Government
72nd installment to my philosophical system.
It is a characteristic failing of Americans to look in the clouds for what lies at their feet. An example of this is given in their considerations upon government. Government, in the proper sense of the term, means nothing but order established by a curtailing of certain values which most within the society deem harmful.
The whole body politic is seemingly formed headfirst. All things that relate to values today are considered first in the mind and secondly in the heart; such is why all is reduced to reason and calculation, and on account of that drives the life out of everything. There’s very little honesty in those who consider the world factually, all too evidently. They subject all considerations to rationality, and on that account forget that reason itself is a value that serves to make all things interpretable, even if there’s very little content to be interpreted.
What serves the faculty of understanding is to be praised above all—but, like all deniers of life, the sickly impulse to mendacity (the impulse to speak lies as truth—and argue them as if they were from the heart) takes the helm, and makes all things a part of a larger rational project, seeking to categorize and systematize all of life on behalf of order and consistency, justifying it from its external utility rather than existential utility.
When the organizing principles for values are made subject to reason, they always depreciate and become life-denying. What is affirmed in spite of reason is truth, for that is a feeling that is made on account of the value itself, rather than the implication of those values in connection with other people. Even if there were only one person on Earth, values would still exist—for there would still be judgment on behalf of the individual: “what is considered good or bad for me” would be the question they would still have to ask themselves. One cannot escape values even if they tried to. Just like with time, space, and causality, one cannot help but interpret the world through personal, subjective stances—and every value that tries to reject value itself is fated to become a meaningless tautology of denial and morose skepticism.
So long as the impulse to deny exists, there will always be those who use it against themselves and call it powerful—those who affirm the negative for the sake of making it positive. I know of nothing more degrading to humanity than reducing its complexity for the sake of comprehensibility, and yet this is the a priori assumption that all have adopted out of habit, due to socialization—conditioning on behalf of what is common, rather than what is powerful on behalf of individuality. Where are the truly strong moralists today? They no longer exist, for nobody today has a true moral impulse—even our drives have been made subject to arithmetic, and our preferences have all been documented and logged consistently to the point that data companies know more about us than we do ourselves.
People are no longer interested in the personal ravings of a genius, even if those ravings are prophetic. What matters today is keeping face, going along to get along, keeping calm and carrying on. It’s all nonsense—slop fed to us as if it were cuisine. I can no more understand modernity than I can bear it. The weight of society is seemingly always on our shoulders. We’re all so interconnected, and made so close to each other on account of our technology—to say nothing on behalf of our decadent, lazy, slothful, lifeless habits—that everything today is passed through a sieve of conventionality. Even the most exciting things are made mundane by how familiar they already are to us; nothing excites because what is expected is carried out with perfect efficiency.
Order rules all, and any deviation from what the heart demands is devalued and deprecated on account of it being different, and nothing more. All our values have been axiomatized, and likewise have our feelings for anything human: art is stared at and judged by its technique and history, rather than sentimental content or existential value; film is made subject to comparison with the director’s last film, and takes into account their psychological disposition rather than looking at the story told by the movie itself; the same applies to love itself—every day becoming more and more commodified and transactional, rather than established on mutual appreciation for the other.
What little is left of humanity is only maintained by those who love others unconditionally. Love is the first and last source of humanity. Let all things perish but this. Without it, there would be more immorality than there already is; indeed, it would make men believe morality is supposed to be immoral. In truth, I believe this. I believe in being immoral for the sake of our morality. A man must toss aside what is valued by others for the sake of finding what is valuable in himself. Only then can he make a truce with reality, and start acting on his own behalf, rather than on behalf of what others expect from him.
What is loved by us today is largely determined by what we have loved in the past. Those who have consistently tried to be themselves all their life have only ever shown life great respect, and in this they have been full human beings, the greatest living among us. If the past were nothing to us, we would freely make ourselves anew each day; however, because few are able to do this, and are brought up being told that the circumstances of today carry over into tomorrow, they always feel limited in what they express, limited by the constraints of their present mood. If a person could see themselves for what they really are, they would have no inclination toward anything life-denying—that is, anything false, things representative of their shadow rather than their true figure. They would simply embody their present feelings freely, and on account of that freedom do what they feel they’re supposed to on their own account.
There’s a very strong aspect of truth in Rousseau’s doctrine that man is born good but corrupted by society. As I interpret him, what he really means is that man, as part of his nature, has a natural desire to do things which gratify him—and in that sense Rousseau’s idea of mankind is thoroughly existential—but, on account of society, which is controlled by the passions of the populace but restrained in accordance with the government’s will, man is made to feel distinct from his own person; the “man” in mankind is taken out, and as a result is made subject to forces not born from his own will.
