In order for government to truly act in the interests of the people, it must consider them as having equal or greater value. This means that the government either cooperates with or serves the people. But “serving” and “cooperating” are simply not the same thing as “governing”.
To conflate government with service and/or cooperation is dangerously naive. The relationship of subject to state is the relationship of prey to predator.
All governments by nature and implicit definition are founded upon collectivist, not individualist, metaphysics; and I have discussed the differences between these two metaphysical constructs many times on this blog. Government represents an Ideal, which is simply an abstract archetype for Reality, itself…a superstructure, or meta-structure, if you like, but it is completely subjective. Government is is tasked with organizing the existence of both humanity and its environment into this grand, overarching ideal, which, being subjective, could be anything at all: a Worker’s Utopia; We the People; the Aryan Nation; Society of Social Justice (i.e. Marxist Communism); God’s Chosen People; the Diversity Paradise; the King’s Land…you get the idea. In order to do this, government must first interpret Reality in a collective sense…that is, it must assume that all that is seen is a direct and absolute function of the Ideal, and government’s job is to subdue the ostensibly disparate components of Reality, including humanity, and organize them into a cooperative system which works collectively to singularly serve the interest of the Ideal…which functionally means serving the governemnt—the State—which is the material incarnation of the Ideal, containing the sum and substance of the Ideal’s entitled power of practical utility. To the individual citizen, this power, as it inevitably becomes more and more overt and comprehensive, looks like tyranny; he sees soaring tax rates and expanding government interference in commerce and free market value exchange as theft; he sees the subterfuge, doublespeak, hypocrisy, artifice, racketeering, and general political corruption as bearing false witness; he sees the warmongering, empire building, law-enforcement excess and brutality, the facilitation or outright commission of foreign and domestic political coups, false flag crises, and the insatiable military industrial complex as murder. In other words, the individual, particularly one living in a western reprentative democracy, which is founded upon the illusionary and completely contradictory-to-government notions of individual right to life and liberty…yes, the individual is operating on a different set of ethics, and this is because he is, even subconsciously, operating likewise from a different metaphysical interpretation of reality (usually…I’m speaking in general terms). You see, the individual assumes that he exists as himself, a singular agent and agency, a Self qua Self, with a singular and efficacious and actual Volition, which exists of and for and to HImself, and therefore possesses a innate and inherent right to own himself. And this means that the role of the State—though impossible, representing the very denial of government entirely—is to protect and promote his body, which he owns, and thus the product of his body’s labor, and thus to promote free association and uncoerced value exchange as a means of social, politcal, and economic association. From this Individualist principle the Individual thus assumes that coercive State policy (threats of punishment to achieve political ends) constitutes implicit (and often explicit) murder; contradiction, hypocrisy, pandering, doublespeak, subterfuge, exagerration, and propaganda is lying; taxes (at least in some forms…in reality, however, all forms), debt, economic meddling, coporate and special interest bribery, and subsidization (at least in some forms…in reality, all forms) is theft. The individual feels this way because the ethics to which he subscribes—the ethics of morality, as opposed to legality—demand that he do so. Moral ethics establish the Individual as the Standard of Universal Good and Truth. And since the Individual is defined according to the metaphysics as Singualar, Conscious, Conceptualizing, and therefore fully Volitional/Willfull, then uncoerced value exchange (i.e. trade/contract in all of its various forms, both formal and informal) represents the only ethical means by which the metaphysics can be applied rationally to Reality. The forced removal of ones property, or theft, becomes evil; violations of one’s body become murder; interpreting or rendering reality in ways which violate the Individual’s ability to properly ascertain and thus organize it (hypocrisy, false witness, deception, etc.) becomes lying. Murder, theft, lying…these are all evil according to the ethics of morality; and morality is entirely and only a function of Individualist metaphysics. And morality is NOT legality, and thus, it has nothing to do with the State. And what’s more, murder, theft, and lying only exist as a function of moral ethics. They are not and cannot be meaningful to legal ethics. In other words, as far as the State is concerned, the lying to, and the murder and theft of the individual do not exist. And this is because the Indivdual, from the frame of reference of the collectivist metaphysics from which the State operates, does not exist. You cannot take from one who does not own himself; cannot lie to one who does not know himself; cannot murder he who is not himself.
And here we begin to see the conflict…the mutually exclusive frames of reference between the Individual Citizen and the State Official is the singular foundation of all social choas, in all forms both public and private I submit, and is implied and necessarily animated and catalyzed by the State, with increasingly authoritarian consequences. The establishment of the State creates a society where individualist and collectivist metaphysics collide. The implicit and natural awareness of the moral right of the individual to own himself is disasterously combined with the implicit legal right of the State to coerce by force the indivdual into a collective reality. The friction begins as a small festering sore which is aggravated by ever increasing government despotism against which the individual rebels in whatever way he can that will not run him afoul of the law, to no avail, as he is hopelessly outgunned by the money and violent power of the State, and marginalized and demagoged by powerful and powerfully dogmatic explicit and implicit collectivist institutions and philosophies which overtly and inadvertently promote collectivist metaphysics, like the media and the scientific and religious determinists. Thus, as more and more individuals wallow in the misery of a marginalized and meaningless existence in an ever-increasing insane asylum of collectivist disciples run by an almost unfathomably powerful and rich ruling class, and as more collectivist polices are inacted to “help” those who suffer from polices designed to destroy them by denying their existence altogether, the moral and psychological foundations crumble. The ruling class implements more and more draconian strategies to deliever on the collectivist “Eden” promised to “the People”, many of the ruling class unaware that they are the only ones who can ever possibly live in it because they are it. All of these strategies fail, of course, because they necessarily must, because the logical presumption of collectivist metaphysics, whether a given politician knows it or not, is that the eradication of individuals is the ethical Good, and the arrant achievement of the Good is the whole damn point of of the metaphysics in the first place. Through the socialization of just about everything—from healthcare to food to education to transportation to employment to childcare to leisure—indolence is affirmed, promoted, and perpetuated. This subsidized indolence leads necessarily to the irrelevance and forsaking of one’s mind, which leads to the forsaking—implicit or explicit— of one’s Self. Eventually, no longer able to extract any more meat or leather from the tax cattle, and no longer able to pay its foreign and domestic creditors, and collapsing under the weight of debt and infighting and external pressures and threats, and thus with no one left to functionally rule and thus no one left to compel into the Collective Ideal, the ruling class collapses or dissipates or scatters or infiltrates other societies/social networks and so goes the nation. This unavoidable end is often bloody and ferocious and apocalyptic, but sometimes it fizzles with a whimper. Either way, end it shall, and there are always mass graves of some sort or another left behind to remind us of the failure of collectivist metaphysics. Not that anyone really notices because, like the Matrix, it always starts all over again eventually.
