The first point on corporate control of natural resources, especially water, is in response to something that is of course extremely unjust and has led to increased corporate profits at the expense of people’s health and well-being. But simply giving the control back to the government is obviously no assurance that justice will prevail! The costs of living may have been temporarily lower under state control in some countries, but how do you think the corporate control/corruption happened in the first place? The fact that “public property” (like water and forests) keeps becoming corporate property goes to show that it never really did belong to “the people” in the first place.
”Public ownership” sounds good, and would be good in the sense of everyone being entitled to their fair share of natural resources, but when said in the sense of governmental ownership it is supporting a social theory which is fundamentally flawed, since government is always subject to further corruption because it is an inherently corrupt and unjust social-structure. Which leads to the second point: eliminating social programs that may have been helping a lot of people in order for the government to pay back loans to the IMF and adhere to their “structural adjustments” has indeed led to further unnecessary suffering and a lower quality of life for countless millions of people, but because governments are inherently corrupt and unstable, because representation is a lie, and cannot be made true, returning to full governmental control is absolutely no assurance of economic stability and justice. When was it ever? There is no way to have harmony, equality, personal freedom or sovereignty in a mass-society, it is inherently unjust and thereby destructive, depending on force and enslavement to varying degree for its existence. (See also the essay “Against Mass Society” by Chris Wilson.)
“The revolutionary alternative to the status-quo today is not collectivized property administered by a “workers’ state”, whatever that means, but some kind of anarchist decentralization that will break up mass society into small communities where individuals can live together as variegated human beings instead of as impersonal units in the mass sum.”
- Dwight Macdonald, from his article Politics Past
Economists offer schemes as solutions too, and even the best among them, like Land Value Taxation, or Community Land Trusts, ignore the root problems of individuals being denied their cost-free birthright, and being forced into monetary dependency and subservience to some outside authority. It also ignores the fact that increasing taxation for the “public treasury” doesn’t equate to greater public wealth or quality of life (because representation is a lie). These proposals are really just petitions, the common woman or man can’t actually make these economic or legal changes themselves, so it amounts to more of begging “representatives” to be less evil, which is not only an exercise in futility but is also sadly subservient and expresses a self-concept of citizen/subject rather than sovereign human. In a film on the injustice of real estate economics, the reformers exclaim: “We can change the way we are taxed!” Yes, hooray for less abrasive whips! This false solution is again just begging for better slavery, rather than rejecting it altogether, as we should and need to.
Others, called “economist heroes” by the corporate media, “help” the poor in the “undeveloped Third World” by setting them up with small businesses through small-loans. Is this development, this so-called progress, really in the best interest of these “less civilized” people? Of course many of the people receiving this assistance today are initially thankful for it; when they aren’t able to acquire sufficient food for themselves, and a few dollars is the only apparent means to get it, that’s very understandable. But they shouldn’t need money to survive in the first place, it is this unnatural social-system that corrupts their lives and makes that their reality. Those that currently live in “undeveloped” areas are those that haven’t been completely corrupted yet, their assimilation is currently incomplete, they still haven’t had all of their ancestral land taken from, they still haven’t lost most of their natural skills and livelihood, accumulated debt, and so on. They can still live more naturally, their traditional culture is still somewhat intact; and so the so-called economic heroes come in to finish the job of assimilation.
The only way to have true freedom, true sustainable and incorruptible democracy and peace, is through individual sovereignty. That means you are a Woman of the Earth first, not the subject of a crown. That means you are a Man of the Earth first, not the citizen of a country. This does not mean that you wouldn’t have community available, you would actually have more of it. Techno-industrial mass-society is anti-community and anti-family; it fragments, divides and isolates us, destroying families and natural community and replacing them with shallow and artificial substitutes like nationalism, sport teams, and electronics. In a genuine community your relationships with your neighbors are not corrupted by monetary concerns, and your level of interaction with community is up to you, it’s completely voluntary, which further removes inter-personal friction that arises from unnatural social-systems.
You would live on your sovereign land, alone or with family (in whatever form that takes) that all wishes to be together, and then you would interact in a gift-economy cultural relationship with others as you choose. Your space would be private, your own “kingdom”, which means kins domain, or family land. This avoids the common problem of inter-personal friction that comes from lack of personal space/privacy along with forced communal decision-making that arises even in eco-villages, intentional communities or other collectives. Humans instinctively desire Freedom, and one aspect of that is having your own space and privacy, and not being subject to communal dynamics you’d rather not be a part of; this has been and continues to be the biggest problem at most intentional communities and collectives that is not recognized as such, and so people within that dynamic think “this is just the way life is.”
