The state is able to get away with its
indecencies because most of us are ignorant of the fundamental nature of
all political systems. The state is an entity that enjoys a monopoly on
the use of violence within a given territory. Because of this generally
accepted definition, the idea that individuals have any rightful claim to
immunity from state violence would, of necessity, be regarded as a
limitation on such monopoly power. It borders on sedition to suggest that
there are any restraints on the arbitrariness of governmental force. This
is why those who engage in unprovoked wars, police brutalities, unlawful
searches and seizures of property, the tasering of harmless individuals,
and numerous other offenses, are almost never held to account for their
wrongs. In the eyes of state officials – be they prosecuting attorneys,
judges, or elected politicians – such acts cannot be thought of as
"wrongs," lest the state be deprived of its essence as a
"violence monopolist." The state and the playground bully
operate from the same modus operandi: the capacity to enforce obedience
to its inconstant temperaments through violence. Regardless of the venue,
the state continues to escalate its indecencies to ordinary men, women,
and children in order to forcefully remind us of our subservience to its
arbitrariness; to refresh our memory that the state is entitled to do to
us anything that it chooses. This same principle was carried out in Nazi
concentration camps, in which prisoners were stripped naked, shorn of
their hair and personal clothing, and in so many other ways
depersonalized and dehumanized. I recall seeing a photograph of a group
of leering German army officers watching a group of naked women
concentration camp prisoners running past them. These TSA ancestors did
not have modern technology to assist them, but had to rely on their
eyesight, alone, to perform their "full-body scanning."
Whose Tea Party?
by Butler Shaffer
They plainly did not know how to treat me, but behaved
like persons who are underbred. In every threat and in every compliment
there was a blunder; for they thought that my chief desire was to stand
the other side of that stone wall. I could not but smile to see how
industriously they locked the door on my meditations, which followed them
out again without let or hindrance, and they were really all that was
dangerous. As they could not reach me, they had resolved to punish my
body; just as boys, if they cannot come at some person against whom they
have a spite, will abuse his dog. I saw that the State was half-witted,
that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did
not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all remaining respect for
it, and pitied it. -- Henry David Thoreau
For decades, I have maintained that the entire institutional order is in
a state of entropic collapse, and that Western civilization, itself, is
in its final days. I have gone on to suggest that, depending upon how we
respond to all of this, our future may become far more free, peaceful,
and productive than what we have known. Events of recent weeks reinforce
my opinion that Western society is in the process of a major
transformation in how it is to be organized; changes that portend
something far more dynamic than what the Renaissance, the Enlightenment,
and the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions combined to
produce.
The words of Thoreau keep coming back to me as I watch the fallout, first
from the TSA buffooneries, followed by the second feature: the arrest of
Julian Assange for having dared to reveal the underbelly of the state’s
dark side. Though I am close to illiterate when it comes to computers,
even I could see how far out of touch the established order is from
grasping what it is up against. Some have suggested that the Assange
episode is the opening round in "Cyberwars," an assessment that
only touches the surface in trying to understand the continuing
metamorphosis. Unlike Thoreau, however, I am unable to engender any sense
of pity for the state as it counts its silver spoons and plots to get
more of your silver to redistribute to its corporate
co-schemers.
The political establishment tells us that we are caught up in a "war
on terror" which, unlike previous wars, is destined to continue
forever. As with all other pronouncements from the state, this
characterization of events is grounded in lies. It is not
"terrorism" – whatever that word may mean – that threatens the
existing power structure, but the collapse of the institutional
hierarchies that have ruled mankind for so many years. The struggles that
now consume the energies, lives, and material resources of the nation can
more accurately be considered as a "war to preserve the
institutional order."