You will never convince the State that it is tyrannical, no matter how egregious its excesses or atrocious and self-serving its transgressions, because it simply possesses no frame of reference for its own tyranny. It certainly sees itself as the Authority of the land, but you must understand that it holds to a fundamentally different interpretation of the concept. To the individual citizen (and to the individualist it is explicit and obvious), State authority is simply force—government coercing via violence and threats of violence its citizens out of their life and property. In other words, though they perhaps expect the State to act morally, they comply with the State’s legality. That is, they understand that the way the State operates is to take from the individual against his will, considering will as irrelvant with respect to legal obligation, in the interest of the “greater”, or “common good”. The individual operates from a place of uncomfortable cognitive dissonance for much of the lifespan of the nation, accepting a weird and ultimately unworkable amalgamation of legal ethics and moral ethics. Eventually the people begin to notice the stark shift of social norms in the direction of the legal end of the ethical “spectrum”; this is inevitable, as the whole point of the State is to eventually subsume all vestiges of individualism into collectivist “reality”. There is greater reliance on government violence and coercion to “solve” problems, compromise or cooperation become more and more unlikely as the polarization between individualist and collectivist ideology becomes a “cold civil war”; voters are bribed with government promises to subsidize their concerns away, which inevitably requires higher taxes and even higher national debt, polarizing the nation even more as concerns about the solvency of the economy and the legitimacy of the system on the whole begin to send waves of anxiety and anger throughout the populace. Citizens are distracted from the obvious political corruption and mendacity through the bromide of political circuses, vapid entertainment heavily submerged in socialist ideology, and the corporate and political encouragement to engaged in all forms of hedonism, specifically gluttony and sexual promiscuity, with the destruction of the nuclear family and the epidemc of abortion and single motherhood further destroying social cohesion and trust, promoting even more anger and fear, all of which is naturally exploited by the ruling class towards the achievement of even more power and wealth. The citizenry is also distracted by the wanton and widespread legal double standards which excuse the political and celebrity and corporate classes from everything from child sex trafficking to open murder, whilst the middle class is terrorized by threats of being ostracized, or worse, and called insane conspiracy wackos for merely pointing this out; and accused of all forms of bigotry for not accepting its “responsibility” to “pay its fair share”, which is simply code for accepting and embracing neo-Marxist ideology and in particular socialist economics. The lower class, whilst being imprisoned in massive numbers for the slightest and most anodyne of infractions, and imprisoned in general in ghettos of institutionalized poverty and nihilism, is used to threaten the middle class…the ruling class will have no choice, you see, but to unleash the hordes of lower/working class “victims” who are just itching to exact revenge upon their middle class slavemasters—the middle class being the bourgeoisie root of all “evil” in the world according to the Marxist collectivists who increasingly own the narrative, and this as the media becomes little more than a State Ministry of Propaganda . Borders are purposefully left porous, as a tacit lower class invasion is permitted by the State, terrorizing the middle class into greater submission. The celebrity, corporate, and political classes are of course safe and sound behind the thick, high walls, bristling with guns, of their ivory towers, so such threats and invasions against the middle class come often and easy, as those who wield power rest imminently secure. After all, worst case scenario, they can always flee to Costa Rica or some other foreign haven, and access their tax-free offshore accounts to finance their lavish lifestyles until kingdom come.
But understand, again, that because the State functions entirely from the ethics of legality and not morality, it does not acknowledge that tyranny is possible for it; it does not accept that its Authority can ever be authoritarian. For the State, theft, murder, and false witness do not exist. It cannot steal from, kill, or lie to that which it owns according to the metaphysical principles upon which it established. Remember, according to the State’s collectivist metaphysics, all of Reality is to be brought into accordance with the Collective Ideal, which is the absolute source of Reality, and the means of doing this and thus the practical (material) incarnation of this Ideal is the State. In other words, the collective Ideal is Reality, and the State’s job is to organize it so that it reflects this Ideal aesthetically. And the “perfect” aesthetics are achieved by making a “perfect” Reality, epistemologically, ethically, and politcally, all beginning with the metaphysics.
The State machinations of this undertaking may to us look like murder, theft, deception, incompetence, and corruption…and in fact they are (for the metaphysics of individualism are perfectly rational, and never contradict, which makes them True and Good; Collectivist metaphysics are thus necessarily False and Evil…and their near infinite rational inconsistency on every level bears this out). But to the State—the ruling class and their corporate/celebrity bedfellows—murder, theft, et al is merely the necessary discharging of its collectivist obligation; the perfunctory disposing of its own naturally-entitled property. Why do you think Eichmann was so blasé about his complicity in the mass extermination of Jews in Nazi Germany? Because as far as he was concerned, it was merely an administrative task…like filing records, date entry, and keeping the books. He said as much himself. And, to be frank, he was being entirely consistent with the metaphysics which he accepted as absolute and irreducibly true. The State technically owned the Jews and everyone else, in his mind…and therefore it can’t be murder then. After all, the State has a right to do what it wants with what it rightly owns.
And by the by, all of this is true for the Church, which defines God implicitly as a Collective Ideal which it exists to discharge upon the earth by force and threats of hell and torment and excommunication. God cannot sin, you see, not fundametally becaue he is wholly rational and considers all men to be their own agents, entitled to their own lives and property and choice…in other words, not because He is moral. But because He is the Collective Ideal…He IS everything, and therefore owns everything. Thus, there is no such thing as murder, theft, et al for God. It’s all His legal right to exercise the legal ownership of His property. And the Church is His Presence on earth. So to those of you who think they shall find refuge in a some kind of “moral theocracy”, think again. “Moral theocracy” is a contradiction in terms.
END
Government is tyrannical by nature. It doesn’t evolve to tyranny, it is tyranny from its very foundation; and this tyranny follows it to the inevitable societal collapse which is tyranny’s conclusion. Government is authority, authority is force, force means forced compliance, forced compliance nullifies choice as a fundamental means of social interaction, nullified choice means a cancellation of man’s will, a cancellation of will makes thought irrelevant, irrelevant thought nullifies human agency, nullified human agency implies metaphysical determinism, determinism nullifies morality, nullified morality as a function of metaphysical determinism implies the politics of “survival of the fittest” (where politics is taken in the philosophical sense to mean how humanity interacts with itself as a function of accepted ethics), survival of the fittest implies the perpetuation of those with superior power by which to command, control, and/or adapt to their environment, superior power always belongs to the State—that’s the whole idea. Otherwise, the government doesn’t govern…it suggests. It negotiates. But ”suggestion” isn’t “law”.
This is basically the sum and substance of it, in a nutshell.
*
Government isn’t people, government is a metaphysical principle. It is a premise of Determinism—man navigates reality not fundamentally by volition (by thought and action), but by determinative forces compelling him outside of his own conscious existence. Man’s sense of individualism is a false front; a liar. Man from birth lies to himself, according to his nature, which has corrupted him by giving him a sense of “Self”. This sense of Self compels man to always act contrary to the truth, which is that the Self is a lie, and that reality is something outside of this Self, which utterly determines all he is and does…which of course doesn’t include “him” at all. So, because man is born with the “original sin” of Self-Awareness and a natural inclination to defer to his own individual thoughts, ideas, and choices, which always and necessarily act contrary to the truth of determinist reality, he must be controlled. He must be forced. He must be governed. The idea that man could ever live a categorically voluntary existence away from and irrespective of some manifestation of supreme coercive Authority is anathema, by definition, to government, then. Freedom, which can only ever really mean freedom from a fundamentally compelled existence, is inexorably exclusive of government. It simply must be. Even at mere face value this has to be apparent to us. The exercise of individual will according soley and utterly to the volition of the individual is a complete contradiction of the very essence of the State. This is arrant; it is obvious. Any attempt to fuse freedom and force is a rejection of reason and an appeal to madness. And this is itself nothing but tyranny.