But this is just another negative belief based on ignorance of the root problem. They deal with the constant inter-personal conflict and unnecessary drama because they think there is no other way, but there is: sovereign homesteads. What they’re experiencing can be thought of as karmic feedback for participating in something that is ultimately not natural or principled (even though of course it’s a lot more so than the typical corporate dynamic). What I’m pointing to is a way that harmonizes with our inner nature, as well outer nature: sovereign veganic homesteads, which minimize the disturbances we experience on both fronts drastically. These are truly kingdoms of heaven in that they lack all the problems that come from living in less ethical, natural and sustainable ways; everything else results in hellish instead of heavenly experience.
“Mahatma Gandhi was a champion of swadeshi, or home economy. … Gandhi’s vision of a free India was not of a nation-state but a confederation of self-governing, self-reliant, self-employed people living in village communities, deriving their right livelihood from the products of their homesteads. … The British believed in centralized, industrialized, and mechanized modes of production. Gandhi turned this principle on its head and envisioned a decentralized, homegrown, hand-crafted mode of production. In his words, “Not mass production, but production by the masses.”
- The Case Against the Global Economy and for a Turn Toward the Local, edited by Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith, p. 418-42
Since animal domestication and farming are also based on false beliefs (like that we need animal products for optimum health), and has also been a source of major disturbance (to put it very lightly, actually the leading cause of environmental and health destruction), as well as being the vehicle for the most massive violence humans participate in, it should also be rejected. Animal domestication was an unprincipled mistake by humanity, and until we end that practice it is unlikely we will escape domestication ourselves. In seeking freedom from domination and exploitation, it makes perfect sense to not do the same to other species, regardless of how “natural” it supposedly is. Taking “good care” of an animal up until the point you kill and eat it, is not ethical, it’s twisted. There is no such thing as “humane” murder or enslavement. The sound nutrition science and ethical principles of veganism should trump unprincipled tradition, so these private homesteads that ensure freedom for us should not be places of enslavement for other species, they should employ organic vegan agriculture. This avoids the ethical hypocrisy, as well as the environmental and health damage from synthetic chemicals and corporately-controlled Genetically Modified Organisms.
The root of all the social, personal and ecological destruction that has been going on is the same: living out of harmony with Nature, through animal & human domestication. The human domestication and farming arises through the forcible restriction from living as free natural women and men on the Earth, mainly through land control/cost/taxation. This is the fundamental flaw of governance (and technological dependance), which has led to the Orwellian human-animal farm we now find ourselves within. Until we can become self/community-sufficient, we will remain dependent on governments and the corporations they serve, we will continue to face the disturbances of living in an unnatural and unprincipled way.
Even everyday disturbances of life can be perceived, with a more penetrating analysis, to be rooted in animal & human domestication as well; from barking dogs, traffic jams you may drive in or plumes of exhaust you must breathe in if you’re walking or biking by them, to annoying neighbors or housemates you are forced to live with (because of monetary restraints), to piercing sounds like never-ending sirens from emergency vehicles in urban centers, it all originates in animal and human domestication, they would not exist without that domestication, they would not exist in free and natural veganic homestead communities. Until we claim our birthright of sovereign land and start accepting the responsibility to live truly ethically as natural humans (growing our own food, producing our own fuel, building our own homes, etc.) we will continue to be disturbed money-slaves, and we will continue to beg for corporate jobs, no matter how unsatisfying and exploitative, just to have the basics of food, clothing and shelter, all of which the Earth provides for free.
“Having reduced the masses to a point at which they have not the means of subsistence for a month, or even for a week in advance, the few only allow the many to work on condition of themselves receiving the lion’s share. It is because these few prevent the remainder of men from producing the things they need, and force them to produce, not the necessaries of life for all, but whatever offers the greatest profits to the monopolists.”
– Peter Kropotkin, from his book The Conquest of Bread
Why should our destiny be so much in the hands of others? Why can’t we have access to our fair share of natural resources that would enable us to break these chains of unjust subservience? Being denied the ability to live naturally and self-sufficiently is the root social-injustice, all others follow from it, this is the real front-line that activists (and anyone who cares about freedom and sustainability) should be focusing the most on. In the book Twelve by Twelve: A One Room Cabin Off the Grid and Beyond the American Dream, the author tells of people in North Carolina living in homes that are only 12 feet long and wide because that is the maximum size allowed by the state before you have to pay various taxes, and install plumbing and electric lines.
The state, being the partner of destructive and exploitative industry, has made it a requirement to have electricity, they force you to pay for something you may not want, just like with insurance; quoting one of the “poor” people trying to live off the grid: “Do you know it’s not legal to live without electricity in North Carolina? It’s not a choice you make. It’ll cost us a fortune. … What does it matter to them if we live simply?” (p. 223-4) He then cries out “Hell is other people!” in anguish over being forced to assimilate to a way of life he does not want to live or support, and also says that he tried communal living and it wasn’t for him either (or me, or countless others who have faced the aforementioned problems of that living situation), he just wanted to left alone (i.e. not attacked by others through taxation, arrest, etc.) as he survived and thrived through his own natural labor.
