This is a beautiful planet, filled, in the main, with decent, cooperative humans. And yet, I want out. Give me any kind of functional spaceship and any reasonable chance, and I’ll take it. This place is anti-human. It chokes the best that’s in us, aggressively and self-righteously.
I was struck not long ago by a comment of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s, in which he expressed the same kind of feeling:
I ought to have… become a star in the sky. Instead of which I have remained stuck on earth….
All of us who’ve had a moment of transcendence – who made some type of contact with what is truly the best inside ourselves – have also sensed that life in the current world is incompatible with it. I think we should stop burying that understanding beneath piles of “that’s the way things are,” “we should be realistic,” and “you can’t fight City Hall.”
Screw the way things are, screw “realistic,” and screw City Hall too. I was made for better things than this, and you were too.
Everywhere I turn, some kind of ruler, sub-ruler, enforcer, regulator, or “right-thinking” quasi-enforcer demands not only my money but also for me to make myself easy to punish, thus showing myself to be a good subservient. That’s not just wrong; it’s a disease. I don’t care whether such people are “following orders,” “just doing their job,” or whatever else they tell themselves to soothe their rightly troubled souls. That mode of living is perverse, and these people are enforcing a disease.
Let me make this part very clear: The desire to control others is disease; it is corruption. Willing controllers are a morally inferior class. And the truly deranged thing is that these people rule the world!
Forget about why this is so – we can debate that later – focus rather on the utter insanity of this:
A minority of moral defectives, who think extortion is a virtue, rule people who are happy to live and let live… by force.
That’s outright lunacy.
And to support the lunacy, we have lies, intimidation, and slogans: “In a democracy, you’re really ruling yourself,” “Only crazy people disagree,” “It’s always been this way,” and so on. To all of which I reply, How stupid do you think we are? You drilled that crap into us when we were children, but we’re not children anymore.
And if “our way” isn’t as bad as North Korea, that makes it right? Only to a fool.
And the results of “the way it’s always been”… my God, the results…
A study from the 1980s((It was published fairly widely at the time, but I lost track of the details and it seems to have persisted only among religious groups. The best information I have is that it was published by the Norwegian Academy of Sciences in 1984.)) found that since 3600 BC, the world has known only 292 years of peace. During this period there have been 14,531 wars, large and small, in which 3.6 billion people have been killed.
This is what I’m supposed to serve with all my heart and soul? A Bronze Age system that can’t keep itself from slaughter? We’re talking about a 5,600-year track record of mass death… and yet fundamental change is considered unthinkable?
Well, screw that too, because I think deep, fundamental change is called for… and was called for a long time ago.
Again, this is a wonderful planet and most of the people on it are decent… but it is ruled by insanity, and I want out.
Yes, I know, there’s really nowhere to go. Every place I might go is dominated by the same diseased model, and dissent is punished the same… and in some places worse. That’s one of the reasons space appeals to me; it gives me a chance to escape this madness.
I’ll draw this to a close with a passage from C. Delisle Burns’s wonderful The First Europe, describing why the Roman Empire collapsed:
Great numbers of men and women were unwilling to make the effort required for the maintenance of the old order, not because they were not good enough to fulfill their civic duties, but because they were too good to be satisfied with a system from which so few derived benefit.
I, for one, am unwilling to expend any effort to maintain the present order. It is by its nature incompatible with the best that is in us… and always will be.
Those of us who want to be more and better cannot support the current order without opposing what’s best in ourselves. Screw that.
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Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com
Nailed it.
I agree. There is a mystery and a transcendental. My life is dedicated to helping individuals find that. I don’t really have hope for BAU but I will work with it (in some way) as long as it is. And the apocalypse? Well when it needs to happen, because BAU is so broken people just cant-won’t work it anymore, it will happen. All I know for certain is that I just won’t let the Mule have my soul. We are all born to die. My soul belongs to me and is immortal. Thanks again Paul for the blog.
Well said.
Community building with residents associations = tribes, Tribal meetings between tribes. Family, tribes, it is how we work.
Paul says “That’s one of the reasons space appeals to me; it gives me a chance to escape this madness.” A simpler albeit imperfect alternative is being developed: Seasteading: http://www.seasteading.org/.
Getting off this prison planet is one thing (hard enough for the average man or woman!), living off of it is quite another. Where will your food , water and air come from? Where will your waste products go? How will you stay warm, but not too warm? What will you do if you become sick or get injured? What will protect you from all of the cosmic radiation, if you manage to live getting past the Van Allen radiation belts?
Instead of all that, why not educate as many people as you can to employ some facts and logic to beat the governments and their legal systems at their own game? The basic premise (a false one, BTW) of the legal system is to ensure justice for those who have been wronged, to provide a means for people who have been injured or their property damaged a means of recourse to be made whole again, and to punish wrongdoers in the hope that they will not do it again. But the legal system commits the crime of fraud at every step of the way, no one has any kind of a guarantee that they will get what they are owed, so why should we be forced to be a participant in that scam?
