Rant 15: Authority

[Irreverend Hugh, KSC]

Rant 15
Authority

“La resignaci?õn es un suicido permanente”

“When the people are afraid of the government, that is tyranny. When the government is afraid of the people, that is liberty.”--Thomas Jefferson

The myths created by HP Lovecraft and others which posit that the Elder Gods which created our world are, by essence, evil and power-mad in ways humans can never comprehend points to a truth we wish not to see. That truth is called ‘authority’. Our human world of social dominance and control with its rules and strictures which serve to cripple our minds before we even intuit their full possibilities, has been created and replicated across generations of our species for the benefit of those considering themselves ‘authorities’. Now the idea of authority is explained as the result of hundreds of years of human experience and wisdom. But forget the idea. Look at what authority often does. It causes us to give up our natural capacity to explore and to think freely, except along the lines inculcated into us throughout our entire lives. Authority is what persuades people to forget their own will to live and subverts their creativity into murderous destruction of the lives of those that are deemed, for whatever reasons (and the reasons always sound so logical and sweetly heroic), to be enemies…to be ‘others’. Our natural capacity for mammalian pack-bonding is twisted and turned against those who do not fit with the programs placed into our minds…our dreams…our religiosities…our philosophies. Those who refuse to accept this are considered traitors or extremists…or lunatics. And sometimes as visionaries.

It doesn’t matter whether you consider yourself a conservative patriot, or a revolutionary socialist, or an anarchist, or none of these. The political dimensions offer only more authority to follow. Whether that authority is the State, the Church, God, Goddess, or many Gods, scriptures, doctrines, books, ideologies, it is based on the premise of authority. We have been trained to see as instinct our fear of the unknown, the mysterious, the dark, the chaotic. That is because authority sets itself up as the essence of light and good, and we agree in ways that seem basic to our existence. But what is really basic to our existence? What is really instinctual? What is really natural? Asking those questions out loud will gain you no respect from people who base their entire identities upon what they have been told. This problem of authority is so pervasive and embedded in our mentalities that we even reject the evidence of our own bodies if it contradicts authority. Even so, if you consider yourself a free-thinker, don’t lose your respect for those who seem trapped in the doctrines and ideologies that support authority. For how do you know you are truly free?

You could possibly label me as some sort of anarchist and then, once I am neatly categorized, have no further thought on the subject…whether you agree with me or not. Yes, I am anti-state, anti-church, anti-god, anti-capitalist, anti-fascist, anti-authoritarian, anti-Bush, anti-war, anti-corporate, anti-this, that, and the other. But I am these and others simply because I choose to see the usefulness in the positions. I am not sure that I am free but I keep on acting as if I am free. I keep on thinking as if it is free thought. And hopefully, if it I am not really free, I have the openness to see that and then to change myself or my thinking. That said, I will rant now about the world in which we live:

Our world is, in case you weren’t paying attention, fucked over. And it is getting worse. Corporate feudalists set up trade organizations that create strictures upon democratically elected governments so that millions of miserable people can be made more miserable. The Amazon forest is dead as I write this, choking off an important global source of oxygen. Environmentalists are driving huge gas guzzling SUV’s from rally to rally. Class conscious revolutionaries are wasting away on socialist internet chat rooms. The labor movement is being bought off by bright televisions and shiny new toys, even as they lose the right to affordable healthcare and social security. World leaders who are doing something to improve social conditions in their countries are being thoroughly discredited in the American media by an administration that seems hell bent on creating Empire. American Right/Reich Wingers have accused the nations of Europe of making deals with Al-Qaeda to launch the 9-11 attacks, and the sick thing is that many Americans are believing them. The idiocy embodied in the royal fuck-up of a president, George Bush, has become the standard that Americans seem to want to emulate. And the bullets keep flying. The bombs keep dropping. And no one is going to care so long as the wars and the deaths keep the prices of gas low. The shit is becoming a surrealist nightmare zoo. And you wonder why some people dress up in black and smash windows or throw rocks?