It is the government which controls man more than he does himself, not unlike how a person is always controlled by his parents, in some sense, so long as he lives under their roof. There’s always a sense of implicit indebtedness to living in society, but in truth this is an illusion; man has only ever been born for the sake of his own happiness, and for the sake of spreading his values on account of his personal honesty and beauty stemming therefrom. The magnanimity of man can never be cultivated so long as he’s forced, on pain of hunger and struggle, to eke out his existence doing something not in accordance with his personal (existential) values. This is not a problem for most people, for they have no ambition higher than mere order, comfort, and regularity—but for those who see more to life than mere procreation and slothful bliss, this existence is a hell, and any form of governmental oversight is to be considered hateful and anti-human.
The corrupting of man’s values begins in the material conditions he’s born into, and in this respect the government is always to blame, at least in some regard, with respect to how he turns out—for it must never be forgotten that life is impossible to bear for most people if they were constantly having to view it honestly; such is why values are what they are today, always false for the sake of making the real world appear more pleasant and tolerable than it really is. In this sense, we’ll always be corrupted so long as the government is able to limit the passion of the heart as far as they have. This is done primarily through violence, either physical or financial, and on that alone is the government upheld, for it is legitimized only through how much it can restrain the power of people—thus weakening their values by forcing them to go along with everything.
A world in which the government presides over everything a man can and cannot do only serves to make him distant from life—it turns honesty into a calculated procedure done in accordance with a given scenario. Everything today seems more a premeditated bargain than genuine interaction—but again, only feels like it. In truth, most people are as clueless and confused about everything as you are. Only men stuck in their perfect realms of reason assume human beings are rational in all respects, and on account of their reason make decisions rather than merely reacting to everything as it comes to them—which is what people actually do.
This is the catch-22 of modernity, the logical paradox we can never reconcile ourselves to: we must forget ourselves if we’re to survive for the sake of ourselves. Life presents us with the impossible and demands that we overcome it by thinking it possible, rather than solving it simply by not considering it a problem at all. It’s for this reason most people are actually made miserable. The world is structured in order to make them miserable, but they think they’re the ones responsible for their misery; in a sense, they’re both right and wrong: right in the sense that their misery is justified, due to it being not from them but outside them; but wrong in the sense that they make themselves more miserable by internalizing the external (systemic) issue as a personal failing, rather than as a governmental or organizational one.
We’re all made to live as if everything is okay as it is, rather than changing the world for our emancipation—that is, our total freedom and liberty to live as we will, not hampered by material conditions any longer. In truth, life would be paradisiacal if our only struggles were existential rather than material, because that would mean the only problems we face are spiritual, artistic, ethical, human; hard problems, no doubt, but problems which we can dedicate our lives to solving, rather than forgoing them for the sake of keeping ourselves fed, which in my view is really the true tragedy of modern life.
Where have our values gone? They’ve been wiped clean from our memories and have been replaced with the values of conformity and anti-humanism. There’s very little today in terms of vivacity, for what animates is considered a distraction from the practical, the real, the calculable, and thus the dead. Life denial is really the only common universal value today. On account of the government—whose sole purpose is to restrain the will of the masses on behalf of the will of the powerful, all while weakening the masses’ desire to will in the first place—we’ve all been funneled through a hall of power which is leading to our certain death.
We can’t even afford to think of a better world today because time is money, and the worship of money is the single greatest form of life denial everyone shares on account of its necessity to live. What else can I say? The government causes the injury and then sells the solution at an exorbitant rate; and the solution isn’t even really a solution, but a temporary antidote to the actual pain—it’s a distraction from the reality of our situation, in order to make it appear better than it actually is.
I’m not interested in providing the world a modern Plato’s Republic. I want to provide a new morality by which people can use to judge the world so as to achieve true freedom. Politics doesn’t interest me, for it’s become nothing more than sophistry—arguing to the public why the values of the strong to dominate the weak (the public) are really a good thing. It’s lies, lies, and more lies; and not even noble lies, but lies that are life-denying and corrupting for all future times.
There’s very little a man can do today, however, because to challenge power risks a collapse of the world order as such—since order and consistency have been built on a foundation of misery and suffering which, were it to end, would bring more suffering than there already is presently. This is a situation where things are deliberately made too big to fail, because if they do then everything along with them fails. We’ve brought this on ourselves, and government today is not in any way interested in fixing, changing, or altering it.