*
Again, government isn’t people. Again, government is a metaphysical principle. And again, it is determinist, which means it is collectivist (the inexorable link between collectivism and determinism is pretty obvious; and I have addressed it several times before, so I won’t do it now). Government transcends individuals at the metaphysical root, like all manifestations of collectivism (churches, tribes, gangs, appeals to “objective” class/racial/sexual distinctions, science-as-philosophy, cultural movements, fads and trends, and on and on). And this is why “checks and balances”, while ostensibly an infusion of sanity and sobriety into governmental polity, cannot serve as any kind of truly effective hinderance to the tyranny of the state. You see, whether you gather coercive power into the hands of only one man, or you spread it across a vanguard, and separate that vanguard by distinct institutions and offices, and regulate the terms by which this power may be consolidated with a complicated paradigm of rules and benchmarks, the very fact that it is coercive power we are dealing with makes all of it a mere ceremonial spectacle. Coercive power, being the fundamental and only really meaningful and efficacious aspect of government, cannot be converted into liberty by sticking it in a blender with constitutional hoops and hurdles and pressing “purée”. Freedom is freedom from coercion. Nothing more. Nothing less. Period. Yet the governmental deals exclusively in force…that is its only real currency. Anything else is window dressing; pretend play; an attempt to excuse the inevitable violence and perfidy of the ruler, and to sooth or mask the misery of the ruled. But the truth is that the square peg of humanity will never be forced into the round hole of government without crushing them both.
*
The operative and ultimate moral issue with government is a priori coercive (violent) ruling power. It’s not about who happens to wield that power, or how many hurdles—“checks” and “balances”—are ostensibly erected in his path before he can exercise ruling power absolutely. Those hurdles are a function of the very same appeal to authority which gives him his ruling power in the first place. Ruling authority cannot be checked because it is fundamental…it is not merely a facet of government, it is government. The foundational principle of Authority establishes the government, the government doesn’t just happen to wield authority as though its power to compel behavior by violence and threats of violence is merely tangential to some greater munificent purpose. The ability to use superior violent power to compel “right” thinking and behavior isn’t a “last resort”, as though the primary purpose of governing Authority is negotiation and compromise and/or the encouragement thereof! See how foolish this is, and yet we all believe that it is indeed somehow the case, even though it defies simple, remedial logic. The necessity of power to point a government gun in someone’s face to get him to do the “right” thing specifically because he is born a rebel and a sinner to reality, itself, and is utterly insufficient to existence if left to his own mind and will, has about as much to do with compromise and negotiation as a ham sandwich has to do with Shakespeare. Getting the “right” ruler or establishing the “right” checks and balances simply cannot change the fundamental purpose and essence of government:
to govern.
And governing is forcing, and forcing is controlling, and controlling, fully and properly realized, is tyranny.
The problem is not getting the right checks and balances in place. And it’s not who rules, but it is simply the fact that they rule at all. Once it is accepted by metaphysical principle that man must be ruled, he will be sacrificed to the State. There is no way to avoid the inevitable conclusion of the premise which demands the governing of individuals in order to integrate them into the “Truth”, which is always merely some insipid and tangential collectivist Ideal (the Nation, the Tribe, the Race, the Chosen Ones, the People, the Workers, the Good, the Just…almost anything can pass for an Ideal).
*
Finally, I’d like to address the bromide—the political trope—which is the notion that the ruling class (politicians and other government officials) should somehow be expected to follow the same laws as everyone else. This…is utter and complete nonsense. It hasn’t happened and it will never, ever happen, because it has about the same practical existence as the tooth fairy and the same practical efficacy as a black highlighter. It is foolishness. It’s a contradiction. It’s a fantasy. It is a rank contradiction to government’s essence at its very heart to obligate the ruling class to the laws by which they govern everyone else. By definition if the ruling class is also ruled (and this, impossibly, of themselves) then the ruling class is not the ruling class! And if the ruling class isn’t the ruling class then who is? In other words, if the ruling authority isn’t the ruling authority then by what means can law be established as actually binding upon the men it is supposed to govern? And if it’s not binding then how is it law? Law depends on someone to force men to obey it, regardless of whether men want to obey or not, or choose to obey or not. But if law is to be chosen by men, not forced upon them, then it’s not law. It’s suggestion…negotiation, voluntarism. And this is not governing, it’s merely cooperating.
People think that somehow choosing rulers via “free elections” is the same thing as choosing to be obligated to law.
It isn’t.
The law demands that rulers rule, and that’s what they will do, regardless of who they are, how they were elected, or who voted for them and why. The law is not a function of those “freely elected”, but the “freely elected” are a function of the law, and the law is force, not choice.
Authority—the ruling class—cannot be obligated to itself . And it is foolishness to assert that the ruling class should also be ruled like the rest of us. The ruling class cannot be both and simultaneously the ruled and the ruling. Men are part of one or the other, they are never one and the same. This is merely a contradiction which obscures the truth.
END
Last week I had a heady discussion/debate with a friend of mine at the home-school cooperative my children attend. Beginning with some marginally interesting/relevant social issues, in particular the NFL kneeling-for-the-anthem controversy, and then proceeding in due course to the meatier topics of Christian theology and doctrine, it went on for well-over an hour. Happily, we found ourselves in agreement about a great many things. It was turning out to be quite the satisfying and encouraging yarn.
Or so it seemed.
In reality, I suppose it was no real shock to discover that we actually had nothing in common, theologically speaking. Since my full-on commitment to heterodoxy seven years ago, I have had these sorts of conversations with Christians—99% of whom are orthodox—many, many times. And they ALWAYS end the same way. Always, always, always. Without fail; without distinction; without caveat; without ambiguity; without doubt.
Any theology/doctrine discussion, given enough time, will eventually terminate at metaphysics: the nature of reality; the nature of man. And once we get down to metaphysics, there are really only two directions you can go: Reason or Mystery. That is, do we define man according to an innate existential ability to apprehend Truth, make moral distinctions, and then choose good over evil (or vice versa); or do we define him as merely an epiphenomenon…his consciousness and his will merely an illusion, purely a function of some great, transcendent determinative Force, which we may define as God (or the gods, or the Universal Mind, or Natural Law/Evolution, and so on)? In other words, can man truly KNOW by what means and to what measure he exists, and can he be certain of what is true and what is not, and from that what is good and what is not, and from that CHOOSE on his own behalf to manifest his existence in a way that is utterly and objectively REAL? Or is Truth infinitely beyond him, because he is not, at essence, himself, but a direct function of some Ultimate Power which controls all things, as all things are, in fact, an absolute function of this Power, Itself.