I for one, am tired of talking (possibly…okay, so I lied). So it may be time, again, to wear my black uniform…to cover my face. And to get ready for the inevitable smack-down…but I’ll be smacking first. You want to find out how free you really are? Get into a confrontation with those who are ‘authorities’. All the politeness of the system of DUMB will be stripped away and then they will try to instill in you a fear of DOOM with intimidating yet stupid questions, a couple of beatings, putting you away in a cell for a while, and then releasing you with some warnings after they make sure they have photographed you thoroughly. And that’s just for the confrontations in the visible streets. One’s imagination cannot keep up with what the ‘authorities’ are doing to those who are confrontational in other ways. But one’s imagination had better keep up and get one step ahead. Do you think that the ‘authorities’ don’t know about your pranks? Whether you are confronting authority by visible actions or thoughts, or whether you are confronting them by keeping low key or blending in, they are coming for you.

You may say, damn, why are you spouting such a political rant? You know why…because you have gone insane. Every act of free speech, whether nonsense or sense, is political. Maybe I am insane. Maybe I am saying this now, while I have the chance. Before we all get discredited and labeled as ‘anarchist terrorists’. You may consider yourself, as a Discordian, beyond all such labels and political posturings. But the State will not respect what you consider. It is armed and it has the power to make you comply with its ‘authority’. Hiding behind Discordian-sounding phrases written by aging hippies who dropped out of any dialogue with society will not make the State any less eager to round you up and put you in whatever place it wishes. What are you going to do to prevent this? Recite zen-isms? Recite mind-fucking couplets? Sing songs? Well, you may as well have fun doing so. Who knows? It may just work.

You can say all you want about the State being a social fiction and about how it is just a hallucination….well, if you really believe that, the next time there is a huge global-justice march in your area why don’t you line up against the cops. See how illusionary their clubs are. How many of you who believe that the State is a social fiction have engaged with it while trying to dismantle something it relies upon? I am willing to concede that not all of you wish to engage or oppose the State. Some of you wish to just maintain your own sense of freedom and keep quiet, allowing others to do as they wish. And I respect that because we need all the free thinkers we can get on this planet. But don’t tell me any blathering theory about how the State is just a ‘hallucination in the minds of the governors’ crap until you have actually tried to dissipate the State. There are sidewalks that I have seen with fresh blood on them from street battles between charging cops and protesters. The cops, the blood, the thuds, the shouting, the streets, the gutters, the people running around trying to escape, the whole thing was just because of our collective hallucination? Yeah, right. Bullshit. Practice makes any theory reveal itself as the lying pretentious bullshit it is.

Throw the monkey wrenched Apple of Discord into the damned machine of authority. The machine of authority is for real, and it will smash you instead. Authority will divide you up and beat you into fighting one another for the right to be called the prettiest or the best, or at least better off than you were before. You know that is bullshit. We all are the prettiest. We all are our own authorities. We write our own damned stories. And Eris has a sledgehammer to pound the concrete structures of the State, the Church, and God into dust. Who will win? Respect my methods of doing something, and I promise to respect yours.

(Aftermath 30th, 3169/ November 18th, 2003)

[Bella]

I don't have to ask why you "spouted such a political rant", St Hugh.
It often seems to me that everything is political in one way or another.
Certainly, authority impacts our lives in many subtle and overt ways every single day.

These are the words that the prophet, Bob Dylan, wrote on this same issue:

"We live in a political world,
Love don't have any place.
We're living in times where men commit crimes
And crime don't have a face

We live in a political world,
Icicles hanging down,
Wedding bells ring and angels sing,
clouds cover up the ground.

We live in a political world,
Wisdom is thrown into jail,
It rots in a cell, is misguided as hell
Leaving no one to pick up a trail.

We live in a political world
Where mercy walks the plank,
Life is in mirrors, death disappears
Up the steps into the nearest bank.

We live in a political world
Where courage is a thing of the past
Houses are haunted, children are unwanted
The next day could be your last.

We live in a political world.
The one we can see and can feel
But there's no one to check, it's all a stacked deck,
We all know for sure that it's real.

We live in a political world
In the cities of lonesome fear,
Little by little you turn in the middle
But you're never why you're here.