As I developed in my book,
Calculated Chaos, the greatest threat to the survival of
mankind comes not just from the political systems that plague us –
although they have provided the mechanisms of destruction – but from that
alliance of institutional interests that invariably finds _expression_ in
collective rather than individualized purposes. We have
long been conditioned to subjugate our lives to institutionalized
systems (i.e., organizations that have ceased being tools for our
mutual interests, but have become ends in themselves). Our acceptance of
the phrase "too big to fail" expresses this premise quite well.
The more we allow institutional purposes to preempt our own, the more
detrimental our organized behavior becomes to the processes that sustain
us. There is nothing quite so characteristic of life, itself, as
resiliency, the capacity to adapt to changing circumstances. The
maxim expressed by geneticists – "cherish your mutations" –
applies to social systems as well. It is the changefulness of life
– not the permanency demanded by institutions – that is central to
our survival, both as individuals and a species. But institutionalism
makes too many life-threatening demands upon the life processes. We have
learned to absorb costs – whether in the form of taxation, regulatory
intrusions, wars and other physical aggression – that interfere with our
self-interested pursuits. But as such costs continue to escalate, a
breaking point is reached; and pressures for fundamental change begin to
outpace institutional demands for life to submit itself to their
organizational purposes.
An enhanced understanding of the dynamics of chaos, coupled with
the emergence of sophisticated technologies that allow for more
individualized methods of research and communication, combine to generate
environments in which the inherent uncertainty of what we
"know" confronts exponential increases in information. The
emerging synthesis of such factors has made our world both unstable
and resurgent; a vivid example of Joseph Schumpeter’s
"creative destruction."
The changes occurring in our world are not simply marginal
adjustments in the arrangements we have with others, nor
superficial amendments to existing rules or organizational forms.
They are, instead, transformations that go to the essence of how people
are to associate and cooperate with one another. We are in the midst of a
major paradigm shift that is redefining the meaning of society! It
is the kind of metamorphosis that is incompatible with the repressive and
unalterable nature of institutions.
Our world is moving rapidly from vertically-structured power
systems to horizontally-networked, informal systems of
cooperation. The centralized authority institutions have long
exercised over people, is giving way to decentralized
relationships among autonomous individuals. The ongoing struggle
between the forces of institutionalism whose methods are grounded
in fear, violence, and the quest for security, and the creative processes
of social individualism premised upon personal liberty and the
inviolability of private property interests, will doubtless prove ugly in
the short run; but will soon bring about the total collapse of
institutionalized systems grounded in a war against life itself. Those
who doubt that members of the institutional order share a common interest
in fighting the human energies that are demanding major transformations
in how society is to be organized, need look no further than the
treatment accorded Julian Assange by various banks, credit card
companies, online retailers, politicians, and other established interests
for his ill-defined "crime" of truthfully reporting the dark
side of institutionalism.
Institutional systems tend to resist these dynamic processes of change,
particularly those to which their rigid foundations lack resiliency to
make creative responses. The established order insists on maintaining the
status quo because it is the status quo. When cultural, economic,
or political constancies are suddenly disrupted by novel forces, the
institutional hierarchy is quick to react. Wars, the burning and hanging
of witches and heretics, political purges, the persecution of minorities,
torture, the execution of men and women charged with treason,
concentration camps, genocides, police states, and other
institutionalized forms of terror and violence, are among the
better-known examples of existing power structures insulating themselves
from energized influences they have been unable to co-opt to their
purposes. When so confronted, established authorities become desperate,
and resort to any means they deem necessary to reinforce their
foundations of power. The purpose underlying such tactics has been to
counter destabilizing influences by instilling a sense of fear among
those they rule. The subject classes learn to fear not only the
external forces purported to be threats to their well-being, but
the established authorities who demand their obedience.
