Civilization is produced by us, not by dominance hierarchies with publicity operations.
Rulership survives on human vulnerabilities. Civilization survives on human virtues. No matter how much publicity equates rulership with civilization, they are fundamentally opposed.
The Fundamentals
As I noted recently, there are two primary models for attaining a civilized, humane, high-trust way of life:
- Cultivate civilization within people.
- Enforce civilization upon people.
In the best of the old days, governments contented themselves to deal with exterior threats, leaving any number of religions and philosophies free to cultivate civilization within the populace.
Since the the 1970s, however, we’ve seen a hostile takeover of society by the state… the enforcement of moral norms by the state. Under this model, the state must enforce proper speech and personal choices; it must save us from one new terror after another. And we are expected to believe that by eliminating threat after threat, rulership is leading us to a promised land.
Do you believe that? I certainly don’t, because I’ve watched it for more than half a century and I’ve seen ever more enforcement, based upon more fears, to the detriment of honest and free living.
What, Then, Shall We Do?
Our job is to teach the next generation what is good and right. The enforcement complex will not do this; they’ll portray themselves as the ultimate agent of goodness, as they have the the aforementioned half century. Our job, then, is to teach the things that actually build civilization: the golden rule, freedom of speech, tolerance, kindness and cooperation.
Now, moving on to particular things:
Homeschooling excels as a way to teach civilization, simultaneously keeping children from the toxic dogmas being pumped through government schools. In the US, where the war on homeschooling remains at a fairly low level, more than 11 percent of American children are now said to be homeschooled. And so the fruits of this, while already visible, will be increasing
Homeschooling works, and if one in nine of parents can do it, many more can do it as well.
Past all of this, we have Bitcoin. This is money with civilization encoded within it. Bitcoin is super-tolerant, in that censorship is very, very difficult and no one can be cut off because of their religion or anything else. More than that, Bitcoin has drawn to itself many of the most serious and morally-minded people.
What we need to do with Bitcoin is use it profligately. Bitcoin’s Lightning overlay (and dozens of Lightning-able wallets are available) accommodates any number of small purchases for trivial fees. We need to get this thing going. It’s money that supports civilization, rather than subverting it… and money is important. .
Silver and gold could be used similarly, but we covered that separately.
And So…
And so we have plenty to do. (And I haven’t mentioned things we should be doing on a daily basis, like talking to neighbors, coworkers and so on.)
As adults, we need to accept that we’re now on our own… as perhaps we’ve always been.
So pick a spot and start.
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See A New Architecture of Education and Building A Positive Social Infrastructure.
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Paul Rosenberg
freemansperspective.com