So what creates a hellish world for so many is not just “other people” (an obvious exaggeration and over-simplification), it is other people that force you to pay for your birthright, and it is the other people you are forced to be exposed to, lacking the privacy and space of that sovereign land, wherein who stays with you is your choice. What does it matter to state officials if you live simply? It matters a lot, though this fact is a great secret of the establishment. The state’s existence relies on people being assimilated to this system; if there was a loophole, like living in 12X12 houses, more and more people would do that, so even that is being eliminated; now they are told they can only live that way part of the year, not year-round; if you try and live very simply and naturally it is a crime, you face fines and arrest. So these peaceful people that want to live peaceful and good lives (in their own “kingdom of heaven”) need to return to being money-slaves, victims of the system, supporting industries and government that are opposed to their values. Sovereign veganic homesteads are the logical antidote to this tyranny, they are the cure for empire, establishing harmony between humans, Earth and all other species on this planet.
If you were born on this planet then your fair share of the resources needed for your survival is your birthright, you are not bound to any contract you never signed, for services you never asked for. The spiraling ripples of discontent and destruction originate at this unprincipled point, it is karmic law in action. By sacrificing our right to live free and natural lives, for supposed greater security, we agree to the age old “Devil’s Bargain.” And how is that working out for most people? How is it working out for the ecosystem and other species? Stress is said to be the #1 reason people go to their doctor, so obviously we have not found personal peace in this exploitative and unnatural society, nor should we expect to.
”You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.”
– Malcolm X, from the book Malcolm X Speaks
And speaking of this contract we never signed, also known as a constitution, did the signers of the US Constitution really have the power to contract for people other than themselves in any matter? Legally a contract can only bind those that sign it, so how does the US Constitution (or any other nation-state’s constitution) apply to anyone besides those who sign it? Could you write a valid contract that said everyone in your neighborhood has to give you a hundred dollars a week for some service they never asked for and never signed in agreement to? Of course not. And furthermore, could you make that contract binding on all their children, and their children’s children, going on forever? That would be laughed at wouldn’t it? Yet that’s the same thing as a constitution, it’s false authority manifest. We are told that the constitution protects our freedoms, but it violates our most fundamental freedom, to live as sovereign natural humans in harmony with the Earth (self-sufficiently & sustainably), by forcing us to pay taxes and submit to an unjust and undemocratic social-hierarchy.
On a simpler level, it comes down to government officials not lettings us be, they constantly invade our lives making demands upon us, they won’t just leave us alone. As Supreme Court Justice Lousi Brandeis said in 1928, “the right to be let alone is the most comprehensive of rights and the the right most valued”. To not be “let alone” really means to be attacked in one form or another, for violence to be initiated against you. And that’s what government really comes down to, a group of people who say they have exclusive use of “justified” violence, supposedly because they only use it for good. Thousands of years ago Lao Tzu spoke to this same absurdity when, directed to government officials, he said “Act for the people’s benefit, leave them alone.” (Tao Te Ching, verse 75)
Through propaganda indoctrination we receive starting from childhood, we are led to think that when the government initiates force, that’s not violence, just “the way society works”. Coupled with this denial of real violence, we are taught that when government forces people to do things (like pay taxes) it leads to a harmonious society. We are led to believe that this violence is good (along with all their military violence, etc.), but all other violence is bad. They can steal from and kill people and that’s okay, but if you do it, then that’s a crime. The government is simply a group of people who claim they have a justified monopoly on violence, and many people (due to massive indoctrination) believe that this violence is indeed justified, they think that without it the world would be even more violent than it currently is.
So this is basically giving approval for pre-emptive attacks, on everyone, all the time, in order to prevent the possibility of some other violence at some other times. Do you see the fundamental flaw in that logic? Here’s another way to think about this: If someone on the street was taking a survey and simply asked you “Do you think mass-violence can lead to a harmonious society?” You’d probably say “No”, as would most people, because it’s an absurd notion: mass-violence and harmony are not at all compatible, they are in fact opposites. So if you accept the fact that stealing from people against their will (i.e. taxation), making wars, supporting industries that are destroying our health and environment, etc. are all acts of violence, then why do you think that will lead to a harmonious society? As I was saying in the opening paragraph, we must uproot these irrational and false beliefs with rationality and truth if we are to progress, personally and socially.
“Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon itself.”
- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, verse 30
Some may say: “If you don’t like this country than why don’t you just leave?” But this is a very short-sighted perspective since there is nowhere where human farms are not, they border one another across the globe, so there is nowhere to go; it is not a matter of leaving, it is a matter of staying wherever you and your family are and wish to be, and claiming your fair share of the currently unjustly used land as your human right to live sustainably on. Some might object to that as well saying: “What about the people that bought large amounts of land and worked hard to earn the money to do so, how is that fair to them?” A quote from Alexander Berkman’s book “What is Anarchism?” is a good beginning to a response:
“The first requirement of justice is equal liberty and opportunity. Under government and exploitation there can be neither equal liberty nor equal opportunity — hence all the evils and troubles of present-day society.”
We do not have equal liberty and opportunity when we don’t have equal access to the Earth’s resources, which should belong to everyone as a birthright for being human, irrespective of whatever country they are supposedly born into. The exploitation begins there, and then capitalism compounds the injustice through usury, unfair and highly disparate wage differences, inheritance originating in conquest, etc. So someone who has gained large amounts of land through these means have not gained them fairly, and once they have more than their fair-share of land it becomes the theft of the birthright of others; therefore even if you had to work hard to attain those riches, it does not justify the continuation of that theft, denying others their birthright. All the land that is uncultivated and just kept as an investment by the rich, while millions have no place to live and are hungry, cannot be justified.
And even those that “earned” their land can be victimized by the system; if they can no longer afford rising property taxes the land would be seized from them as well. Moreover the government officials can at any time still claim the land for themselves as “eminent domain” or harass you with bogus “code violations”, charging you various fees and penalties until you are forced to sell the land. These actions are often taken when the land is wanted for new corporate development, and government serves that corporate interest through an unjust legal system; this is another example revealing again that ultimately the public and private sectors are really just one sector, the fascist sector.
For the majority of people on Earth, saving enough money to buy land, pay all the initial taxes, fees, etc. and then not have to do additional work besides their natural work to keep the property, is not a possibility. Unless you are ultra-rich, you will still need to earn money to pay for mortgages, property taxes, etc. and so therefore have not achieved freedom from the monetary system of control and exploitation, your life is still compromised and corrupted. Some system apologists might say: “Yeah people may need to earn some money on the side, maybe a small business, but whats wrong with that? They are earning their keep.” But this is where the corruption of the natural life begins (along with beginning of our discontent), having to sacrifice time that could be much better used towards things like creativity, spirituality and sharing pleasure; instead that time has to go towards earning money to appease other peoples conditions for living on the Earth.
The crucial thing that many people overlook is that social-systems initiate violence over us first, supposedly to protect us from violence. This is the fundamental philosophical premise that must be rejected; it is not okay to initiate force against people just because you say it is for their own good. That “goodness” can never be proven (and is disproved every day), therefore, nonviolence must take precedence. What is “good” after all? Isn’t nonviolence good and violence bad? That’s the most basic morality, the universal ethic. We have been indoctrinated to accept a completely backwards morality, and we, along with other species and the ecosystem as a whole, are paying dearly for that acceptance.
Tellingly most people already do reject the premise that violence always prevents violence, i.e. the legitimacy of preemptive attacks, on the person-to-person level; for example, if someone told you they need to punch you in the face in order to help you overcome your cough, and that you have no choice about it, what would be your reaction? You’d probably think they were a crazy control-freak right? Yet most people believe the propaganda of governments telling them that they need to commit violence against them (force them to pay taxes and other fees for their natural birthright), for “their safety and well-being”. Meanwhile governance has been the #1 source of further violence throughout history! Talk about a need for a wake-up call!
“Even outside war, in the 20th century alone, more than 270 million people were murdered by their governments. Compared to the few dozen murders committed by anarchists, it is hard to see how the fantasy of the “evil anarchist” could possibly be sustained when we compare the tiny pile of anarchist bodies to the virtual Everest of the dead heaped by governments in one century alone. Surely if we are concerned about violence, murder, theft and rape, we should focus on those who commit the most evils – political leaders – rather than those who oppose them, even misguidedly.” … “The statist looks at a population and sees an irrational and selfish horde that needs to be endlessly herded around at gunpoint – and yet looks at those who run the government as selfless, benevolent and saintly.” … “[We are led to believe] that these living man-gods [i.e. false idols] have such perfect knowledge and perfect wisdom that we should hand them weapons of mass destruction, and the endless power to tax, imprison and print money – and nothing but good, plenty and virtue will result.”
-Stefan Molyneux, MA, “Everyday Anarchy”
Fortunately there are growing numbers who see through this propaganda, but they also know that if they begin to practice noncompliance with this illegitimate social-system (i.e. stop paying taxes, fees. etc. and claim their birthright of sovereign homesteading land), they will likely be met with further violence (arrest/fines/imprisonment) and so they go along with the status-quo because they don’t want to face this, and that’s understandable. That’s why at least waking up others to this crucial truth about social-systems is imperative and our responsibility; when enough people no longer believe the lies upholding system it will not be able to continue on, it relies on its mask of morality, it relies on maintaining the mass-deception.