If all men were capable of honesty, the first thing that would collapse is government. Unsurprisingly, everything we hear from the media today is a lie because the media is an apparatus of the government, and acts on behalf of their values—corrupting values perfectly matching those of the powerful. As such, nothing has meaning behind it anymore, for what is the point of meaning if it cannot strengthen the values we already hold to? It’s all so tiresome, and the more one thinks about it the more they see how hopeless it all is. People are too practical-minded today, so much so that they can’t imagine anything that transcends the boundaries established by the powerful.
The government is really a synonym for the powerful, and as a result all values have become defiled, made weak, cripplingly so; and every ambition revolves around becoming powerful on a personal level, rather than increasing the existential power of everyone. So long as people are made to live in a world that doesn’t respect their humanity, we’re going to formulate values that serve as bulwarks against our humanity.
Sans life, sans culture, sans everything.
Quotes for the reader on Government from great minds throughout history:
Thirdly, The supreme power cannot take from any man any part of his property without his own consent: for the preservation of property being the end of government, and that for which men enter into society, it necessarily supposes and requires, that the people should have property, without which they must be supposed to lose that, by entering into society, which was the end for which they entered into it; too gross an absurdity for any man to own. Men therefore in society having property, they have such a right to the goods, which by the law of the community are their’s, that no body hath a right to take their substance or any part of it from them, without their own consent: without this they have no property at all; for I have truly no property in that, which another can by right take from me, when he pleases, against my consent. Hence it is a mistake to think, that the supreme or legislative power of any commonwealth, can do what it will, and dispose of the estates of the subject arbitrarily, or take any part of them at pleasure. This is not much to be feared in governments where the legislative consists, wholly or in part, in assemblies which are variable, whose members, upon the dissolution of the assembly, are subjects under the common laws of their country, equally with the rest. But in governments, where the legislative is in one lasting assembly always in being, or in one man, as in absolute monarchies, there is danger still, that they will think themselves to have a distinct interest from the rest of the community; and so will be apt to increase their own riches and power, by taking what they think fit from the people: for a man’s property is not at all secure, tho’ there be good and equitable laws to set the bounds of it between him and his fellow subjects, if he who commands those subjects have power to take from any private man, what part he pleases of his property, and use and dispose of it as he thinks good. —John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, Sect. 138.
The end of government is the good of mankind; and which is best for mankind, that the people should be always exposed to the boundless will of tyranny, or that the rulers should be sometimes liable to be opposed, when they grow exorbitant in the use of their power, and employ it for the destruction, and not the preservation of the properties of their people? —Ibid., Sect. 229.
BUT it is high time for me to have done with this subject, lest I should be suspected of writing a satire against monarchical government. Far be it from me; if monarchy wants one spring, it is provided with another. Honour, that is, the prejudice of every person and rank, supplieth the place of the political virtue of which I have been speaking, and is every where her representative: here it is capable of inspiring the most glorious actions, and, joined with the force of laws, may lead us to the end of government as well as virtue itself. —Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, Book III, Chapter VI.
When a minister, suspected of ill intentions, is continued in employment, discontent must naturally spread over the nation; and if the end of government be the happiness of the people; if suspicion and jealousy be contrary to a state of happiness; and if this suspicion which generally prevails, this discontent which fills the whole nation, can only be appeased by the removal of the minister; prudence, justice, and the examples of our ancestors, ought to influence us to endeavor that the affairs of the nation may be transferred to such whose greater integrity or wisdom has recommended them to the affection of the people. —Samuel Johnson, Parliamentary Debates.
But the end of government is only to promote virtue, of which happiness is the consequence; and, therefore, to support government by propagating vice, is to support it by means which destroy the end for which it was originally established, and for which its continuance is to be desired. —Ibid.
Another principle of government which the wisdom of our progenitors established, was to suppress vice with the utmost diligence; for as vice must always produce misery to those whom it infects, and danger to those who are considered as its enemies, it is contrary to the end of government; and the government which encourages vice is necessarily laboring for its own destruction; for the good will not support it, because they are not benefited by it, and the wicked will betray it, because they are wicked. —Ibid.
In order to determine which is the best Form of Government, it is necessary to determine what is the End of Government? and I suppose that in this enlightened Age, there will be no dispute, in Speculation, that the Happiness of the People, the great End of Man, is the End of Government, and therefore, that Form of Government, which will produce the greatest Quantity of Happiness, is the best.
All Sober Enquirers after Truth, ancient and modern, Divines, Moralists and Philosophers have agreed that the Happiness of Mankind, as well as the real Dignity of human Nature, consists in Virtue. If there is a Form of Government then, whose Principle and Foundation is Virtue will not every wise Man acknowledge it more likely to promote the general Happiness than any other. —John Adams, II. To John Penn, 27 March 1776.