I don’t expect it will come as any surprise to learn that my friend ultimately appeals to mystery metaphysics. He is, after all, a consummately orthodox Christian, whereas I have rejected orthodoxy on the grounds that it indeed projects this very brand of metaphysics. I have rejected the idea that real knowledge is the knowledge that one cannot ever actually know. And any definition of God which makes everything fundamentally an extension of Himself by hermeneutically wrecking the distinctions between Him and the iterations of His creation, is at root an appeal to Nothing as the root of Truth. Because if everything IS God, then we cannot ever actually know what God is…because we cannot tell what He is not. It’s like when we are told that nothing happens which God does not allow. If this is true, then human choice is impossible for obvious reasons. And if human choice is impossible, then knowledge is meaningless, which makes “knowledge” itself a contradiction in terms, and thus makes it impossible to KNOW God. Which means you cannot declare that nothing happens which God does not allow. Because…who is God? Shrug. That’s a mystery.
Now, this is all interesting and is all well and good, but it’s not really the point of this article. The point of the article is to examine the way in which my friend defended a particular metaphysical assertion towards the end of our discussion. I questioned the veracity of his claim that man was “fallen” and that God did not consider any “unregenerate” person’s actions to be moral, regardless of whether or not they WERE, in fact, moral. In other words, my friend conceded that man is born with the innate capacity to apprehend Truth and is therefore capable of making moral choices, but that as far as God is concerned, ALL the choices of those who have not confessed Christ as Savior are evil choices.
I demured, saying that if God decides that what is moral is in fact immoral, then he has contradicted Himself by contradicting reason. How can God value Himself as Good whilst at the same time denouncing man’s good choices—whether he is “unregenerate” or not—as being fundamentally evil? No God worth his name would conflate evil with good and then have the audacity and lack of self-awareness enough to simultaneously proclaim Himself a MORAL being, Furthermore, if ALL of man’s choices are evil, then man can never be in a position to accept Christ as Savior, because THAT choice is, to Christians, the apogee of moral action. God must choose FOR man.
So…let me get this straight. God must choose Himself, BY (or OF) Himself (that is, from His own will), and somehow this means that man, who has absolutely nothing to do with THAT Choice can now make choices that God now considers to be moral?
Er…
I’m sorry, but this kind of theology is madness, and doesn’t come within a thousand miles of reasonable. It’s magical thinking…the stuff of children’s fairy tales and old wives tales and superstition.
And yet, what did my friend say in reply?
Exactly what you’d expect.
”But, that’s Bible.”
And that, my friends, is called an argument from authority. And it is the Christian’s go-to move whenever they find themselves backed into a theological corner. Always.
You see, it doesn’t matter that the idea is completely devoid of reason, and that it is impossible to explain because how do explain a square circle? How do you convince someone with words that black is simultaneously white or that up is down or that a bird is a cloud? You don’t. Because there are no words for such a task. Words are the audible expression of ideas, which can only exist if contradiction is excluded from the process of formulating the concepts which are connected together to form those ideas. If A is NOT distinct from B then neither can be said to exist. Man cannot express “tree” if “tree” also means “shoe”.
Once Authority has been injected into the discussion, then there IS NO LONGER any discussion because words have become entirely meaningless. You accept what the Bible says because it’s the Bible and because it’s the Bible you accept what it says. This is a tautology, and it specifically falls under the category of “argument from authority”.
You see, the argument from authority removes any “why?” from the equation. There is NO “WHY?” because Authority is FORCE, absolutely, and therefore becomes its own “why?”. To ask why is to assume you have the right to have something explained to you…but that explanation has been punted entirely out of the realm of Truth. You OBEY, you don’t ask questions.
So what my friend did, and I like to think unwittingly, is completely nullify the hour of discussion that preceded his declaration that what is an utterly ridiculous, impossible, and intellectually treasonous description of man’s metaphysical state is nevertheless true because the Bible says it.
Well, A, no the Bible doesn’t say it…YOU say it. I know the Bible, and I can assure you that it makes no such assertion, period. Full stop. THAT foolish and evil metaphysic has been smuggled into the pages of the Bible by the gnostic paganist roots of the Augustine/Luther/Calvin theological death cult. And B, according to your very own admission, the Bible cannot actually say anything because clearly words don’t matter. The Bible is force, and therefore is not obligated to EXPLAIN a damn thing to you or me or anyone else. The Bible is nothing more than an idol or a talisman which demands your categorical obedience under threat of terrible punishment. So how dare you deign to attempt to explain it to me. How dare you decide that it SAYS something…as if the Sword “says” anything other than “obey or die”. As if meaning matters.
And this…was sad. The whole conversation was a bust, I believe. His declaration was a tacit admission that he has no real interest in what he says he believes, let alone in convincing me of its rational and intellectual integrity. The point of Christianity is to force the world to obey, nothing more. Which in actual fact makes its theological apologetics of no more relevance nor interest than any old random jumble of words. The entirety of Christian orthodoxy has been reduced to mere mouth noises.
So the next time someone says “But, it’s Bible”, take a glance upwards. See up there? That’s where you’ll find the guillotine dangling when the political conclusions of that statement are finally realized.
END
“Obedience to a ruling authority is not, by definition, a choice. Thus, the only way one can legitimately choose government–to freely and democratically elect it–is if it has no authority over him or her. The problem with this is that absent authority government is not government. For what is government absent authority? And what is authority absent the right to use violence to compel behavior? The answer: It is nothing. And to some, unfortunately, this is mere paradox; and this assuming people think of it at all, which for the most part they do not. But to the truth it is the contradiction which makes the smallest government the largest, and the most compassionate benefactor the most monstrous tyrant ”
-Me
*
For now, I will more or less focus on the idea of mandatory voting–government enforced voting, much like government enforced healthcare. But understand that whether voting is mandatory or not does not change the fact that voting in either case is not a legitimate choice. To be forced to choose or to force those who did not choose a certain way, or at all, to accept the outcome of a choice is NOT choice. As I said in part one of this series, once force is injected as a means to compel others into the outcome of a choice, which is functionally the same thing as forcing them to make a choice in the first place, then there is no such thing as choice. Choice is a function of will, and force is the rejection of the will–that is, force is the explicit or implicit admission that will is irrelevant. Force and choice are mutually exclusive. They cannot be synthesized into a single context. One cannot be free to choose if he must choose, nor free to accept what he must accept. That shit just doesn’t compute.
*
If I am forced to choose between A or B (or C, or D, etc.) then obviously choice is utterly besides the point. That is, to declare that I have no choice but to make a choice is a blatant contradiction in terms, and frankly I’m surprised that the idea of mandatory voting gets any traction at all, anywhere, based on this fact alone. How “choose or get punished” gets translated into “free and democratic elections” defies my suspension of disbelief. Then again, when the underlying metaphysic which dominates humanity is “man must be governed because he is so naturally wicked and stupid”, I suppose its not hard to understand after all.
So, the logic goes: I am forced to accept either A or B–and yes, C or D or E, but for simplicity’s sake let’s just say A or B…so I am forced to accept A or B, of a “free” choice, that I am forced to make.
Hmm…something smells juuuuust a little off here.
The fact that a choice–in this case a vote–between A or B which you are forced to make is purely an imposter of choice is starkly exemplified by the forced acceptance of A or B by those who don’t make the choice at all, as in the United States, where voting for public “servants” is not (yet) compulsory. But, as I said in the beginning of this article, and in the previous article in this series, the distinction between being forced to vote and accepting the outcome of the vote, as in Australia (I think), being not forced to vote but to be forced to accept the outcome of the vote, as in the United States, is a meaningless and fundamentally redundant distinction. The truth is that those who vote have exercised no more real choice for their officials than those who, like myself, recognize the futility of the whole spectacle and avoid it completely. And this I will address more thoroughly and specifically in a latter article.
