A Pandemic Retrospective

Science is irrelevant to freedom. It is important, yes, but it is secondary to exercising one’s natural right to live on one’s own terms. Whether science, or "The Science" as it has come to be known in recent years, determines that one is endangering themselves or not has absolutely no determination on whether the individual possesses the natural right to conduct themselves as they see fit — even if the scientific community argues that them doing or not doing that something also puts others in danger. Freedom simply means choice, and so this is not to say that one is free to impose their choices onto others, therefore affecting another’s ability to choose — this would be an act of aggression, which is antithetical to freedom — but it is to say that individuals are free to mutually and consensually make the decision to do or not do something with one another, such as meeting in a confined setting, staying under the same roof, or operating their own business as usual, in spite of the warnings of scientists and medical professionals.

This principle, the principle of freedom, is a sense of morality that was tragically absent in most people during the recent COVID-19 pandemic years, which some still treat as an active pandemic rather than a historic one that has long been just that, history. But this is their prerogative, regardless of my personal opinion on them and how I choose to conduct myself to the contrary: and there lies the contrast. As one will have discovered during this period, there are two kinds of people, collectivists (the group comes before the individual) and individualists (the individual comes before the group), and by now one will have learnt the hard way who is which. The contrast I bring to attention is that I, a steadfast individualist, and other like minded individuals, take no issue with, what seems to us, to be hypochondria brought on by being subjected to the most repugnant, coercive, and totalitarian of propaganda campaigns in recent history. Speaking on behalf of myself, and perhaps on behalf of many other individualists, I do not blame the hypochondriacs for being so. It was not their doing but that of those to whom they gave their trust and loyalty. But having had this trust and loyalty undeniably betrayed and maliciously abused, the victims of such abuse should have then, upon learning of this, immediately withdrawn their trust and loyalty, their obedience to and perpetuation of the order of the day. For if they did not, they made themselves no longer amongst the victims of the piece but instead amongst the villains.

After such revelations and after such individuals continued in their unwavering compliance, some even escalating to enthusiastic enforcement (and free of charge), this endorsement of totalitarianism, which I would call "medically induced fascism", lies naked and will not be forgotten nor should it be forgiven. After the red curtain had been pulled back, revealing the coalition between malevolent politicians, Stalinist scientists (forever diminishing the term "expert"), and nefarious pharmaceutical corporations (well and truly a corporatist cabal), any who persisted in forwarding the designs of such an anti-human conspiracy onto their neighbours is far beyond the pale. And make no mistake, what such victims-cum-victimisers supported for two years, and perhaps even beyond and now, was fascism: the merger between corporation and state, where the corporation — namely big pharma, the media, and big tech —  is in league with and subservient to the will of the state. A more concise term for this phenomena is "corporatism", as Mussolini himself argued. Having been, and perhaps still being, a cheerleader for corporatism, how could one subjected to such victimisation at the hands of such individuals, their own neighbours, overlook this aggression that was masqueraded as "public health"?

Such cheerleaders will and have argued since the jig has been up exactly this, that what they did was "for your safety" and "for your health". Let us put aside the fact that this is now and has been for a long while absolutely false, the interventions in one's life, such as lockdowns, quarantine, masks, vaccines, and all else, having provably done far greater harm than good, decreasing quality of life, increasing human suffering, and killing more people than COVID-19 was ever capable of; let us put all that aside and concede that the cheerleaders were right, The Science was on their side, and we dissidents endangered ourselves and others by not heeding their warnings; even if this were all demonstrably true, it does not and did not ever matter. 

Recall my opening statement, "science is irrelevant to freedom". Whether or not science determines that lockdowns will save lives, it does not matter because locking people in their homes is immoral; whether or not science determines that forcing people to wear masks anywhere and everywhere they go will save lives, it does not matter because forcing people to cover their faces — distorting their connection with other human beings — is immoral; whether or not science determines that forcing people to get vaccinated will save lives, it does not matter because violating the natural right to bodily autonomy, to have absolute dominion over one’s own body, is immoral; whether or not science determines that forcing people into quarantine and forcefully preventing the infected from physical contact with their loved ones will save lives, it does not matter because denying consenting individuals physical contact with one another, regardless of the circumstances, is immoral; and whether or not science determines that taking absolute control over the terms on which every individual lives their life will save lives, it does not matter because to deny anyone the ability to live (and die) on their own terms is, yes, absolutely immoral, irredeemably inhuman, and utterly evil.

