The State of the World
The world, the world of people, the world of civilized people is one large and fairly healthy family. Now, to be sure, there are in the world sick and perverse families where abuses occur and fears are justified, but we can label them 'sick', 'perverse' or 'abnormal' because they are not normal: they do not represent what happens naturally and for the most part. They are not the norm, but deviations from it.
Currently, the world-family, of which all of us are members, is showing significant signs of perversity and sickness. Fears and anxieties predominate, wars are brewing, poverty abounds, hunger—avoidable, man-made hunger—is too much of a reality, even the environment is being ruined—what healthy creature ruins its own home environment?
None of this is natural or normal, and, if we don't set it straight, nature, which often prefers to act in ways that are well beyond our control (earthquakes, plagues, volcanoes, tornadoes, floods, landslides, forest fires, blizzards, drought...), is likely to set it straight for us, and to do that in ways that are far from gentle and benign, and which don't take our survival into consideration. For even the ancient Romans recognized that divine punishments, though sometimes late in coming, are by no means light (Livy Ab Urbe Condita book 3 chapter 56).
A Course of Action
As intelligent creatures, we must understand (as our earliest ancestors did when they started making clothes, shelter, fires, and food stores for themselves) that leaving our fate in the hands of nature is a bad idea. The better plan is to start making provisions for the future.
The present, as we have seen, is being thoroughly mismanaged by the powers-that-be, and there is little that we can do about that. The future, however, is a vast expanse of promising possibilities, and, if we set our sights on the possibilities that look good to us, and make small moves towards realizing those possibilites, chances are that we will enjoy that better future, and, the sooner we get started, the sooner we'll enjoy it.
Now, since, as we have seen, much of our current misery can be traced to the bad leaders that we have, and since many of our leaders are elected by our votes, it stands to reason that we must become better, more savvy voters. The usual complaint, of course, is that voting always boils down to a choice between two evils, and being a good voter consists in discerning the lesser of two evils, but, when your choice boils down to, say, choosing between a thuggish traitor, on the one hand, and one who unblinkingly commits genocide on the other, it becomes strikingly evident that choosing the lesser evil is a loser's game. For too long, we have played along with these false choices presented by the political parties and those who fund them, and have overlooked the fact that the Democrats and the Republicans are merely the 'right' and 'left' limbs of the same monstrous beast, and that, whether we enable one to advance or the other, all we accomplish, election after election, is to move the whole country—indeed, the whole world!—one more giant step closer to Hell.
If this be progress, let's have no more of it! For, indeed, a few more steps in this direction, and not only will we reach Hell, but we'll pass right through it and establish ourselves as the new moral low-ground, the most dismal and hated place in all of creation.
The Secret
"But what can be done?" I hear you protest. Well, like Talos of old, this monster has its Achilles' heel, but, hush! Let's talk of it quietly, or it will get its defenses up and the opportunity will be lost.
The Achilles' heel of the system is your freedom to write-in a vote. You don't have to choose one of the candidates they offer. You can propose another, and not just nominate them, but vote for them, so who is to blame if you fail to take advantage of that option?
Of course, when you mention write-in voting, you generally get two responses. One is the favorite response of those who fear it the most, the corrupt folks who keep this messed up system running for their own advantage. They'll say something like "You'll waste your vote" or "Nobody else is doing that", and so create this fictitious and invisible peer pressure (for, since votes are private, how do they know what everyone else is doing?) that coerces you to pick from the candidates they are offering. But let us remember that "the serpent was the most subtle beast of the field" and not fall for its tricks, for all the devil ever has to offer is a choice between two evils. So write in your vote, saying, "Get behind me Satan! I have to do what's good for me, and I have no time to waste on you, your bad advice, or your empty promises."
The other response that you get is something like, "I wouldn't know who to vote for." This is a more honest answer, and one that we can work with. You see, one of the tricks that the devil has been using to get you to vote for the candidates of his choosing is to keep you in the dark about what constitutes a good leader. If you don't know what a good leader is, how can you object to the candidates he offers?
Identifying a Good Leader
The ugly fact of the matter is that pretty much nobody—even those with an extensive education—knows what a good leader is these days. Oh, sure, some colleges and universities, especially those with a connection to the military, will crow about how good they are at producing leaders, but all of modern education is focused on producing employees, and employees have to be followers not leaders, and this is especially true in the military, where following orders and being a team player are the highest virtues, and the orders come from an external source, the politicians, who do what their sponsors tell them to do. And their sponsors are not genuine leaders of men, but just successful businessmen, who, as Ebeneezer Scrooge and Henry Potter exemplify, either don't realize or don't care that what's good for business isn't necessarily good for people.
