ON NATURAL AND POLITICAL TRUTHS

Human beings are basically a species of rational pack animal, it is natural for them to live in communities or to want to live in communities. A town, a village or a state is a natural and legitimate community. In my essay entitled "The Lust For Power" I mentioned that all people are naturally unequal due to the fact that some people are mentally stronger, physically stronger, more ambitious, more domineering, more intelligent, more wiser, more devious, more manipulative, more controlling than someone else, etc. Slavery in the past was a form of political or legal inequality due to scarcity and poverty, and so political inequality is a natural outcome of natural inequality, a fact that Aristotle himself was not too slow to notice. Nowadays there are many laws in place that overcome political inequality, some of these laws even claim that it makes all people equal, but we all know that this is not true. Trying to make all people equal is no different than attempting to rob them of their own individuality as well as their own natural passions. All political laws are artificial but necessary, they are necessary as a means to create stability, fairness, justice and a sense of harmony amongst different peoples. The idealistic desire that some people have that makes them want to make everyone equal goes against the natural tendency for struggle, competition and conflict which are natural and useful drives within organisms. If a group of human beings were placed within a state of nature, there would be some conflict and struggle for power and the scarcity of resources amongst them, yet, seeing as how human beings are essentially rational, a semblance of ethical order would exist, nonetheless there would still be some tension and conflict and even war amongst them, but in the long run they would form productive communities, this is because human beings are naturally constructive and purposive creatures. The concept of having "the consent of the governed" is a very interesting concept in the field of political thought in the sense that it is a very useful ideal and aspect of political realism, it points out that if a governor or a political representative of any community (state) does not govern this state in accordance with the "general will" of these people as a whole who live in it, then the governed do not really owe this governor or representative any allegiance of any kind. The social contract is mostly a myth, except for in Switzerland where the people have actually democratically voted in regard to most if not all the amendments and changes in their own constitution that they wanted. The social contract does not exist in most nations and this is because the governed have never made any official agreements with any writers of laws within these other nations. The state is a whole and we as individuals are merely a part, the state that we are born into or enter into, existed before us. The state is an organized system as well as an abstraction. The state as a system has been maintained by many generations of people. The elite classes are firmly embedded within the structure and system of the state, they have maintained and expanded the state to serve their own interests, they are not easy to separate from the state. The governed (masses) have been largely manipulated and controlled by the elite classes up until now through the state, this will also go on for a while to come. A town, a village or a state and its leaders, governers or representatives only have force and the power to implement executive force because the people in these communities join the police and the army and this is because they want to protect and expand the interests of their own community. That communities have been hoodwinked and misrepresented by those in charge is an obvious fact that has happened many times in the past, so it does not warrant too much space in this current essay. Rights do not exist in nature, they do not originate in nature. Does a lion have the right to kill and eat an antelope? Do antelope's have the right to claim that lions do not have the right to kill and eat them? Rights are something that we struggle for, that we fight for, we enforce our rights onto the world from within us, because we feel them as values that exist within us that we need to objectify and enforce onto our environment and the world generally. We secure our rights politically through activism and artificial laws. Voltaire claimed that the ignorance and the idiocy of the masses prevents them from knowing how to govern one another and themselves properly and effectively, so enforcing their own rights and values through democracy is a waste of time. According to Voltaire, people should just accept enlightened benevolent and despotic rule. The problem with Voltaire's suggestion is that it expects the masses to remain ignorant and stupid forever, his view is essentially fatalistic, this is because a concerted effort should be made by the masses to educate themselves morally as well as through knowledge, they should engender a spirit of struggle and activism among one another and in themselves towards the goal of objectifying their own values and rights in the world. When we are born, we are born helpless and dependant on others for our existence and upbringing, yet, when we reach an age in which we can reason properly for ourselves, we begin to realize that liberty and freedom are gifts from nature itself, not long after this does it take us to figure out that no institution or person has the right to command us or dictate to us how to live. It is reason and desire that gives us the right to govern ourselves and one another. To rebel against so-called authorities that attempt to curb our liberty and rights is a natural survival mechanism in all rational and free human beings. The goal of government should always be to secure freedom, equality and justice for all within the state, regardless of the will of the majority, this is because the will of the majority is not always correct. The will of the majority can only be correct in a climate in which education, knowledge, integrity and the standards of morality are high in the population itself as a whole, and the population is well informed on all the latest issues of importance. The concept of an open society is a very useful one in politics, this is because it produces a political climate that is based on participation and