The fundamental issue that needs to be recognized is that there is no valid justification for why land & water should not be a human right, there is no principled reason for why we must pay some people called officials for their “services” and be automatically subjugated to citizenship; the usual justification, “It’s for the greater good”, is just dogmatic opinion, (opposed by history and current reality) that does not take precedence over the fact that social-systems initiate violence on everyone every day, and one should be free and sovereign, not forced to obey life-restrictions via a social contract that they never signed.
The massive world-wide problem of homelessness is really a problem of landlessness. Building or acquiring a modest natural home is not a major difficulty, the problem is not having a piece of free land to have it on. People are homeless and hungry not because they are incapable of building a natural shelter or planting some seeds, they are simply restricted from living in that easier and natural way because of the monetary-slavery imposed on them by land control/cost and taxation.
We are led to believe by technocrats, politicians and the media that living off the land is more difficult than being a money-slave. The anthropological record shows otherwise, along with the testimony and demonstration of people today who have abundant homestead gardens and orchards: they actually have more free time than those needing money to purchase the things the earth provides for free. What changes this is monetary slavery, the need to pay taxes and land costs, so that if one looks at the hard life of modern farmers they don’t take that into consideration, even though that is what makes them have to work so much more than they would if they were free of such unjust debts.
I’ve heard technocrats say things like “Thank you industrialization! Now we have time to read books!” Again this is really just propaganda, it is pushing the lie that natural living is harder than artificial living, and that you would have less free time living in harmony with Nature. Now of course since most of us are domesticated and have lost natural skills that need to be acquired, along with the fact that much of the Earth is under concrete now, initially the transition to a natural way of living will be rather difficult, but that will only be during the initial phase as we restore the natural balance and abundance that the Earth and natural communities provide. The more people that establish veganic homesteads, the easier it will be for everyone else, the easier it will be to voluntarily help and share with one another. That said, tearing up concrete with some friends can be a lot of fun!
“2500 years is long enough for us to have learned that escape from community, and from the earth, is not a solution, but a root cause of our troubles.”
– John Zerzan, Twilight of the Machines, p. 37
Once people have their own free land, gift-economies would flourish. Today even with the restraints of monetary-slavery, low-wages and high costs, many people regularly give to charity, like local food banks. There have even been cafes opening that have a “pay-what-you-can” policy, along with the common “free-box” phenomenon, community tool-libraries, organic seed libraries, etc. All of this confirms that sharing is a natural thing for human beings to do, and of course it would be a lot more common if people didn’t have to worry about paying the rent, mortgage or taxes! The ancient tradition of human cooperation has been corrupted by the domination/exploitation paradigm, and the foundation of that paradigm is land control; from there begins the process of siphoning the wealth and energy of the masses up to the few vampires at the top of the social pyramid.
But what about roads, schools and hospitals? If no one is paying taxes for them, won’t we be without them? No, we won’t. Why do people think that only government can provide these things, even when they do so poorly? (A rhetorical question, the answer again being indoctrination.)
“Throughout my year [of living without money], many people suggested I could only live without money because others live with it. ’How would you have a road to cycle on if there weren’t money and I didn’t pay my taxes?’ It’s an understandable argument, but it’s based on the underlying assumption that you need money to create things.”
- Mark Boyle, The Moneyless Man: A Year of Freeconomic Living, p. 193
To think quality roads, education and health care is only possible with government is irrational and denies the intelligence and skills of yourself and those within your community, it is a mindset of child-like subservience and helplessness. Yes each of these services and infrastructures like roads will be more natural without centralized governance and industry, but that’s hardly a reason to embrace artificial social-systems of control and destruction! As Mark goes on to say: “I’d happily sacrifice large asphault-covered roads if it meant we could get back to a truly sustainable way of living.” (p. 194)
Can you imagine living on a homestead with nearby friends and family on their own homesteads, sharing and enjoying the abundance to be had by natural living, out of the grasp of the consumerist corporate world? You would be able to pursue your creative passions alongside enjoyable and health-giving small-scale gardening, sharing the bounties of both with your friends and neighbors, a good life uncorrupted by the need for money… It would be nice wouldn’t it? We might even call it a return to Eden, the establishing of true little kingdoms of heaven. Yet your imagination might soon drift to what might disturb that peace and satisfaction, and what, if anything, might do that?