When we talk about 'good leaders' we are not talking about those who can turn a profit at all costs, or those who can build great monuments to themselves by oppressing everyone else, or those who can conquer vast territories by destroying everything in their path. We are not talking about slick orators who can make a dumb idea sound like a grand adventure, or an unjust cause sound like the right thing to do. We are not talking about bossy or loud people who need to be the center of attention, or thugs who like to throw their weight around. We are not talking about those who charm people with their beauty, or win them with their smile, or tell them what they want to hear. Yes, people often follow those who can do these things, but that just makes such persons leaders, not good leaders.
In order for a leader to be a good leader, his actions have to produce—not surprisingly—good results; he has to lead people to a better set of circumstances than the one he finds them in. One does not have to be loud, flashy, tough, abusive, beautiful, egocentric, or eloquent to accomplish this end. One does not even need to be in a position of power (though it helps). What one does need is a vision of a better future, a sense of justice, compassion for others, and an awareness of what is practical. In addition, since the foremost leaders in the world so manifestly believe that might makes right (despite the admonition that "Those who live by the sword will die by the sword"), it is currently important that a good leader, in order to be successful, have some means of controlling bad lealders who are militarily powerful.
Managing Bad Leaders
Now, most people think that the path to controlling militarily powerful leaders is to marshal convincingly superior power against them: since such leaders see might as their own basis of power, they are sure to see it as another's basis of power as well, and, if they view military superiority as establishing dominance, then they must yield when confronted by a superior power.
This is very reasonable, but not necessarily effective. You see, you will always have trouble convincing them either that your might is superior to theirs, or that you will use it, or that you will use it effectively, or that they won't use theirs more effectively. Thus, you set yourself up for the game that we have been witnessing play out since the end of the Second World War: one power tests another, the limits are probed, stretched, circumvented as each vies for position and seeks an opportunity to pounce. Having military superiority in terms of might is only effective as long as one remains vigilant, ready to strike, willing to strike, and willing to bear the suffering of a prolonged struggle with a fierce and determined enemy. Where there is wavering in these matters, there is an opportunity for the enemy. And so having greater might does not put an end to the fighting; it merely postpones it, and, during the delay, the enemy is doing its best to strengthen itself.
It is better, then, to find a way to displace might as the source of legitimate, respected power, for the object is not to supress the other, but to remove emnity, and emnity cannot be removed by force or violence any more than a fire can be quenched by being doused or sprayed with gasoline. Yet, emnity can be removed, and the world has plenty of examples to offer of neighboring countries that have long been at peace, but which formerly were engaged in the most violent disputes that the technology of the time permitted.
Enmity can be removed because, deep down, all humans are social creatures. The trick is to find the right way to do it. In many of the more well-known cases, emnity is removed through the death or capture of one of the key players, but a change in leadership is not necessary if the leaders themselves can accomplish a simple change of heart. And the change itself is simple enough, but the trouble lies in digging through all the vices and defenses that have come to encrust their hearts, and these vices and defenses are the natural outgrowth of an unnatural inner condition, just as a pearl is the natural product of a disturbance within an oyster's shell.
The Heart of Darkness
The unnatural inner condition of a leader who feels emnity is a psychological disorder which may have any number of causes, and so has to be treated in a customized way. This disorder, however, gives rise to a deep-seated paranoia which requires the sufferer to adopt, in his relations with his fellow humans, first, all the defenses of an herbivore that fears predation. As humans are not herbivores, the success of these herbivore-defenses provide opportunities for cautious predatory experimentation in his dealings with others. Success in these experiments leads to the realization that a good offense makes a great defense, and then snowballs either until they are brought under control, or until they die.
