so long story short, I got this crazy idea to try and sell socialist goals and objectives in a political pamphlet without referencing a single socialist as a means of sneaking it past America's OMG BUT HELPING PEOPLE IS SOCIALISM reflex and here's what I have so far:
So have you ever thought about why we’re doing all of this? With the flags and pledges and the taxes and borders and so on? Countries, I mean? Like does it ever seem like at one point we were in some sort of tribe or something and then we started making cities and before we knew it we had gigantic superpower nations the size of continents with enough nukes to flash fry the earth if we really wanted to? We have never wielded more power as a species on this planet yet we've never seemed more unhappy. So why do we do it? Whats the point of it all? Well i’m no philosopher, but it seems to me the only reason for all this is to get a better version of what we had in the tribes, right? Why waste all this time and energy building anything more, if it was gonna be worse?
And make no mistake it IS worse. Look around you. The world hasn't felt normal for a while now, and certain presidents I could name are just the newest symptoms. Just surviving from month to month is a chore, the sick die without care or are billed to death after the fact, and homeless people and minorities can be beaten or killed on a whim without repercussion. This is a very Strange Time in the history of humanity, and there’s no reason why it should stay this way. So how do we change it?
Well, like i said I’m no philosopher, but Hobbes was, and he said that the legitimacy of a government flowed from the fact that life under said government was better than living in a state of absolute nature, without even a tribe to help you out.He described life in the state of nature as “nasty, brutish, and short” and postulated that this is where the authority of all governments rightly flows: from helping people survive better than they could alone in the wild. Now granted in his time this was an argument for maintaining the monarchy but the same principles apply to any form of government at all: tribal, democratic, aristocratic, capitalist, or socialist. Every society promises a better life than the hermit life, and the degree to which they deliver on that promise is the measure of how well that society worked, all other things being equal*
*Meaning, assuming it wasn’t sabotaged by the CIA
I guess what i’m getting here is, what else are you looking to get out of society if not a life that isn't nasty brutish or short? I mean that's what it's felt like lately, hasn't it? The people around you seem nasty, for nasty reasons, our policies towards our own people seem brutish and hostile, and life seems subject to end without notice, by disease or by violence. Everyone is working hard just to survive, but dont we deserve to thrive? We work so hard, yet still we struggle unnecessarily, just to afford that which should be basic: food shelter, even clean water, if you live in Flint. Why do we put up with having to live life on Hard Mode?
Well obviously because we’ve been trained to it. You don’t get compliance like this without a bit of preparation. Little by little we were trained that to be a person meant to exhaust you body everyday doing things you don't wanna do, in order to go on living a life filled with yet more things you don't wanna do. And its not natural to do this either. From birth to death we are told that we have to fit the system, the same system which was created to benefit US,so that we are contributing enough to the system. Tell me THAT makes sense.
But the final question remains. What do we do about it? Well the first step is to realize what we want out of this whole social contract business and the next step is to start working towards it. How? I dunno. I can't tell when you’re reading this, or in what context. Maybe its time for a revolution? Maybe change can come peacefully without firing a shot? It's on you to look around and determine that, dear reader.
Hold a protest, start a political movement, found a cult based on Punxsutawney Phil, pick a direction and starting moving grasshopper, cuz you've been wandering blind for too long already. Whatever you see as the next step towards making this life a little less harsh brutish and short, do it. The less specific I am here, the less The Powers that Be know about whatever it is, You, the reader, are about to do, and thus,the more likely you are to pull it off. So good luck, you weaponized ape, you.