Government officials would have us believe that if people started living this way they would be victimized by terrorists and criminals, yet isn’t it they themselves that are most likely to arrive with weapons, arresting us, taking away our homes, tearing up our gardens? Of course the answer is yes, this is what they do today (and have done for centuries) whenever anybody tries to live separated from their social system of control and exploitation. The worst terrorism and crimes have been, and continue to be, committed by governments.
Government is telling us that we need protection, from people just like themselves! (Speaking of which, if you look into quality sources of information on the terrorist events of 9/11/2001 in New York and 7/7/2005 in London, it’s obvious that the official stories given to us about those events are false, and that those events had to be state-sponsored, just like many others throughout history). Government is just like the mafia by making you pay, through the threat of violence (arrest and imprisonment carried out by people with guns), for protection from themselves; except the mafia doesn’t pretend to be your friend. The only way we can eliminate this true threat is to eliminate their positions of power, and the only way we can do that is to cut off the life-line to this toxic Beast: our subservience, both mental and physical.
A quote from the Bible comes to mind, don’t take it as a religious endorsement, it’s just fitting here:
“For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the Principalities and the Powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness…”
In my mind I translate “flesh and blood” as our neighbor, those in the same lot as us basically. The government uses mass media every day to instill fear of our neighbors, to point out and dramatically assault our consciousness repeatedly with crimes, distorting just how common it really is, and most importantly to them, to make you feel that you need protection from it, to make you feel that you need your Big Brother to protect you from your neighbor because they are always out to get you. Yet what they never reveal in the media is that most crime is actually a result of the system itself, most people are brought to desperation and mental illness by being forced into this unnatural and soul-suppressing consumerist/industrialist society.
The other important factor to understand is that yes, there are disturbed people out there that can be destructive, so in the interest of our safety we should minimize the amount of destruction they can yield. Therefore we should stop supporting the formation of centralized power which produces nuclear weapons, “smart” bombs, etc. because it is very likely that a disturbed person will gain control of those weapons (just look at all of military history!); Additionally false authority and hierarchy is unnatural and corrupts the human mind, and so that means anyone in positions of great power are most likely disturbed individuals! And so, the solution to this dilemma is to eliminate those positions of false power in the first place.
A world without governance is actually safer than a world with it; on top of the aforementioned reasoning, there are the historical examples of communities without a central authority that had much less disorder and violence than those with it; this also refutes the belief that without social-systems we are doomed to destructive chaos.
The corporate media also doesn’t mention all the violence government officials take themselves against the public, particularly those speaking and working for peace and justice. After all, as many involved in activism are aware, there are government agents being payed to interfere with nonviolent positive activism as their sole occupation, violating people’s privacy constantly and worse, all of course in the name of “safety.” But safety for whom? Of course it is the preservation of the status-quo that the employers of these agents are concerned with, maintaining their power and control, and peace and justice aren’t exactly compatible with that. The “4th Branch” of the government (the mass-media) may talk about a corrupt politician now and then, but they never question the existence of governance overall, and whether it could actually be harmful to the public; it is always portrayed as our benevolent parental overlord.
It’s fairly easy to fall for this trick and think that what we need to control all the “anarchy” in the world is more governance, more centralized control, but this forgets that the whole planet now consists of one human farm (aka country) bordering another, and that has not ensured greater safety at all, it has actually brought us to the point of possible world extinction through nuclear war and/or ecological collapse. The chaos/destruction we observe around us, from wars, various physical/mental diseases, state-sponsored terrorism, oceans/rivers/air/earth filled with toxic chemicals, acid rain, forest clear-cutting, to nuclear waste/radiation/weapons, dangerous nanotechnology, GMO’s, etc., have social-systems themselves as root cause; most would not exist entirely, and the others reduced dramatically, if we didn’t give the few the unnatural power to create and yield all this destruction in the first place.
Returning to the root solution, there is definitely some recognition that very localized agriculture and trade is a crucial part of it among activists world-wide, yet as humans born into this techno-industrial society, many have a hard time forming a clear conception of what a natural life would even look like, or consist of; they are like animals born in captivity. Also like such animals they often become unnaturally attached to their false parents; people often feel indebted to the system, since it has allowed them to survive (no matter how feebly and unnaturally) and so they can become defenders of those that are ultimately their captors, because of a false sense of familial bond. This can be seen often with ultra-patriotic individuals who angrily shout at and villainize anyone who questions “their” government, since subconsciously it is equivalent to questioning or criticizing their own parents.