So, again, a “choice” you are forced to make and which obligates you to an outcome you are forced to obey is not, by definition choice.
To be continued…
Man must be protected from himself is the argument for government in a nutshell. And this? Is a very bad argument. This sophist rationale is why freedom is never to be found under the auspices of government.
Any government.
Ever.
Anywhere.
Because freedom which is function of what an external monolith of “legal” violence, like the State, will allow is not freedom. It is, by definition, control. The phrase “that which allows us to be free” contains a fundamental contradiction in terms. Freedom does not and cannot operate under the auspices of threats of violence for stepping out of external, codified boundaries. And to say that these boundaries are what guarantees that freedom itself (in the form of unfettered wicked indulgence by the naturally depraved human being) doesn’t become oppressive is another contradiction, as it makes the restraint of freedom the foundational moral operation; it makes the limitation of freedom the means, so the argument goes, of ensuring freedom. But unless man is able to choose his actions, by not having his behavior fundamentally dictated and coerced through threats of violence should be stray from an abstract, subjective (yes, subjective) legal code, there can be no morality. Why? Because there can be no choice. For if man cannot choose to do good, then man cannot do good at all. And actions which are compelled at gunpoint are not choices!
It is not necessarily intentional. It is not necessarily rank deception. It is most likely a function of the prevailing philosophy regarding the nature of man which has never, to my knowledge, been reconciled to reason…where reason is a place that cannot ever, under any circumstance, accommodate contradiction.
*
Because of man’s tendency to do evil, so the argument goes, left to his own unfettered (un-governed) devices society must inevitably dissolve into an orgy of tyranny and oppression.
This is a contradiction which nullifies the argument, and renders the practical application of it both impossible to any efficacy and ultimately destructive. For man cannot be both good and evil. What I mean by this is that he who is the standard for morality–for good–cannot also be he who wrecks this standard. He from whom rights are said to be derived cannot also be the one who poses the threat to the those very rights. Man cannot be the primary thing worth saving and the primary thing which jeopardizes that salvation.
Now, of course we may rightly assert that some human beings truly do evil and therefore are capable of harming others, but this is not the argument with which we are presented in defense of government. The argument is that human beings on the whole cannot fundamentally be trusted to exist outside of the power of coercive authority because human nature itself is depraved.
Human beings have the natural tendency toward evil, so it is argued. They are prone to it–not by choice, but because of naturally determined instinct. What this mean is that when presented with the option of good or evil, human beings, absent any external arbitrating, force, will do evil. They must…because they are driven in such an unfettered circumstance by their nature, and their nature is evil. Therefore, human beings must be governed by an outside force–a governing authority– in order to keep their natural evil in check, and to (hypocritically) ensure the existence and perpetuation of the human race by means of a rigid and regulated social apparatus that ultimately dictates all behavior by threatening its denizens with violence should they dare resist its self-proclaimed mandate to control man for the sake of man. And this is the metaphysical and ethical foundation upon which government stands. Go and see for yourself. Ask 20 people why we need government and I guarantee you that 20 of 20 will regurgitate, in some manner, the hypocritical philosophy I just explicated.
This foundational philosophy ironically and certainly inadvertently undermines the oft-trotted argument that government can exist of the people, for the people, and by the people. That is, it undermines–by its inherent and fatal contradiction–the assertion that people are the standard of the law which the government exists to uphold. If people are by nature evil, and this the root of their very being, then it simply cannot be argued that they may simultaneously represent the good which government must protect. On the contrary, if man is by nature evil, and can no more help doing evil when left to his own devices than he can help walking upright, then people in fact represent a singular threat to good. Because their nature is inexorable and absolute evil, they are the antithesis of good. And therefore, people must be controlled, not set free, by an external coercive authority. And this is exactly what they are, no matter what anyone says to the contrary. You cannot claim to be free in an environment where all of your actions are ultimately a function of what someone else says you are allowed to do.
Further, the idea that a government can exist in the interest of a humanity which is by nature evil is to assert that the government is a proponent of evil. This, however, is never the argument for government, because though true, it wrecks the benevolent facade of coercive authority. On the contrary, the argument is always that government exists for good, and that without government, man’s evil nature will reign supreme. And what this means is that it is not man, but the government which is actually the standard of good. The people are not the standard. The people are not that from which moral “rights” are derived. The government is. For the “rights of the people” are irrelevant absent government, because absent government man’s natural evil must subordinate them. The people, then, are not the source of moral dictums, but are the singular danger to them. They are not the value of the law. They are the enemy of it. So they must be controlled.
*
You cannot legitimately argue that man represents that from which natural moral rights are derived, and yet at the same time claim that he is evil and represents the singular existential threat to those rights, and therefore must be governed. This is to create in man a dichotomy of nature which contradicts and nullifies itself. If man is good, and this as a function of his very nature, then it is both irrational and counterproductive to establish an institution which exists to compel moral behavior by “authoritative” (legalized) violence. For to insist that the naturally good man must be compelled to good through violence is to deny that man can do good on his own, and this denies that his nature is in fact good. And if man is evil, and this a function of his nature, then man cannot possibly be compelled to good, for good is utterly exclusive of his being. To compel him to good is an impossible task. For man, being evil, perverts good, he does not cultivate it. It’s like adding poison to a meal and calling it seasoning. The only thing for which the naturally evil man is fit is destruction. In either case, government is utterly beside the point.
*
To attempt to use force to compel the naturally evil man into goodness, or to prevent the naturally good man from losing his goodness is like attempting to compel the frog out of his frog-ness, or to prevent the frog from losing his frog-ness. The frog is by nature absolutely a frog. No amount of violence and no amount of coercion can make him a rabbit. And since the frog is by nature a frog he can pose no threat to his own frog-ness. No centralized coercive authority is necessary to prevent, nor is it effective in preventing, the frog from losing his frog-ness.
The man who is good by nature has no use for government, because by definition he cannot lose his goodness. Nor can he pose a threat to his own natural goodness (i.e. left to himself, man who is “naturally” good when governed somehow becomes “naturally” evil when free of government). Because to claim that he may pose a threat to his own goodness is to deny that he is, in fact, naturally good. And the man who is evil by nature has no use for government, because he cannot be compelled to do good. Because to claim that the man who is evil by nature can be synthesized into good is to deny that he is, in fact, naturally evil. The naturally evil man is fit only for destruction. And if he is destroyed, then there is no one to govern, and thus there is no point in government.
*
And all of this leads us to another truth.
Man cannot be defined according to a moral nature. And of course once we no longer define him this way, there is no rational philosophical argument for the existence of government. Why? Because government is force, and force is violence, and violence nullifies choice. The man who cannot choose is a man who cannot express his own agency; and the man who cannot express his own agency cannot express SELF. Thus, he cannot BE himself in any relevant way.
