Each item below identifies a parental or adult behaviour that is violent but ‘invisible’ because people would not ordinarily perceive the behaviour as damaging. The bracketed section identifies one or more likely responses of the child although the precise response(s) will obviously vary from one child to the next. The responses might be feelings and/or behaviours; they might be copies or reactions.
Every time that a child is terrorised into surrendering control of its own mind in order to act on the will of another, its unconscious fear, self-hatred, powerlessness and inclination to use violence increase. Thus, the child is taught to be violent towards itself, others and the Earth through an unending sequence of parental and adult behaviours (entailing acts of commission and omission) that, individually, might easily be overlooked or even dismissed as insignificant. In brief, the child’s natural Self suffers death by a thousand ‘invisible’ cuts.
There are times when authority must revert to violence in order to maintain obedience.
There will always be a small minority who refuse to obey the tenets of cultural law. Because of this, authorities employ a constant stream of violence known as law enforcement, or police. These are not police in the defense of liberty, but police in the defense of authority. Cultures always teach that liberty and authority are one and the same; but the design of police is to wield the weapons of violence in the preservation of authority, not to defend liberty.
Authority must also employ violence when cultures break down. Throughout history, people have slowly and steadily learned more and more about their own worth, and hence demanded more and more freedom. Different cultures have fallen as people realized that culture is a lie.
When cultures begin to break down, it is because people are learning about their value. Such cultures and the authorities they protect are doomed. Never once in history has a culture in decline been redeemed. When authorities see that their culture is being dismantled, and obedience is no longer theirs to enjoy, they return to violence. These returns to violence are historically extremely brutal. The violent enforcement of law is a sign of coming liberty.
Culture and Objectivity
Since culture is not objective, it must be subjective, at least to some degree.
To the degree that culture is subjective, it cannot make reference to any objective facts or realities. For instance, if I say, “I like vanilla ice cream,” I am expressing a subjective preference – quite distinct from saying, “Objectively, vanilla is the best flavour of ice cream.”
Furthermore, if I say not only that vanilla ice cream is the best flavour objectively, but also that it is immoral to prefer any other flavour, and moral to prefer vanilla, then clearly I am going far beyond the bounds of rationality.
Not only am I claiming that vanilla is objectively “best,” but also that it is the only moral ideal, and that any preference for any other flavour is immoral.
The elevation of a subjective preference to an objective ideal – especially when it involves ethics – is simply called bigotry.
Thus culture, by elevating subjective preferences for local customs to objective – and often moral – ideals, is merely a species of petty, self-righteous, pompous, false, prejudicial and ugly bigotry.
Culture is the most dangerous lie in the world, because false moral ideals are always required for the execution of evil.
Now, what is moral must be enforced – thus by turning subjective preferences into “objective morality,” culture opens wide the hellish gates of violent control.
In other words, by turning violence into virtue, culture not only excuses violence – culture creates violence.
What Slaves Really Fear
Culture can thus be accurately viewed as a set of moral mythologies that are used to create, justify and extend violence against the majority of individuals.
What is it, then, that prevents us from shrugging off these choking and enslaving falsehoods?
In other words, who are you most afraid of?
If you start to speak the truth about culture, mythology, exploitation and violence, whose response frightens you the most?
If you openly speak about the simple reality that the state is violence, are you afraid that black-suited SWAT teams will burst through your windows and drag you off to Guantanamo Bay?
If you say that religious superstition is an exploitive lie, that the New York attacks were an unjust retaliation to far more unjust American attacks upon Muslims, that soldiers are merely men paid to kill others, like any hit-men – whose response do you fear the most?
There is a reason that we do not say these things.
There is a reason that we smile and nod and wave our flags and cheer our leaders and refuse to speak the simple truths that would inevitably set us free.
That reason is not that we are afraid of our leaders, or their thugs, or their jails, or their tortures.
The reason that we bite our tongues is that we are afraid of each other.
Why We Are Talking About Culture…
The reason that we are talking about culture and statism and religion – rather than only your personal relationships – is this:
The moment that you begin to speak the truth – a prerequisite for any form of intimacy – you will be attacked by your fellow slaves.
The question, then, since no one likes to be attacked, is: why bother speaking the truth at all?
Well, we speak the truth because we want the future to be different from the present – our own personal future, in terms of having honor, honesty and integrity in our personal relationships – and the future of the world, which yearns and deserves to be free.
If you truly take on the concepts in this book – if you speak openly and honestly about the truth – you will be endlessly attacked, your life will become very difficult in countless ways, and very few of your existing relationships – if any – will survive your new honesty.
Now, I could tell you that somewhere beyond the darkness that you will be cast into, lies a golden land of beauty, intimacy, love, laughter and true and deep friendship.
However, I cannot tell you that.
I cannot tell you that, because I cannot guarantee that.
You may be for various reasons stuck in a small town full of patriotic bigots and religious cultists.
You may be 15 years old, and remain dependent upon your parents for years to come.
You may be old, and dependent upon your children.
You may be the only sane rationalist in an Islamic village.
You may find that, if the truth destroys your marriage – or rather reveals its prior destruction – that you may never get married again, or have a satisfying romantic relationship.
You may find that, when you speak the truth to your adult children, they won’t want to have anything to do with you anymore.
I want to be clear about the dangers that always follow honesty.
We are not enslaved because we are cowards.
We are enslaved because we are objectively in danger.
We should take some relief in the enormous difficulties faced by those who speak the truth – because, if speaking the truth were easy, the state of the world, its bottomless and exploitive lies, would make absolutely no sense at all.
No, speaking the truth is incredibly difficult, and very dangerous – and not because of prisons, and not because of our masters, but because of the endless attacks from our fellow slaves.
When you sit around your family table at Christmas or Thanksgiving, it is worth taking a moment to let this basic reality seep into your very bones.
When you look at the ruddy, smiling faces around the table, it is essential to truly and finally understand that, in reality, these people are your masters.
It is not the whips of our owners that keep us down, but the frowns and snarls of our fellow slaves.
It is not the jails of our masters that keep us huddled and frozen in fear, but the disapproval of our fellow slaves.
The “state” is not in Washington, or Rome, or Madrid, or Ottawa, or Baghdad.
The “state” is not the guns of the police, the truncheons of the prison guards, the huts of the gulags, the cells of the prisons, the grenades of the troops, or the jostling darkness of the paddy wagons.
These are merely the effects, not the cause.
The “state” is not far away from you.
It is not distant.
It is not political.
It is not economic.
It is not military.
The “state” is your fellow slaves.
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Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that’s it.
In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.
When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force. The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gangbanger, and a single gay guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.
There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we’d be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger’s potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat–it has no validity when most of a mugger’s potential marks are armed. People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that’s the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.
Then there’s the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser. People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don’t constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level. The gun is the only weapon that’s as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weightlifter. It simply wouldn’t work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn’t both lethal and easily employable.
When I carry a gun, I don’t do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I’m looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don’t carry it because I’m afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn’t limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation…and that’s why carrying a gun is a civilized act.