consensus for all the people in a state. An open society is a society in which honesty, sincerity and communication is part of the every day existence of all the citizens and their government and everyone is well informed on all matters of importance to their lives. That living in societies with governments and rules shapes individual people into something which is different to how they would behave if they were in a state of nature is an interesting thing to think about. Societies tend to shape, mould, manipulate, control and alter peoples thinking and behaviour in many ways, so people should think about how they would think or feel if society had not altered them differently from how they think they would be in regard to their natural inclinations and tendencies in a state of nature. The human desire to make their own efforts, work and industry into a sort of right to own land, property and material goods, comes about due to the fact that human beings are naturally ethical, constructive, purposeful and have a propensity towards rationality and communal living generally, as you know I have mentioned and attributed these qualities in regard to people in a state of nature also as being natural inclinations that exist within them. The desire to be constructive and purposeful comes about within people when they fully realize how empty their existence is without these drives that exist within them, these types of drives could even be viewed as a way of distracting themselves away from how things would seem without them. Many great thinkers in the past such as Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, etc., have written concerning how they thought people in the past must have thought and felt within a state of nature as well as how they must have behaved. These great thinkers that I mention above got some things correct in their assessment as well as other things wrong concerning people within a state of nature. I must also point out that these great thinkers that I have mentioned above, as good as their mental observations have been concerning the way that people within a state of nature might have thought, felt and behaved, I still feel as though there still remains the fact that they did not account for the fact that different individual people and cultures of the past were different one to another, they also did not account for the fact that reality is an ongoing process, they wrote about a state of nature as though it was a fixed condition, that is, that it was a certain way only, etc. When people begin to rule themselves and one another more fully with education, talent, ability, merit, scientific knowledge, reason and morality, then they will no longer need the concepts of "God" or "political force" to legitimize their own authority through government, rulers and heads of state will not even be necessary, all we will need as a system will be a type of deliberative democratic method that exists in a participatory and consensus form with representatives as well as leaders to aid us in our interests, and when intelligent and civilized people disagree on any matter, then all they will need to do to resolve any matter would be to discuss the matter until a compromise and agreement has been met in an ethical and rational manner. The very fabric of political thinking and civil society up until today in all of its institutions and in its general way of thinking has been based upon legitimizing itself, either through God, religion or force, whether military or legal. In fact the concept of God alone has had such a huge stabilizing and civilizing effect on society generally that any political activities and institutions that have allied themselves with the concept of God have had more success than any others, and has led to it being able to legitimize the behaviour of any of its own causes through the people that represent them, yet the only alternative to the legitimacy of God has been the use of political force in a Machiavellian sense, but the problem with these ways of thinking is that both these methods that I mention above are inherently manipulative, irrational and deceitful in nature, yet they have been used on society by the elite, and this because people generally do not know any better and so therefore have accepted it, people have not advanced and grown up sufficiently enough to have had the good sense to have overgrown this self-ignorance as well as the manipulation of others that has been perpetrated against them, these methods have robbed people of the individual freedom to live and grow in a world with truth and sincerity, both rationally and straightforwardly. Earlier on in this essay I mentioned and implied that the concept of God and religion is used in a false and dishonest way and also in a deluded way to legitimize the authority of whoever wants power over others, yet some people actually believe that religion gives people a hope that cannot be lived without or replaced by anything else, but I believe that the hope that religion gives people can be replaced by the hope that ideals can give them. To use the concept of God, religion or the Bible to legitimize authority over others, is to live a lie, this is so whether you have the authority itself or are having the authority used on you by someone else. The type of equality that is produced by political laws is an equality of living conditions and liberties that exists for certain groups of people in a nation or area, but does not exist for all people of all classes and circumstances across the board around the world or even in one's own country, for instance, if I went to another country that had different laws to that of my own country, then it is clear that I would be politically unequal to the people of that nation when I first arrived there, this would be so unless I went through the long bureaucratic procedures and struggles that are necessary for me to share equal rights with some of them politically. Even in my own country I do not share equal rights with the upper classes or with the members of the institutions of law enforcement, they are legally allowed to do things to me that I am not allowed to do to them, the simple act of enforcing laws onto others already makes some people unequal to others politically, it empowers the law enforcers with power over the people that are having the laws enforced on them. In a politically equal and free society there would be no laws, there would