You see, man is not a moral agent in the sense that morality defines him. Man is a rational agent. What this means that man is the epistemological frame of reference for all he knows; all he thinks; all he does. That is, man being himself, where “himself” is the agent who conceptualizes existence and thus makes it relevant and meaningful, is why man knows what he knows. Because he is SELF, and absolutely so, he is able to make distinctions between good and evil, and truth and fallacy. He is the arbiter–the reference–for knowledge.
Man’s nature is not a moral one, it is to be the reference for morality—for good and evil; truth and fallacy. HE defines and applies these things. Therefore, it is HE who governs them, not the other way around (the other way around being to make man subordinate to the very ideas and concepts which are meaningless and useless without him). For what is Truth unless it is true TO AND FOR MAN? And what is goodness unless it is good TO AND FOR MAN?
These things are worthless. They are nothing. They are non-existent.
It is man who serves as the epistemological and moral standard for all of the reality in which he exists. Man cannot rationally or productively be subordinated to a legal moral standard that derives the entirety of its value and relevancy and meaning from him. Man cannot serve moral standards, moral standards must serve him. Man does not serve truth. Truth serves him. To erect a set of rules for man to follow and by this claim he is good is to strip man from his rightful place as the only rational moral and epistemological reference for all of truth and goodness. And once this happens, truth and goodness have no meaning…and so the rules are pointless. Rules to which man is subordinated by violence are ultimately his destruction, not his salvation.
🍀
The primary ethic and politic of determinism is authoritarianism. That is, once individual Will becomes merely an inexorable effect of a Singularity of Cause which decides all purpose, be it God, or Natural Law/Scientific Empiricism, Existence (what “is” as its own end, where “Existence” must necessarily subordinate all other definitions of all objects, rendering their distinctions moot), or Social/Cultural Construction, or any other garden variety ideal like the Common Good, the Underprivileged, etcetera etcetera, then man cannot by definition act purposefully, on his own, to any relevant, rational, or moral objective, regardless of how this objective may be defined. Thus, all knowledge and purpose can only be ascribed to some kind of transcendent (and rationally impossible) revelation according to those who proclaim themselves the ecclesiastical (ruling according to “spiritual” mandate) recipients of the “Wisdom” or “Truth” of the Great Cause (the Singularity of Cause). Examples of this can be found in religious leaders who claim divine rulership according to “God’s Calling”, the Representatives of States who claim to act on behalf of the “People” or the “Common Good”, or Intellectual elites who claim natural insight or acumen with respect to the “language of the Universe”, where the universe speaks in the arcane vernacular of mathematics, statistical analysis, genetic and evolutionary processes, various research methodologies, etcetera, etcetera. In all of these cases, Truth, and thus necessarily all that Is, is a function of an abstract ideal which causes absolutely, and therefore categorically determines all that man does, and thus, by definition, all that man thinks. Man then can only be compelled and controlled by force (violence), since he possesses no real capacity for self-awareness and therefore no capacity for self-control. He cannot think, therefore he cannot choose. And therefore he must be ruled–and absolutely so, by those who DO think, and DO know: those, again, who are the self-proclaimed extensions of the Determining (Singularity of) Cause. In other words, they rule you, because they are, as far as you are concerned, indistinguishable from that which determines you.
If you are like me, you cannot even bring yourself to suffer a single minute of a single political “debate” because you understand that the nature of such showmanship is purely obfuscation. And it need not even be conscious…it simply is by the nature of the collectivist philosophy which underwrites the notion of a central governing authority. Which, by its very nature, appeals to its AUTHORITY to act “on behalf of the people”.
Ah, but since the “people” is, and can only be, referred to in the collectivist sense–because no democratic government claims to represent the interest of just a person (“you” or “me”, individually)–then acting on behalf of the “people” (collective) really means acting on behalf of itself. Why? Well, because it alone possesses the mandate of force necessary to compel the group’s collective will upon society…which is to say, the environment. And this mandate has been given to it by the collective, by the majority group, and not by any one person, or one citizen, in general. Because any ONE person is, by definition, too small a minority to “elect” that which is being tasked with perpetuating upon the environment the will of the group. It’s not your will, or any individual will, it cares about, because no such individual will has anything to do with a government that is elected by the people in the collectivist sense, which is the only sense the term “people” can have when we start talking about government…which is the Authority which acts on behalf of Group; and there is no such thing as a group of one. That is an obvious contradiction in terms. This means that such an Authority can never act in service to YOU, yourSELF.
Your only hope then, once you’ve acceded to this governing Authority, is that it acts is in such a way that you happen agree with its actions; or that you are un-offended by them. But by no means can you assume that the government acts on behalf of YOU as an individual, since it does not recognize YOU, individually, but only the collective it represents–which, being an abstraction, has nothing actually to do with YOU in the ontological sense at all. To vote then for a government to rule on behalf of the collective, which you as an individual must then by definition be completely and perpetually at metaphysical odds with, presents a very dangerous and intransigent existential dilemma. You have, by conceding to the premise that man is, metaphysically (at the very irreducible heart of being) a function of the group, abdicated your ownership of Self; and moreover, you have abdicated the REALITY of Self. You have denied your own fundamental material and ontological and self-evident Truth in favor of an abstraction. You have rejected your own ability to interpret reality for the impostor of reality given to you by those called to rule you on behalf of the “people”, or “society”, or the the “workers”, or the “disadvantaged”, or the “nation”, or the “kingdom”, or the “church”, or the “common good”. You have willingly placed yourself inside the iron maiden of existential entrapment and have assumed as “truth” and as “benevolent” and as “moral” the idea that you, as an individual, are entirely insufficient to life. You have agreed that you no longer get to be, in fact, you.
*
At any rate, since these politicians are vying for the job of ruling you, it seems odd that they would need to, fundamentally or relevantly, procure your permission for such a position. You see, being ruled is, in fact, the polar opposite of being asked. If you are asked, you can say no. If you are ruled…well. Try telling the IRS that you no longer permit them to draw taxes from your wages; try telling the politicians in Chicago that the gun on you hip is moral and justified because you simply chose to opt out of the article of city law which prohibits such items on your person. Go ahead and see what happens when you try to “opt out” of the government you get to “freely” vote for; you get to “freely” choose; which “represents” “you”. I’ll be sure to write you in prison; maybe send you a carton of cigarettes to barter for a week of chastity. Or to smoke afterwards, whatever suits the situation.
To freely vote to be ruled is a contradiction in terms. This is patently obvious. Even if you assume that you have some say in how you are to be ruled (you don’t, if you are being rationally consistent to the idea of a governing authority which acts on behalf of the group), the fact is that since you cannot opt out and still be recognized as a free, legitimate, actual, relevant, moral, and equally ontologically valid self-aware being, voting to be ruled according to the ideas of the COLLECTIVE, even if you happen to agree with them, still must subordinate your individual identity to the identity of the group. And since the group’s identity can only be manifest by the authorities “elected” to enforce it (that is, to make it “real”; that is, to manifest the group”s identity on reality; that is, to define reality), it is NEVER truly your will which is being expressed and rendered, but the collective’s. And the logical conclusion of this is that the individual MUST be subordinated to the collective will. And this cannot be done voluntarily because the individual cannot, by definition, from his singular frame of reference (his individual metaphysic) apprehend the reality of the collective. Reality is a function of the collective, not the individual. And those tasked with rendering reality are the proxies of the group, and no one else. And those proxies are the rulers. And rulers rule by authority, and authority is force, and force is violence. Period. Full stop. And their authority is a direct function of the abstraction of the Collective, to enforce Collective Will UPON individuals, since it cannot enforce it upon the Collective, itself being a direct function of it. The Collective and its ruling Authority are, in effect, one and the same. They are corollaries. They are sympatico. It is not then the Collective which needs ruling, it is the individual. The Collective is ALREADY the epitome of perfection. It has no need to be ruled; it only has need to RULE. And what does it rule?