Of course, many who suffer from this condition end up as simply confused and disfunctional persons. Mistaking society for a crowd of predators who are out to get them (instead of a natural, cooperative unit, like a flock or a herd), they careen from one social faux pas to the next, and so never quite fit in, and never quite succeed. A few, however, master the art of fitting in, and this makes them formidable predators. Some of these, then, become monstrous criminals; others ruthlessly climb this social ladder or that, lying, cheating, betraying colleagues, stabbing them in the back, using every dirty trick in the book; some always taking care to present themselves as harmless angels; others boldly playing the bully and issuing threats, and getting away with whatever they can. Yet even then, they are often held in esteem since the more social people who interact with them often mistake their predatory actions for virtues like ambition, backbone, decisiveness, effectiveness, and courage. This happens because, for many normal people, the idea that someone is this thoroughly anti-social is unthinkable, and so they fit the data to a theory that they find more believable.
The Predator King
When one of these conniving predators meets success in climbing a ladder that leads to political power, real dangers emerge. For, just as a good leader can do the greatest good for the greatest number of people, so also a bad leader can do the greatest harm to the greatest number of people. A bad leader's reign, then, is characterized by selfishness and paranoia. In his mind, everyone is suspect because the predator can no more imagine that others are not predators, than social creatures can imagine that one of their own kind is a predator. Indeed, the more innocent they are, the more conniving he suspects them of being, for, from his point of view, innocence is always an act. For such a leader, the tale of King Dionysius and the sword of Damocles (see Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 5.21) epitomizes his conception of his position.
Finding himself, then, in command over what he imagines to be a sea of conniving predators, each of whom is striving to take his position just as eagerly as he strove to get it, he begins to take defensive measures, walling off the path he took to power, and any other path that he can imagine. As a safety precaution, he uses intermediaries to distance himself from the people, and, as a safety precaution, he often has these same intermediaries killed off or otherwise neutralized.
Frequently, the predator-ruler sets about making life difficult for those he rules, for, the more time and effort they have to spend on small and necessary matters, the less time and energy they have for plotting against him. From this arise a whole host of rules, rules that he and his current batch of associates have no intention of adhering to; no, these are rules for everyone else to follow. Thus, so often, we find the lower classes oppressed by low wages, heavy tax burdens, hyper-regulation, bureaucratic red tape, and 'relief' programs designed to entice and entangle one in permanent dependence, while the wealthy and connected take perverse pleasure in dishing out all this abuse to the lower classes, and in advertising it as being "for their own good."
A Cabal of Kings
If it was the case that a predator king was an anomaly—the occasional exception to a more benign rule—he would present difficulties, but these could be dealt with once his problem was properly diagnosed. Unfortunately for us, the Devil is in the mix, and has been for several hundred years, creeping in and gaining ground through the works and teachings of men like Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Charles Darwin, and their disciples. By now, his views not only rule the schools, but pervade all of Western civilization (if we can call it that), and this Western 'civilization' pervades all the world.
The consequence of this is that we have not a single predator who keeps everyone else in line (as Hobbes envisioned), but multiple layers of predatory bosses, and overlapping networks of predators and predatory institutions to abuse and exploit us. In a given day, a person is preyed upon by their government (which comes in local, county, state, and federal forms), their employer(s), their bank, their insurance providers, their retiremant planners, their health providers, their utility companies, their school, the places they shop, their internet and phone provider, the content providers they access through their phone, TV, computer, or even their car. And soon the 'Internet of Things' will enable their home appliances, the local traffic light, the buildings in their neighborhood, and nearly everything else to join in the party. These things make demands on our time, our attention, our money, our actions, even our thoughts. And, on the one hand, we accept it all as the new normal, while we wonder why we feel so helpless, trapped, and stressed out, and broke.
It couldn't be that all this arises because the people around us—who should be our friends and neighbors—are preying on us, could it?
It couldn't be that those who should be fostering us and granting us opportunities are, instead, sealing off those opportunities, stunting our growth, and keeping us down, could it?
It couldn't be that those who are supposed to be taking care of us (doctors, preachers, lawyers, judges, politicians, public servants, 'customer service' workers, insurance claims adjusters, and many more), are merely in it for the money and are actually exploiting us in our hour of weakness or finding ways to kick us while we're down, could it?
It couldn't be that the so-called 'news' media feeds us a steady stream of lies that provide cover for the rich rascals of the world to get away with murder literally and figuratively, could it?
No, no, of course not. That's the kind of thinking you find in conspiracy theories. And the press, fully backed by the corporations and their politicians, is sure to assure us that's just what it is. So "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" And, go back to sleep, so that the Matrix can keep on sucking the life-blood right out of you. As the policemen say (amidst bullets, wreckage, fire, carnage, and bloodshed), "Move along! Nothing to see here."