We ought to have learned how viciousness is necessary to the exercise of
state power from the vivid revelations of Abu Ghraib atrocities, or the
use of "waterboarding" and other forms of torture used by
American forces in Iraq. As with TSA behavior, these post-9/11 intrusions
by the military were also rationalized in the name of preventing suicide
bombings and other terrorist acts. Such, alas, has been the purpose of
none of these indignities and cruelties. Their underlying purpose has
been that of every bully: to reinforce the power they exercise over their
weaker victims through humiliating and dehumanizing them. Though
political systems are often able to secure compliance through
less-threatening means, it is their capacities to inflict widespread
terror amongst a population upon which their authority ultimately
depends. Lest you are still burdened by the FOX-News, neo-con mindset
that "terror" is something practiced only by others,
speak to the survivors of American "shock and awe" bombing
attacks on Baghdad.
Regardless of the dehumanizing tools made available to government
operatives, both the purpose and the effect of their
trespasses upon us is to reinforce public subservience to the state by
demeaning the inviolability of our sense of individuality. As Nazi
concentration camp survivor, Viktor Frankl, tells us, "under the
influence of a world which no longer recognized the value of human life
and human dignity," people "lost the feeling of being an
individual, a being with a mind, with inner freedom and personal
value." Those who survived the camps tended to be those whose
"spiritual freedom" was what made life "meaningful and
purposeful."
It is just such individual centeredness and dignity with which political
systems are constantly at war, and which the state must suppress if it is
to subject people to its arbitrary control. Like the military practice of
shaving the heads of new recruits, the state must strip people of any
sense of individuality and personality if it is to maintain its
monopolistic power over them. This, not the bogeyman of the
"terrorist," is the purpose behind the very existence – as well
as the current practices – of the TSA and other police-state atrocities.
As the Nazis and Soviets made known to the world, totalitarian power is
achieved only by forcefully subduing individual claims to
self-ownership!
The state is able to get away with its indecencies because most of us are
ignorant of the fundamental nature of all political systems. The
state is an entity that enjoys a monopoly on the use of violence within a
given territory. Because of this generally accepted definition, the idea
that individuals have any rightful claim to immunity from state violence
would, of necessity, be regarded as a limitation on such monopoly power.
It borders on sedition to suggest that there are any restraints on the
arbitrariness of governmental force. This is why those who engage in
unprovoked wars, police brutalities, unlawful searches and seizures of
property, the tasering of harmless individuals, and numerous other
offenses, are almost never held to account for their wrongs. In the eyes
of state officials – be they prosecuting attorneys, judges, or elected
politicians – such acts cannot be thought of as "wrongs," lest
the state be deprived of its essence as a "violence
monopolist." The state and the playground bully operate from the
same modus operandi: the capacity to enforce obedience to its inconstant
temperaments through violence. Regardless of the venue, the state
continues to escalate its indecencies to ordinary men, women, and
children in order to forcefully remind us of our subservience to its
arbitrariness; to refresh our memory that the state is entitled to do to
us anything that it chooses. This same principle was carried out in Nazi
concentration camps, in which prisoners were stripped naked, shorn of
their hair and personal clothing, and in so many other ways
depersonalized and dehumanized. I recall seeing a photograph of a group
of leering German army officers watching a group of naked women
concentration camp prisoners running past them. These TSA ancestors did
not have modern technology to assist them, but had to rely on their
eyesight, alone, to perform their "full-body scanning."
We would not regard as wholesome a family forcibly held together by an
abusive parent who used fear, threats, and violence to enforce his or her
arbitrary expectations upon the rest of the family; a parent who listened
in on the phone calls, or who regularly went through the clothing or
personal belongings of his or her children, or followed them around on
their dates, or subjected them to periodic urine tests; a parent who felt
justified in employing torture as a form of "tough love" in
getting answers to their questions, or who resorted to the use of
electric prods to overcome their children’s resistance to their arbitrary
authority. How might we regard the psychological health and social
futures of children raised in such a brutish environment? How even more
despairing the outcome of such methods directed against a society of
300,000,000 people?
http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer226.html
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- Whose Tea Party? MJ
- Re: Whose Tea Party? GregfromBoston