Whether patriotic or critical of government, most people who do want to make the world a better place have been so indoctrinated into this social-system they totally miss the real solution (veganic homestead communities), and the insurmountable obstacle to that sustainable vision for society: the forcible restriction to living naturally on the Earth. Very good ideas now often surface among good intentioned people, like “We need less waste, less transportation of energy/resources, more recycling, more localized and sustainable production of organic food, we need more self & community sufficiency, we need food sovereignty and local control of natural resources”, and all of this is very good, true and in the in the right direction, but that direction needs to be traveled to its final destination/solution, otherwise then the not-so-minor detail that most people can’t afford the land (or time) to live in a truly localized and sustainable way is not addressed, nor is the ineffectiveness of partial environmental solutions.
This short-sighted, “working within the system” approach misses where the logical direction of ecological and social science is pointing to, the ultimate ideal: Sovereign Veganic Homesteads. That model is the most local (there’s nothing more local than growing your own food and living on a homestead!), the most sustainable & healthy (veganic agriculture is the most sustainable, healthy and ethical form of agriculture!), the least wasteful (homesteads can be zero waste!), the least dependent on transportation of resources (homesteads can be completely non-dependent!) and energy (homesteads can produce their own energy, if even needed, via windmills, solar/thermal, biofuel, etc.!); veganic homesteading is the sustainability ideal to which all these good ideas are progressing toward.
The reformer’s train of thought may not venture outside the systemic box (thanks again to indoctrination), and so they miss this real “kingdom of heaven” solution. This ecological and social template is the only thing that can really produce the positive dramatic change the world needs, now more than ever; half-measures and false climate-change and social-justice solutions offered by industry and government will not be enough, as the facts and current reality makes very evident. Just like the mistake of thinking a social system that is just more democratic and less corrupt will be sufficient, the idea that simply buying more local and producing less waste while still supporting the system, being a “conscious consumer”, though certainly better, is not enough to end the ecocide, mass-injustice and tyranny taking place, nor does it address the root injustice of land control that makes us need to buy (rather than freely produce) the necessities of life in the first place. We must recognize that the whole artificial corporate/consumerist society that we are forced to live in is fundamentally wrong and cannot be reformed into goodness; there is no good form of slavery.
Until land & water is claimed as a human right by individuals and families, the destruction of mind, body and ecosystem will continue. Sending a nice letter or petition to a CEO of a big company, or to some politician, asking for your fair share of the land & water, free of charge, will obviously be ineffective. The unjust usury-based economic system that exploits the masses, the never-ending wars, the nuclear waste and bombs, and all the rest of what makes up modern “civilization,” will continue to go on until we strike at the root of the evil, as Thoreau put it. All reforms that ignore the root problem of land control and forced taxation will not bring the drastic positive change we need and deserve. The problem is, as Derrick Jensen put it in the book “Deep Green Resistance,”
“We do not question the existence of an economic and social system that is working the world to death, that is starving it to death, that is imprisoning it, that is torturing it. We never question the logic that leads inevitably to clear-cuts, murdered oceans, loss of topsoil, damned rivers, poisoned aquifers.”
So what can we do about this? As I said before educating others about the crucial truth about social-systems is key (e.g. please share this essay), but if you and some others are willing to risk arrest for the greater good then it basically comes down to claiming your birthright. Two acres of arable land per family would be sufficient and fair. Those that already have a house and land could just continue living there, but stop paying taxes and costs that prevent them from living freely and naturally. Surrounding community could then support them in eviction resistance, proclaiming that a free place to live on the Earth is a birthright for all.
The first steps for those that don’t already have a house or land, would be to work with family, friends and willing neighbors to occupy empty land and houses, depave empty concrete lots, and form sovereign homesteads for everyone involved. The little wilderness that still remains should be left alone, there is plenty of land that is already misused (like golf courses and giant ranches) that can be claimed. Helping each other defend against house and land evictions (which are really an attack, a form of violence) the mask of governance is taken off and the truth of tyranny becomes clear to see:
There are people that want to live naturally, ethically and freely on the Earth and there are other people who want them to be their slaves instead. So these other people have men with guns go to your home and tell you that you have to pay up, otherwise they will harm you. Again, this is exactly what the mafia does! There really is no difference, except in appearance; the mafia doesn’t pretend to be your “representatives”. And so having found this clarity of good vs. evil in the world, people can confidently defend their birthright vs. the violence of others who want to force them to pay for what should be free (i.e. their space and time on this planet).
The more people vocalize and act on the fact that sovereign homesteading land is a birthright the more successful this movement will be; the evil of governance will become more clear for everyone as the real front line of the revolution remains in the spot-light (which is well worth repeating): people trying to live natural, free and nonviolent lives, and then men with guns (police) initiating force against them under orders from the State, attempting to return the humans (whom politicians consider their property) to subservience and assimilation, attempting to return these free humans to slavery. Then it will be clearly a battle between violence and nonviolence, and once that moral high-ground is clearly established and widely seen, the lies and propaganda of governance which has shaped human beliefs that have supported this destructive rampage through the centuries can finally be discarded for good.