only be mutual agreements and liberty among all the people within it, yet we know that laws must always be enforced, otherwise crimes and injustices would be committed with impunity, so in a sense one finds inequality and power struggles everywhere in nature as well as the necessity to enforce laws as unavoidable. Any legitimate political state in the form of an organized political community needs force to enforce laws and maintain justice. In the past when people moved into city states to live they did this so that they could feel safer away from all of the anarchy and injustices that occurred in the outside world. City states also ensured people with more protection over their own property and belongings. Max Weber's famous definition of what a state is, has more to do with what a state evolves into over time due to some peoples love of power and control, yet if you eliminate most of the coercive institutions and hierarchical power structures from any state, then it becomes a simple organized political community with some means of law enforcement and protection for most of its own citizens. When anarchists claim that there should not be a state, this is like saying that people should not be allowed to live in organized political communities that protect them and their own property. I agree with the anarchists that there should not be any rulers, tyrants or false leaders running our lives within society or government, but I do believe that people in general need a government and a state to enforce laws and maintain order and justice. The members or politicians in government should be either leaders or representatives of the people, they should serve the peoples interests and nothing more, their own desire for power should be used to benefit the people at large, rather than be used to serve their own interests and vanity. It is not possible for the many to rule themselves or one another without representatives or leaders who are more qualified than they are to do this, and this is because the masses are either to busy or too unqualified to rule themselves or one another properly and consistently. Any real authority which anyone in government has over the masses should be based on merit, talent and ability, and not on coercion and manipulation. Anarchists like to mention that we could all live in a society in which all interactions are a cooperative succession of voluntary associations and contractual associations amongst all the different people within the society, yet this assumes that all people of all classes and levels of ambition and dominance will want to cooperate with one another without any problems arising in the long run. The problem with this anarchist system is that it suggests liberty without moral or legal security and stability, whereas a society with at least a minimal government can ensure liberty, security, stability and opportunity for all the people involved in it through its objective use and ability to uphold and enforce laws through a government and a judicial system, it also protects a nation from any outside or foreign attacks. Anarchists also claim that citizens can pay for their own law enforcement and military defence or at least ensure the establishment of these institutions to provide these service for all people. The problem with the anarchist economic system is that it is based upon pure socialism, except for the advocacy of government ownership of the means of production, and exists without a hint of capitalism involved, yet we all know that pure socialism without any capitalism does not work. For a political and economic system to work well it must largely be based upon capitalism with only a minimal amount of socialism involved in it, there should also be competition and a love of power on the part of some of the people within the system to keep a good dynamic going within the system generally, and the system should also ensure an objective sense of liberty, security, stability and opportunity for all the people involved. The system that I mention above can only really be based on a minimal government which provides democratic opportunities for all the people involved. An anarchist system by its very nature fails politically and economically and should be relegated to the category of unrealistic idealism. The reason that I mention that a capitalist system needs some socialism in it, is because socialism tends to counteract all the faults that seems to exist within capitalism, I believe that these two economic systems should be harmonized together, but with capitalism holding the greatest share of the influence and control over the economy at large. Anarchists are always talking about the need to abolish capitalism and the state, yet every year the economy and the different businesses are less able to produce enough jobs for all the many people that are being born and are leaving school who are looking for employment. Anarchists sometimes forget that it is capitalism that produces most of the jobs, labour, capital and the so-called wealth, opportunities and prosperity in the world generally, and that it is also the state in the form of the welfare state that supports all the many people that exist that there is not enough jobs for, because these jobs simply do not exist for them. I know that nowadays from experience that for every job that exists there is at least a hundred people that want this job and are willing to compete for it to some degree. In economics, scarcity will always be a problem, it is a problem that cannot be resolved by anarchism, but it can at least be alleviated if people remain politically organized through governments, etc. The history of the world has shown that the masses have up until now needed strong rulers and leaders to unite them and lead them towards greater things. People have needed strong and clever leaders because the masses have not been able to be strong and clever themselves as individuals. As long as the people remain weakened and uninformed they will need strong and clever leaders to guide them. Blaise Pascal made a good point when he mentioned that political laws would have no power behind them, and would not be able to be carried out without force behind them. He also mentioned that without political laws in our lives then any force that appeared could become tyrannical and oppressive. The use of physical force by individual citizens, even in its retaliatory use is something that cannot