The avoidance of pain is the avoidance of life.
Since theft is the forcible removal of somebody else’s property without consent, then taxation is always, universally and forever a moral evil. Taxation.
Since human beings do in fact have equal rights of property, any social system which rejects this right is doomed to utter failure – just as any bridge planner who rejects the reality of gravity will never be able to build a bridge that stands.
When we speak of “gods,” we are really talking about “the opinions of priests.” When we speak of “the government,” we really mean “the violence of a tiny minority.
Any time a system that justifies power can be conceived of running without that power, all those who profit from the manipulation of that power cry out that without them, all is lost.
The finger-wagging admonition, “Rape more gently,” is oxymoronic. Rape is the opposite of gentle, the opposite of moral. This is how many anarchists view the proposition that the existing system of political violence should be reformed somehow from within, rather than fundamentally opposed on moral terms, as an absolute evil, based on coercion and brutality, particularly towards children – with the inevitable consequence that its only salvation can come from being utterly abolished.
It is very hard to understand the logic and intelligence of the argument that, in order to protect us from a group that might overpower us, we should support a group that already has overpowered us. It.
If I say that I need the government to protect my property, but that the government is by definition a group of people who can violate my property rights at will, then I am caught in an insurmountable contradiction. I am saying that my property rights must be defended – and then I create an agency to defend them that can violate them at any time. This.
Service to “the country” is considered a virtue – although the net beneficiaries of that service are always those who rule citizens by force. In.
If we value human life – as any reasonable and moral person must – then fearing anarchists rather than political leaders is like fearing spontaneous combustion rather than heart disease. In the category of “causing deaths,” a single government leader outranks all anarchists tens of thousands of times.
If you cannot escape your prison, then you might as well imagine that you’re free.
However, prejudice against anarchists – much like prejudice against atheists – is one of the last remaining acceptable bigotries in the world. We cannot judge any group negatively – except a group that relies on reason, evidence, and non-violence.
The entire point of a new theory is that it is unprecedented; the first man to invent a jet aircraft could scarcely submit examples of jet aircraft flying in the past.
The reason that philosophy is so essential is that if we don’t use it, it is used against us in the service of evil to enable the murder and enslavement – literally – of billions.
Society is really an ecosystem of agreed-upon premises or arguments, usually based on tradition. Those who accept the “truth” of these arguments find their practical course through the existing social infrastructure enormously eased; they do not ask people to really think, they do not discomfort others with uncomfortable truths, and thus what passes for discourse in the world resembles more two mirrors facing each other – a narrow infinity of empty reflection, if you will pardon the metaphor.
The processing of universals is the job of the unconscious. If we feed it the opposite it breaks; when it breaks we break and the people around us break.
We can never be closer to others than we are to ourselves, and we can never be closer to ourselves than we are to the truth – the truth leads us to personal authenticity; authenticity leads us to intimacy, which is the greatest joy in human relations.
As the old saying went in the Soviet Union, “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.
Invading a statist society is like grabbing the cages of a large number of trapped chickens – you get all of the eggs in perpetuity. Invading a stateless society is like taking a sprint at a flock of seagulls – all they do is scatter, and you get nothing, except perhaps some crap on your forehead.
You are born into this world without choice, into a familial, social, educational, political and geographical environment that is merely accidental. And for the rest of your life, everyone will try to convince you that you are responsible for this accident.