Please read The Scam of the Legal System, The Legal System Equals Gambling and The Holes in the Legal System, just for starters.
The people who stayed in Europe asked the same questions and made the same warnings to people heading for the New World. And here we are.
Traveling from one continent to another on the same planet is far away different from traveling to another planet, or just living in space. Read about the problems that long term space life brings about. For starters, almost immediately you get a decrease in the amount of Calcium in the bones.
Randy
Colonists heading to the new world faced similar problems. For instance, lack of vitamin C which caused scurvy. They dealt with it. The first people to migrate into space will similarly deal with it whatever the challenges may be.
I completely agree. I’ve found using the Establishment’s tactics (but to extricate oneself instead of being enslaved) works best. To wit:
a) Configure your mindest. In our case, that means discovering your core values for yourself and not accepting the belief systems of others blindly. You are your own person; you should have your own convictions. If you hope to escape this Hall Of Mirrors and bust out into freedom you will need strength and conviction of a magnitude that come from personal conviction. Re-educate yourself. Most of our accepted / official history is total spin – written by the victors to justify their ambitions and motives which are rarely very savory. Don’t be a pawn in the schemes. Educate yourself.
B) blend in. The Japanese say the nail that protrudes the furthest gets the hammer. The establishment thrive on conformity. Do you think there is any advantage to going around and pointing out the hypocrisy and injustice everywhere you see it? There are precious few who will acknowledge it as truth. Don’t rattle their cage; they don’t like it. This only makes you a target. Connect with others already in the path. This is a much better form of persuasion.
C) slow and steady. Ever noticed the big trends in history? Those arcs of change that wouldn’t be acceptable in the short term but are accepted over generations? I think this is a tactic the Establishment use quite well. The play the long game – multi generational. Rebels can fail to appreciate the movement they’re part of (especially if not connected with it or if they don’t recognize it). This means the independent person’stimescale is short and consequently will fail if change isn’t brought about swiftly. Utopia may not be in our lifetimes. We may breakdown the prison but it maybe those who come after us that reap the real rewards. Have stamina and fight not just for ourselves. It those who follow even as we benefit from those who have sacrificed before us. It’s a movement not a lifestyle.
One last point. Don’t be discouraged about the problem of not having a place to go / escape to. This fight is more mental than physical. Cyberspace is where we can link up even if separate and isolated physically.
Good work Paul!
I’m a sovereign state. Nearly 82, I’m also the healthiest octogenarian in town. I’ll be “gettin’ out” all too soon. I ain’t in no rush. And I ain’t a-gonna let the bastards get me down. “They” might appear to have lots of “power”. But they haven’t the authority to interfere with my sovereignty unless I give them that authority. I suggest you reread this:
http://www.ozarkia.net/bill/anarchism/library/DiscourseServitude.html
I see this as a fun time to be alive. I’m merely one of nearly 7.5 billion human souls on this pale blue dot upon which I’ve been privileged to reside. In those 4 score and 2 years I’ve seen lots of changes — not all for the worse.
I’ve enjoyed, for instance, witnessing the “Brexit” vote, the “Trump” vote, and now the “Renzi” vote. Last time I voted in a political election was 1964, well over 50 years ago. I don’t discount the probability that the results could be the product of much elite masterminding and rigging and ringing out of the term “populism” endlessly for the purpose of manipulating a move toward acceptance by the hoi polloi of global government.
I’d like to live to see that quest implode in their ignorant faces. Sam
If humans have screwed up life on earth, what makes you think they won’t do the same out in space? I think the battles have to be fought and won here on earth.
One thought: Dominance is a lot harder to maintain when the area to be dominated is measured with a cube function, rather than a square. 😉
As for internal issues… you’re entirely correct: Nothing solves those but we ourselves.
My thoughts exactly about those who intend to “save” mankind by going to places like Mars. I say, “Wherever you go, there you are.” You are not escaping anything because you (we humans) are the problem. And they lie as usual because saving humanity is only an excuse to act as a foil for their greed in going after unknown treasures and being the first to lay claim. Idiots. But hey, why not when you can get the taxpayer to fund it all. Just grease a few D.C. palms and presto!
I have been saying “There’s been a terrible mistake. I don’t belong here.” The realization of the insanity of the status quo is a start toward recovery. We are meant to be free but there is always someone with a psychopathic need to control others and with just enough strong arm support to do it. Those of us who recognize the true condition of the world have an obligation to promote life and liberty so that at least future generations have a chance to thrive as individuals and not as wards or property of the state subject to the will of professional deceivers.