be left at the discretion of individuals and independent groups or clans. It is the need of objective laws that all people can agree to, that makes a government and law enforcement necessary, it is necessary as a means to enforce all the laws that have been agreed upon by a community; and this it does by using force. Government can be viewed as an arbiter and standard for honest disagreements among different peoples. Sometimes anarchists forget about these simple principles that certain people like Pascal was in the habit of pointing out from time to time. Force, manipulation and violence are the most effective methods of producing any political changes in the world at large, because simply voting and following the system does not produce any really significant changes in it. One must be willing to use force, manipulation and violence as well as the democratic method of self-government, if one is ever going to produce any real changes in the world politically, yet whether it be towards a good or bad end depends on the will of the people generally. I am a strong believer in democratic meritocracy. Democratic meritocracy is a democratic system of self-government in which it is popular for the people to support and vote for the representatives who deserve positions due to their talents, efforts, abilities and merits. Democratic meritocracy is a system of government that has leaders and representatives, not rulers, monarchs, aristocrats, plutocrats or nepotists. Aristocracy by its very nature is very repetitive, stuffy, insipid and oppressive, and so could never really fulfill the needs of an evolving and expanding culture. In a democratic meritocracy in which political offices and positions are held due to one's merit, it then becomes useful to have a review committee which meets at a specified period of time, whether each year, or every few years, which acts to reassess the validity of the tenure held by the different office and position holders. The review committee would stamp down on corrupt, abusive or incompetent position or office holders. In politics as well as in life generally, it is necessary to question authority, leaders, representatives, and office and position holders regularly, and this is because it is always a dangerous and passive position for the masses to be in when positions of power are not questioned, or challenged. Abuses and corruptions can occur if authority, and power is not questioned. A limited tenure for each office or position, with a regular change of office holders and position holders can be viewed as a good method to control and regulate power structures, it prevents stagnation and corruption and abuses from occurring. Too much political and economic equality, and agreeableness is a danger to all productive societies, and should be avoided, it produces weakness and decadence. Hierarchy and competition are significant features of a dynamic society, it prevents it from becoming stagnant, decadent and weak. Real freedom comes from political laws. When the members of all the classes are equal under the law, then real freedom can be experienced, and this is because freedom cannot come from the dependant symbiotic relationships of slaves to master, or master to slaves, or any other type of relationship based on political inequality. I do not believe in economic equality, it produces the faults that I mentioned earlier. The problem with having a pure meritocracy, is that everyone at the top will end up manipulating everyone in the middle and at the bottom in a sort of unfair manner. Some people claim that the masses as individuals have the authority to demand justice from their government, and that the best government is a government that governs wisely, prudently, and for the benefit of all the people in the society without a democratic system or institutions being part of it. But how can this be so? How can a government benefit all the people of a society, if all the members of the society is not allowed to shape their society through democratic means? If the democratic system is not allowed, then a top down manipulation and oppression of the masses will begin to show itself, and then the demands of the masses will not be met, this then starts to become a problem bit by bit. The masses are not only entitled to justice, they are also entitled to the democratic system, because there is no real justice without it. A republic is a stable form of government because the ultimate source of power lies with a constitution (charter), whereas in a democracy, the power lies with the rule of the majority. Republicanism is a form of statism; power lies in the state, and the citizens have to sacrifice themselves, and are slaves to the state. The power of the state should be weakened, so that the needs of all the citizens can be fulfilled. Statism has nearly always favoured the elite classes when it has existed as republicanism. A political empire is a form of statism, it is an inflated and greedy state, and it takes what others have, while also making them into slaves to this state. A government (state) should serve its citizens, just as much as its citizens serve their government. There should be a balance of forces between the citizens and the government, and it should not be allowed under any circumstances, for there to be an imbalance of forces between the government and its citizens. A government that does not serve its citizens, is an unjust government, and is therefore, an illegitimate government. An ideal government is one in which the head of state is a committee of several persons who deserve to represent and govern the people through merit, and govern the state in aggregate. An office or position should be merited, not only because of effort, talent and ability, but because they, as an office or position holder, is trusted by the people, and duty is the highest form of trust. Individual ideas are more important than whole ideologies. A political or economic system that is based on useful and advantageous ideas and principles, would work better than political and economic systems that are largely based on ideologies. I am a strong believer in mixed systems, composite systems, in synthesis. Many people make the mistake in thinking that specific ideologies should be pure, or simple, without admixture; yet this attitude, is one-sided and anti-dialectical, it reduces possibilities, creates dogmas, stifles progress, and limits potential and growth.