Just as local communities successfully overcame the mafia in Italy through large numbers of people refusing to comply with their demands, we we can form the Beloved Community (as the great Martin Luther King, Jr. put it) across the world by claiming our birthright and refusing to comply with the demands of so-called “officials”. And remember, this is not “reclaiming the commons” as a citizen, this is reclaiming your birthright as a human.
Gandhi was wisely insistent that Truth and Nonviolence are inseparable; it is only when they are both pure and working together that a force capable of dismantling empire is created. This is why Gandhi was successful against the British Empire and why Martin Luther King, Jr. was successful against the American Empire; by making the good and evil of the situation very clear, by making the nonviolence vs. violence starkly obvious, their movements gained the power to succeed.
Look at all other violent revolutionary campaigns throughout history, what significant positive change did they bring? If activism contains lies and violence it is doomed to failure, it is just another version of the evil that is being deplored. No matter how good-intentioned activists are, fighting fire with fire, evil with evil, just doesn’t work; this is why governments hire agent-provocateurs and use many other means to either create or provoke violence, it always works in their favor. Some so-called radical activists have a hard time accepting this, just like they have a hard time accepting the nonviolence and science of veganism, but this is basically just an expression of immaturity, a refusal to face the facts and ethical imperative of current and historical reality. I highly recommend the book “Nonviolence: 25 Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea” by Mark Kurlansky and the documentary “A Force More Powerful” for more on this issue.
Some final thoughts on safety, the #1 “justification” for governance:
“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
– Benjamin Franklin
“The cardinal rule of a closing or closed society is that your alignment with the regime offers no protection; in a true police state no one is safe.”
– Naomi Wolf, Author of Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries
Do you agree with the above quotations? Perhaps you’re not convinced that a world without social-systems would be safer than our current reality, and perhaps you’d rather have that supposed safety in exchange for your sovereignty and liberty. Perhaps you’re fine with being a money-slave, paying taxes for things you don’t want or agree with, and petitioning and protesting mostly in vain. Perhaps living more freely and naturally just doesn’t sound appealing to you at this point in your life. If so that’s fine, that’s your disposition, your preference. But for those that don’t want to play this game why must they? Why is their choice invalid and yours valid? Why should your preference for supposed greater safety override another’s preference for greater freedom? Why must someone agree to a social contract they never signed? There is no principled, rational and true reason for why the choice of greater nonviolence and freedom should be opposed.
To say everyone must submit to some other human’s contrived authority, and pay them for services they never asked for, is tyrannical. This is the despotism of all social systems, they are based on force, on violence, and so have already committed a crime before any other has. Governance punishes us with restrictions and servitude at birth for a “pre-crime”; we are charged guilty before innocent, and this is not a defensible position. No one has the right to deny a woman or man their birthright and deny their sovereignty for a crime they’ve never committed.
Also if despite the principled reasoning I have offered in this essay, you’re currently living a pretty comfortable life and find the call for the abolition of government to be “too extreme”, or maybe just sort of scary to you, then because of this you may also disregard the crucial truths I’ve presented. But if you were to look beyond your bubble of comfortable existence (or even just more deeply into it) you’d see how much suffering and destruction is going on in the world around you, how our lives are in fact corrupted by tyranny, and then a call for drastic change would not seem so extreme, but rather more logical and necessary.
There is risk in freedom. It’s safer to never leave your house, but that’s equivalent to house-arrest, to prison. Life can be risky, but we take the risk because the possible rewards, namely happiness and satisfying engagement with the world, creativity, others, Nature, etc. is worth going for. Guaranteed mediocrity is worse than possible joy. We have been denied the possibility of experiencing real freedom and right living on this planet by social-systems, we have been disallowed from realizing our full potential for happiness.
So don’t accept the belief that heavenly experience is only to be found in the after-life, that we have to live in an unsustainable way and be subject to pre-emptive violence, that we can’t be a natural and free humans on this planet. Lets respect the freedom of others, dominate no one and live peacefully in harmony with Nature, each other and other species, lets make Earth more heavenly (i.e. more peaceful, healthy and just) by establishing true kingdoms of heaven, sovereign veganic homesteads, making up voluntary gift-economy communities.
This form of Green Anarchism (more specifically a form of Veganarchism), liberates all species on Earth from domination and the negative effects that cause. And at a time when we see ecological (and possible economic) collapse, nuclear disasters and the ever-present threat of nuclear weapons, a growing worldwide-surveillance grid & police-state, further unjust exploitation and disparity of wealth, extinction of species, toxic chemical overload in the air, water, earth and our bodies, Peak Oil, GMO’s corrupting our food supply and health, and on and on, it’s a perspective and solution who’s time has definitely come.