The foundation of every government is some principle or passion in the minds of the people. The noblest principles and most generous affections in our nature then, have the fairest chance to support the noblest and most generous models of government. —John Adams, III. Thoughts on Government, April 1776.
Nothing is more certain than the indispensable necessity of government, and it is equally undeniable, that whenever and however it is instituted, the people must cede to it some of their natural rights in order to vest it with requisite powers. —The Federalist No. 2.
But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is no doubt the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions. —The Federalist No. 51.
Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been, and ever will be pursued, until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. —The Federalist No. 51.
The end of government has been described in a great variety of expressions. By Locke it was said to be “the public good;” by others it has been described as being “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.” These, and equivalent expressions, are just; they are only defective in as much as the particular ideas which they embrace are indistinctly announced; and different combinations are by means of them raised in different minds, and even in the same mind on different occasions. —James Mill, The Political Writings of James Mill.
Every form of Government, in fact, which is not representative, is properly a spurious form of Government or not a form of Government at all; because the Lawgiver in one and the same person, may, at the same time, be the executive administrator of his own Will. And although the other two political constitutions—Autocracy and Aristocracy—are always so far defective in that they afford opportunity for such a mode of government, it is at least possible in their cases that a mode of government may be adopted in conformity with the spirit of a representative system. Thus Frederick the Great was wont to say of himself that he was ‘merely the highest servant of the State.’ But the Democratic Constitution, on the contrary, makes such a spirit impossible; because under it everyone wishes to be master. It may, therefore, be said that the fewer the number of the Rulers or personal Administrators of the power of the State, and the greater the representation embodied in them, so much the more does the political constitution harmonise with the possibility of Republicanism; and such a constitution may hope to raise itself, by gradual reforms, to the Republican Ideal.—On this account, it is more difficult to attain to this one perfect constitution according to the principles of Right in an Aristocracy than in a Monarchy, and in a Democracy it is impossible otherwise than by violent revolution. As regards the people, however, the mode of Government is incomparably more important than the form of the Constitution, although the degree of conformity in the Constitution to the end of government is also of much importance. But if the mode of Government is to conform to the idea of Right, it must embody the representative system. For in this system alone is a really republican mode of Government possible; and without it, let the Constitution be what it may, it will be despotic and violent. In none of the ancient so-called ‘Republics,’ was this known; and they necessarily became resolved in consequence, into an absolute form of despotism, which is always most bearable when the supreme power is concentrated in a single individual. —Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace, Second Section.
Government exists for the purpose of keeping the peace, for the purpose of compelling us to settle our disputes by arbitration instead of settling them by blows, for the purpose of compelling us to supply our wants by industry instead of supplying them by rapine. This is the only operation for which the machinery of government is peculiarly adapted, the only operation which wise governments ever propose to themselves as their chief object. —Thomas Babington Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays - Volume 2, Essay on The Civil Disabilities of the Jews.
At one time also the French adopted and acclaimed the American notion that the end of government is liberty, not happiness, or prosperity, or power, or the preservation of an historic inheritance, or the adaptation of national law to national character, or the progress of enlightenment and the promotion of virtue; that the private individual should not feel the pressure of public authority, and should direct his life by the influences that are within him, not around him. —Lord Acton, Lectures on the French Revolution.
Men who understand and practice the deep underlying philosophy of the Lincoln school of American political thought are necessarily Hamiltonian in their belief in a strong and efficient National Government and Jeffersonian in their belief in the people as the ultimate authority, and in the welfare of the people as the end of Government. The men who first applied the extreme Democratic theory in American life were, like Jefferson, ultra individualists, for at that time what was demanded by our people was the largest liberty for the individual. During the century that had elapsed since Jefferson became President the need had been exactly reversed. There had been in our country a riot of individualistic materialism, under which complete freedom for the individual—that ancient license which President Wilson a century after the term was excusable has called the “New” Freedom—turned out in practice to mean perfect freedom for the strong to wrong the weak. The total absence of governmental control had led to a portentous growth in the financial and industrial world both of natural individuals and of artificial individuals—that is, corporations. In no other country in the world had such enormous fortunes been gained. In no other country in the world was such power held by the men who had gained these fortunes; and these men almost always worked through, and by means of, the giant corporations which they controlled. The power of the mighty industrial overlords of the country had increased with giant strides, while the methods of controlling them, or checking abuses by them, on the part of the people, through the Government, remained archaic and therefore practically impotent. —Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography, Chapter XII.