One's safety does not take priority over another's freedom, primarily because every individual maintains the natural right to live on their own terms, but also because a life without quality is not a life at all. For what is a life devoid of risk-taking, adventure, and choice, other than one of anxiety, misery, and hermitry — one without meaning. It is inhuman, which is to say unnatural, for any human being to be subjected to such an empty existence against their will — and who would deny that such an existence would not be the one the individual selected for themselves but rather the one selected for them. Such pre-determination of another's choices has historically always led to more death and suffering rather than less, and the recent pandemic was no exception.

Averting Future Tyrannies

 

Majorities are unreliable and easily led, as one will have experienced during the pandemic years, and so one who sides with principle and not with them will and have always historically, as one witnessed during the recent mania, found themselves surrounded, shouted down, and ostracised. For freedom is not free nor is it safe. But the risk taken upon oneself is worth the social and economic costs that one may face because it is in defence of something irreplaceable, invaluable, the only thing that preserves the individual in being just that, the individual, and from which all other human happiness stems: integrity, that is, being true to oneself no matter the cost. The number of people who share the belief in this principle, the principle of living on one's own terms, undeterred by threats of force, never surrendering their freedom for safety, the less sacrifice any single dissident individual has to make alone. 

Winter is coming and surely with it the fear factory and its relentless campaign to have oneself and everyone around them do just that, surrender. So what can any one individual do to resist and to lessen the sacrifice necessary to preserve oneself? I propose the following: forgive those who desire and prove worthy to be forgiven and forget those who don't, blood or otherwise; always encourage the personal and discourage the political; and never argue the scientific with proponents of tyranny, rather always argue what is moral, what is right, for it is all that really matters. For each individual dissident that spreads this sentiment among their personal circles, the risk taken in dissidence by any single one is reduced exponentially, and a significant domino effect is caused that we may all benefit from: a spontaneous counter campaign to that of the centrally planned legion of doom. 

The story of the pandemic now past was just this, many small and seemingly insignificant acts of bravery amounting to a large and significant minority resisting the creep of corporatist tyranny. This was sufficient enough to (rather ironically) slow the spread and, ultimately, turn the tide, ending once and for all what would have likely otherwise been an eternal state of emergency to justify more and more encroachments on individual freedom, until there were none left to encroach upon — complete and utter totalitarianism. And this too is the story of any and all historical resistance against tyranny. Not a downtrodden majority standing against an oppressive minority, but a principled and courageous minority standing against an unprincipled, cowardly, and overwhelming majority: a single man in a crowd of conformists simply saying "No!", and whilst most look on, out of either fear of retaliation or genuine faith in the regime, others are inspired to echo the lone brave man, and thus a revolution is born. 

To be the brave man, one must first be willing to be the villain, the boogeyman, the extremist, the terrorist, the conspiracy theorist, the scapegoat. The brave man will be all of these things whilst also being none of them. This is what it means to stand apart from the crowd and say "No!" But as the history of toppling oppressive regimes has taught us, the brave men, surrounded on all sides, outmanned and outgunned, persecuted by the empowered, mindless majority, forced to live their lives in banishment, always win. Why? Because it is always the majority that sleepwalks through history while it is always the minority that wakes them up to the evil that they have done. If it were the other way around, such industrial scale atrocities that litter the pages of human history would never have come to fruition, for they would have lacked the sheer volume of unconscious zombies necessary to implement such a degree of evil. 