We live in a political world
Under the microscope,
You can travel anywhere and hang yourself there
You always got more than enough rope.

We live in a political world
Turning and a'thrashing about,
As soon as you're awake, you're trained to take
What looks like the easy way out.

We live in a political world
Where peace is not welcome at all,
It's turned away from the door to wander some more
Or put up against the wall.

We live in apolitical world
Everything is hers or his,
Climb into the frame and shout God's name
But you're never sure what it is."

[The Good Reverend Roger]

GREAT rant.

OTOH, without SOME kind of authority, men become like beasts.

The strong prey on the weak, and there is no recourse except violence.  A worse world is hard to imagine.

Hobbes was right.

[Guido Finucci]

Hobbes was right.

No he wasn't. Life isn't nasty, brutish and short in the cruel light of the lack of social contract. I offer as evidence that fact that there have always been people who didn't subscribe to the social contract (and considered themselves to be above the authority of the time), that these people tend to be the ones with a great deal of power themselves, and that we have managed to muddle through to this point.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Hobbes was right.

No he wasn't. Life isn't nasty, brutish and short in the cruel light of the lack of social contract. I offer as evidence that fact that there have always been people who didn't subscribe to the social contract (and considered themselves to be above the authority of the time), that these people tend to be the ones with a great deal of power themselves, and that we have managed to muddle through to this point.

Those people enjoyed the protection of law, even if they rejected the notion.

To illustrate my point, I offer up the nations of Liberia and Mali, which are considered to be the most lawless nations in the world.

Hardly paradise, and an illustration of what Hobbes was trying to say.

[Guido Finucci]

Those people enjoyed the protection of law, even if they rejected the notion.

That may be but they didn't buy into a Hobbesian social contract so, according to Hobbes, they weren't enjoying the protection of the law - they were just lucky. The absurdities that are about to start looming here is one of the reasons that Hobbes and me don't get on.

To illustrate my point, I offer up the nations of Liberia and Mali, which are considered to be the most lawless nations in the world.

And here there are self-organising groups of people who _are_ subscribing to social contracts and getting into something like gang warfare.

Hardly paradise, and an illustration of what Hobbes was trying to say.

But in Hobbes' mind, that is an example of paradise (war notwithstanding).

I think Hobbes got it wrong because he thought that the only way to avoid nastiness was to remove the concept of individual reposnsibility from society.

[Horab Fibslager]

The idiocy embodied in the royal fuck-up of a president, George Bush, has become the standard that Americans seem to want to emulate.

curiously enough that same analogy may be comapred to candians and homer simpson, tho it's by state of nature rather than want of emulation. where the average american wishes to emulate george dubya's choke on a pretzel at 8, bomb baghadad at 11 sensibility, the average candian already ate the bag, worked off teh calories shoveling out the driveway, then went for a pow-wow with the international community who lives next door. true the fanatacist next door still would like nothing better to see the candian covered in napalm, at least he respects that the canadian is reasonable enough to coem a nd smoke a doob wiht hoim, regardless of anything else.


in any case, good  rant. cheers.

[Y.M. Hut]

Speaking of shovelling snow, what's up with the weather here? Took me 30 minutes to go 2 blocks in this shitstorm.

This coastal weather doesn't agree with me. We get the cold, the coasts get the ridiculous snowfall, that's the way it always works. Ahwell, only three more months of this to go.

[Horab Fibslager]

i dunno, i'm jsut pissed that the weather didn;t have the good sense to chinook before it decided to snow again. damnit.


and chances are i'm gonna have to work outside this winter... lovely.

damned enslavemnt to money.

[SMFabal]

Yeah, this cold weather is killer. It dropped all the way to 70F today. I'm freezing!  

[Irreverend Hugh, KSC]

i dunno, i'm jsut pissed that the weather didn;t have the good sense to chinook before it decided to snow again. damnit.


and chances are i'm gonna have to work outside this winter... lovely.

damned enslavemnt to money.

You mean you don't work because you want to? because it is the highest calling and meaning for you? because you like money? Damn. You could have become a pirate.