You.
And you don’t see the destruction bearing down on you like a rolling thunderstorm just over the horizon because you are too busy worrying about who to vote for, and cheering the idea of “government of and by the people” as though its some kind of rational tribute to liberty. But here’s the truth. There is no “people”. There is only you, and me, and he and she. And we are not a collective, we simply are Self. To vote to be ruled by a government committed to the electoral outcomes of a collective is to deny your very nature as a being of One.
And just how long do you think it takes before those in power recognize this dynamic, and realize that the collectivist philosophy to which they (and most of the citizens they “represent”) subscribe must place an insurmountable barrier between the individual and the collective which they have been called to represent? Just how long do you think it takes them to realize thus that the individual citizen cannot possibly have any relevant or legitimate any say in the governing of the collective, be it through voting or any other means, because he is by definition contradictory to the GROUP? Well, a casual glance at history will reveal the inexorable slide of every nation in every continent on the face of earth into the smoldering ruins of collectivist ideology (socialism, Marxism, fascism, feudalism, theocracies, monarchism, even democracies like, say…America). History would seem, then, to indicate that it takes very little time at all. In fact, in my opinion, I’d say it takes on average less than two years after the formation of any society ruled by a central governing body before anything but an illusion of “representative” government, “elected” and doing the “will of the [individual] people”, remains. And maybe even less than that.
*
Above, when I mentioned political debates at the very beginning of this essay you’ll have noticed that “debate” is in quotes. This is because, to me, political debate is more like a grand advertisement for a product I don’t really need (a centralized juggernaut of force) but which I’m told I must have if I want to “fit in”. And in this case “fit in”, means to possess an adequacy to my own existence. In other words, if I don’t have some massive central governing apparatus with all its requisite leaders and rulers to define reality for me (e.g. tell me what to eat, to drink, to drive, to smoke (or not), who I can marry, when my kids are “properly educated”, and by what method, etc.), then I am doomed to death–the product of my inherent depravity. In the religious sense, depravity means that I am the abstraction of evil in its visceral, material incarnation, and thus can do no good except I that am compelled by threats and force by God’s ministerial proxies “standing in His stead”. In the political/governmental sense, my depravity is summed up by the generally unspoken but almost universally accepted notion that: Man MUST be governed; for without the collective (the group), led by its elected officials (the arbiters of the collective’s authority, which simply means that they rule, ultimately, by force) man cannot hope to survive.
The simpler translation of this is: as an individual man does not possess the inherent tools to exist. He needs the collective; and the collective, being purely an abstraction (because individual human beings are the only material, tangible, and visceral components of ANY group), needs its human rulers to manifest its authority (force) to regulate society (to define collective “reality”) in material reality in order that the infinitely depraved individual can survive.
Oh, what irony we live with! The logical conclusion of this is: we must destroy the individual’s identity entirely in order that the individual may live. The individual doesn’t actually exist (and fundamentally cannot exist) because he possesses no relevancy to reality except that he be sacrificed to the Collective, in order to (ironically, and contrarily) ensure his survival. For remember, the assumption in a democracy, though it is not openly admitted as such, is that man must be governed; thus, he cannot by nature provide any relevancy to reality because he is insufficient to his own existence as an individual. Reality, you see, must be rendered only by the authority of the collective; because, again, it is impossible that the individual can render it because the individual, left to himself, MUST die off.
In fact, man’s death as an individual is so assured that one cannot make an argument that man as an individual can even be born at all. For his insufficiency to existence is an infinite product of his very root nature; it is infinite ontological depravity; infinite existential insufficiency. And because of this, it isn’t possible that man can be rationally considered as having any innate ability to be born as an individual AT ALL; since individuality and existence are, according to the operative collectivist philosophy, mutually exclusive. There is no birth into existence for that which is infinitely insufficient to existence. There is no birth into existence for that which is infinitely unable to exist in the first place.
In other words, the collectivist metaphysic (and the root of all collectivist economic philosophies (socialism, Marxism, fascism, democracy even, dare I say)) demands, horrifically, that the real “abstraction”–the real “illusion”, is the individual. The only “true reality” is the collective, which, through its agents of authority–rulers, leaders, officials, etc.– subordinate the abstract individual to the collective reality. What YOU as an individual sense…what you as an individual claim to “know” from the singular existential frame of reference of SELF, is a lie. Or an illusion. Or a dream. You have no say about reality because you, alone, individually, cannot possibly grasp reality by nature. Your sole responsibility then is to subordinate yourself to the collective; or, more precisely, to those whom the collective has “called” in order to meet you in your illusion–the individual human “authorities” which have been “elected”, or “appointed” or “called” or “divinely established”, or whatever, who have the human “form” you can recognize in your delusion. And the reality is that all forms of such authority are ultimately rooted in force (violence) because, in your illusion and your infinite individual state of depravity, you cannot be trusted to actually ACT of your own volition in service to the “truth” of the collective. For you, being infinitely depraved as a product of your infinite individual existence have no frame of reference for the understanding necessary to exercise volitional obedience. So, even though ostensibly it looks as if your rulers are reasoning with you, and willing to reason, and entreating your vote, this is purely for show, whether they consciously know it or not. Reason is utterly irrelevant when you have no choice but to obey. Once they are elected, you either obey their collective mandates, or you, at best and if you are lucky, will find yourself deprived of the lion’s share of your material possessions. In the end, however, the ultimate conclusion of such a system is always much, much worse, as history bears witness. The sacrifice of the individual to the collective–which really means its human governing proxies–always becomes literal when all is finally said and done.
Take a long, pensive gaze at the dusky horizons of the past…look upon the smoldering civilizations littered across the crimson wastelands of human collectivist history. It is always real blood spilled when those in power finally wake up and realize that there is only one “perfect” way to go about manifesting the “truth” of their “calling”.
“Or maybe you’ve watched a friend make an ill-advised purchasing decision. It’s amazing how we can have such clear insight into the poor choices of our friends and family members. If you’re connected to other people, there’s a good chance somebody has equally clear insight into implications of the decisions you’re faced with. The only way to benefit from their clear thinking–the only way to avoid the deceitfulness of sin–is to invite their input…
We must understand that solid commitments and deep convictions just aren’t enough… Who, outside of your family, has permission to talk to you and challenge you, if need be, about the things going on in your life? Who’s close enough to warn you if you begin to drift?”
(Community: Your pathway to progress, pp. 33, 34. North Point Ministries, 2008)
Notice the irony implicit in the use of these words…the ones I’ve put into bold print above: “invite”, “permission”.
Do you see it?
Not yet? Okay, let me give you another hint.