This latter point is the precise object of my original proposition, the aim of the sentiment I advocate one embodies and spreads to others: disenfranchise the majority, which is to say take away from them their means to bring about whichever dystopia they have been duped into constructing this time — government. This does not mean, as one has been incessantly taught as the solution to everything by this very establishment, wielding government in the other direction, thereby empowering the minority politically instead. For this would inevitably make this newly empowered minority the new majority that will go on to bring about such evil as I have described, as has historically always been the case when the minority advocates political solutions, i.e. solving problems by force. Rather it means acting out personally and privately the change one wishes to see in the world, which is to say leading by example and disengaging with government and any and all of its solutions in favour of engaging with others peacefully and voluntarily by means of persuasion, while leaving be those who do not wish to be engaged or persuaded.

This idea in practice would be attempting to convince one's family, friends, and colleagues in conversation, in writing (such as this), and by other persuasive means, such as recommending books, articles, videos, and other media, simply that one should be free from compulsion, in absolute control of their own body and, by extension, their own destiny. They need not agree with or approve of one's lifestyle, choices, or even philosophy; they need merely agree to this elementary, fundamental understanding of morality that already conducts all human interactions that are not political: tolerance, which is to say peaceful co-existence. 

The effect of disseminating this tenet of persuasion over force, if successful and widespread, is the gradual breaking up of the majority by reducing support for, dependence on, and therefore the influence of, government, until its resources are so exhausted that it collapses beneath its own weight. This nonviolent solution requires great patience, time, and effort, but it is the only moral and permanent solution to the tyranny of the majority, the only way freedom wins, forever. For what it is the alternative but that which humanity defaults to, that which has been tried over and over again for centuries: sticking a gun to people's heads and demanding they go along with one's plans, else pulling the trigger. As any student of history has observed, that road, sooner or later, always leads back to the slaughterhouse.

Politics is evil. And if politics is evil, those who practice it, politicians, must also be evil. And if politicians form governments to impose politics upon those who otherwise would not be political, then governments too must be evil. 

To understand why one would make such a statement, one must understand what politics is. It is the formation of an organisation with the express purpose of spreading and enforcing adherence to one's personal beliefs (law) among the many residents within its geographical boundaries (country) — and beyond these boundaries and among residents of other governments in the event of wars and subsequent invasions. 

But in order to achieve such enforcement and subsequent compliance, one must understand what "enforcement" and "compliance" means in a political context. To enforce one's personal beliefs, one's laws, is to impose one's beliefs onto others. It is the act of saying "You will do as I will, not as you will, and if you do not comply, my henchman will see to it that my power over you is felt." And so, in a political context, compliance is always out of fear rather than want. If one's rules are adhered to and one's order achieved only through threat of force, then the individual's willingness to comply is rendered absolutely irrelevant. Put simply, if one hands over their possessions to the armed mugger willingly, or even gladly, one has still been mugged nonetheless. Neither one's willingness to participate in the immoral act nor the volume of those willing to participate in the immoral act make it any less immoral.

And this is the foundation of politics: threat and subsequent fear of force. This being the case, the foundation being rotten, sustained only by instilling enough fear amongst its residents to dissuade them from resisting — and beyond if deemed necessary to secure conformity — anything and everything government does, which is to say everything politics does, is evil by extension of it being conceived through evil acts. No matter what a cabal such as this achieves, when inserted into the context of holding up peaceful people at gunpoint in order to do so, their good deeds will always be soiled by the bloody hands with which they perform them.

But politics is only evil because it is granted absolute dominion over the lives of every individual within its reach: this monopoly on politics we call "government". If this was not the case and politics was confined purely to the personal, i.e. confined to the private lifestyle and philosophical preferences of the individual, then the worst thing that could, generally speaking, come of a political conflict would be disassociation or a nasty exchange of words — as opposed to a contentious, volatile, and often bloody struggle for control of government and an exchange of repression and, if attempts to reason with the order of the day become futile, an exchange of fists, knives, bullets, and bombs.