“–the only way to avoid the deceitfulness of sin–is to invite their input.”
Do you see it now?
Well, certainly some of you do. For those of you who do not, don’t feel bad. It’s really not a measure of your perceptive capabilities, nor your intellect. It’s more a measure of how these spiritual Marxists excel at deception, which is the modern currency with which they buy their followers. It has taken me years to develop my skills at spotting the fly in the ointment from a mile away, and your erudition will develop as well, in due time. And once you see it…well, you will not be able to un-see it. You will be called a skeptic, a doubter, a conspiracy theorist, overreacting, presumptive, and paranoid. But what you’ll really be is smart. What you’ll really be is someone who they can no longer exploit in service to there own interminable worldly appetites.
Notice the incongruent and contradictory relationship between a metaphysic which declares that you are, at the very fundamental root of your nature–your being, your existential seed–utterly insufficient to existence to the point where if you are not fully integrated into the Christian Marxist hive (the “church”) you can make no claim to existence at all, nor to the idea that you must “invite” or “give permission” to the collective (“the body”; “the nation”, the “race”, the “tribe”, the “people”, the “workers”…but in this case, specifically, the divine proxy known as the “small group”, which answers directly to the North Point Ministry autocracy known as the Pastorate, ruled by the Protestant Pope, the “Senior Pastor”).
Understand that you cannot make a claim that any one in possession of a “sinful nature”, which is the full sum and substance of his existence, has any natural right to invite people who MUST intervene in order to compel integration to the the group for that person’s “own good” (remember, according to the text I quoted, other people (the collective) inserting themselves into your life is the ONLY way to avoid the deceitfulness of sin).
Here’s a thought: In order for one to give permission to the group to perform the daily ritual of intervention one must possess the inherent intellectual and psychological faculties necessary to determine truth from fiction, and good from evil. But notice also how impossible this must be for someone whose nature is TOTALLY Depraved. Who functions, above all else, always and entirely according to a “sin nature” which is utterly destructive to the individual, to the point where any rational “existence” by such an entirely debauched individual is fully impossible.
You see, since your depravity is infinite and absolute, there is no way to define SELF as somehow distinct from it. This being the case, there can be no one who is capable of of the kind of intellectual and psychological attributes necessary to discern reality enough in order to make an invitation or to give permission to anything, or anyone, regarding any doctrine whatsoever. Since you are entirely a function of your depravity, you must be blind to whatever “benevolent” reality North Point Ministries is so arrogantly and deceptively and so fucking blithely asking you to choose to “invite” into your life. And this is because you, being entirely a function of your absolute depravity, cannot be distinct from it. Which means there is no way for you to discern reality at all, in order to make a value judgement concerning which group you “invite” to speak to you, and to ensure your safe travels upon the road of righteousness…a road which you must inevitably miss unless you “invite” the collective’s leadership to lead (force) you upon it. But to be able to invite–to be able to give permission–is to be able to see the road to salvation for yourself. But it is clear by the appeals to the metaphysic of man’s total depravity that this is simply not possible. According to the doctrine of Total Depravity, and the adherence to the idea of the abject Fall of Man, and the categorical acceptance of man’s Original Sin which thus MUST determine man to self-destruction in the form of infinite and interminable torment in hell fire, man is no more inherently capable of seeing the road to salvation than he is of flying to the moon by flapping his arms. In which case to “invite” the Small Group to come along and assist him in traversing it is obviously and demonstrably impossible.
Make no mistake then, the words “invite” and “permission” are simply there as tools used by these tyrants to diffuse skepticism. To deceive people into thinking that there is some kind of cooperation being effected here. This is the kind of conscious and intentional deception these evil institutions use to coerce otherwise intelligent men and women into surrendering the entirety of their lives and resources to the wolves who in past centuries and in past societies would have skipped the sophism and propaganda altogether and simply used threats of violence to compel people into the pews, and murdered those who refused or dissented.
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“To invite their input”.
Listen, diplomatic terms like “invite” imply that one by natural right has full possession of his life and property. Indeed, it implies that the only means by which anyone can legitimately seek to influence you–and the purposes and promises and objectives you have set for yourself by your own ideas and your own volition as an autonomous, fully sentient and fully competent agent–is to seek your permission; to entreat your invitation. And this not by sophism or by deceit, but by appealing to your sense of Self…that is, by appealing to the idea that what they are proposing is that which brings value to the realization of your own existence, in a way which ultimately benefits YOU. And by YOU–by Self–I mean one who is fully capable to his or her own existence, by nature, and thus possesses fully the means by which to discern fact from fiction, and therefore good from evil; one who employs reason as a means by which to promote the Self, which is the only rational context of existence, and that promoting Self, then, is the very definition of morality.
A casual examination of the doctrines of Protestant Orthodoxy reveals that this definition of Self utterly incompatible with the religion. There is simply no fucking way any professing Protestant in good standing can with a straight face describe man’s Self the way I have done so above. The metaphysic of man as an agent fully aware of himself, fully in possession of epistemological faculties resulting in a right and good discernment of truth, could not be further from the metaphysic of Christianity today, which makes no pretense of any notion of man which does not fully condemn him to abject self-annihilation to the point of rendering man fully non-existent even upon his birth, due to his categorical and singular fusion with the abstractions of “depravity”, “evil”, “fallen”, “insufficient”, “unable”, and “unholy”. In other words, the metaphysical presumptions endemic and categorical in Christianity today (and every day since Augustine, for that matter), which guide the entirety of the doctrinal cannon espoused in churches across the globe scream in bloodcurdling fashion a contradiction to the notion that anyone has any right, or any rational, psychological, or intellectual means, to “invite” or “give permission”.
I mean, the absurdity of it all makes one question whether or not he is awake or still in bed dreaming.
Nevertheless, this is what is touted. And this is what people accept as reasonable. This is what Christians pass off as “truth”.
God help us.
Look, it’s very simple. The church today all but announces with every worship song and in every sermon in every church in America that you have no motherfucking right to self ownership. And that the sum and substance of all evil is to be found in the presumption that man is somehow an actual sentient and fully capable agent, fully divested with and fully sufficient to self ownership and thus possesses the necessary right to his own life…to do with it what he or she pleases in whatever fashion he or she decides, and that since in the name of rational consistency, ALL men and women must have this very same natural right, there can be no such thing as the idea that rationally and morally working out one’s existence can somehow violate the right of another human being to manifest his or her own existence; and that this, and nothing else, is the rational means to both individual existence, and the co-existence of individuals with other individuals.
No. The church today will die, literally and figuratively, upon this hill: that existence is fully a function of a metaphysic contrary to self-ownership and the sufficiency to one’s own existence, and that without the FORCE (the violent coercion) by those men who don title’s such as “Minister” or “Pastor” or “Father” and appoint themselves as divine proxies and then proceed to demand that the laity make no practical distinction between proxy and Deity, there can be no such thing as a human race at all.
So know this:
When they say “invite”, they mean they will invite themselves.
When they say “permission”, they mean they will permit themselves.
They will help themselves to a full portion of your life and property, because that, by their own doctrine, is their divine right. And whatever you want? Whatever you decide on your own behalf?
Doesn’t exist.
unreformingtheology 