This is not to say that in the absence of a monopoly on politics — government — that people would not be involved in violent conflict. That is and always will be guaranteed. But it is to say that the frequency and degree of such violent conflict will be considerably reduced, guaranteed. And it is indeed guaranteed because the primary instrument of violence, the one that has proven historically to be the most efficient at slaughtering as many as possible in as short a time as possible, will have been permanently confiscated as an option to solve any (or indeed all) of the common man's problems. Harnessing political means, which is to say force, is to impose one's preferences onto and over those of others, and so it follows that this cycle only serves to continuously perpetuate violence. Thus, it also follows that the removal of such a cycle, one that harnesses violence as its default action and therefore normalising violence as an appropriate tool to solve one's problems, reduces if not mostly eliminates violence in society. Why? Because now the means by which to defer the physical enforcement of one's preferences onto others is no longer available, one is compelled to do the enforcing oneself, and it is easy to pass these physical and psychological costs onto others when the consequences are remote, but it is increasingly hard to bare the costs when having to personally intimidate, threaten, and physically handle one's peaceful neighbours in order to achieve the desired conformity with one's agenda.

To put the costs that are bogged down in politics and intentionally obscured by its bureaucracy into perspective, and to effectively assess one's moral compass, take an example of a scenario engulfed in politics and privatise it, which is to say strip away any perception of a legitimacy to authority and evaluate one's opinion on the scenario in its now naked form. 

Let us apply this mental exercise to the very concept of government, as I have described above. One's neighbour owns a business, a large business, that provides for their client's community rules, security, healthcare, education, energy, and a whole host of other necessities. But in order to hire employees, purchase office space and equipment, and run day-to-day operations, the business owner, one's neighbour, rather than achieving these things by actually providing a high quality service that offers value to their customers and sustaining the business in the traditional free market fashion, i.e. voluntary exchange for goods and services (laissez-faire), they instead stick up and shake down their customers, their neighbours. And if their customers dare to end their contract with the business, a contract they have never signed nor even seen, the business owner will send employees — who are usually the ones providing for their security — to abduct the dissident customer from their home and imprison them against their will for an arbitrary period of time, until the business owner decides they have been punished sufficiently enough for daring to terminate their contract — which, again, they haven't signed nor seen.

Would one hire this neighbour and their organisation for their many services, regardless of the quality, if this is how they sustained their existence? Not if one had a say in the matter, I would wager: this is the point. In this context, that of the private, where no one is immune from responsibility for their actions, and therefore no one can afford to neglect their reputation in the face of society, anyone and everyone is accountable to anyone and everyone — no amount of wealth, status, influence, or force can save those who would conduct themselves by nefarious means, whether carried out by themselves or by others on their behalf: all will be judged as individuals. Simply put, a society that rewards good behaviour with a good reputation and punishes bad behaviour with a bad reputation is a self-regulating one, which is to say order is achieved organically, spontaneously, without force or need of it — unlike the artificial order achievable only through the use of force which we experience overwhelmingly today. Is this not the only way to achieve peaceful co-existence, happiness, freedom? 

For who would deny that humanity is not more productive, prosperous, peaceful, and satisfied in their lives than when left in freedom? The alternative, order by force — this artificial, involuntary order — isn't really order in the same way an abusive relationship, where one party compels the other to stay, isn't really a relationship: if the desire to continue isn't mutual between the participants, the relationship is not genuine. So, if I may be direct for a moment: Why do you stay? Why do you insist that you must stay and to not stay would be worse than staying? What are you afraid of? Responsibility? Choice? Freedom? Are you really more afraid of the uncertainty of freedom than the certainty of slavery? 

Choice means freedom and freedom means responsibility. Freedom is frightening because of its uncertainty: it is the fear of the unknown; and responsibility is frightening because of its uncertainty: the fear of making the wrong choice, or having to make a choice at all; but where there is choice, there is hope: and there is choice, it's yours, it always has been. The order of the day is only legitimate, that is, it can only do what it does with impunity — threaten, rob, command, and enslave — so long as one believes that it is so. Rulers, those who exist today and those passed, are and were only ever as insurmountable a foe as one allows and allowed them to be. 

Stripping the ruling class down, so they're naked of their perceived legitimacy, all that remains is that nefarious neighbour, the one who sticks guns in their peaceful neighbours faces and demands to be paid tribute. For all their talk, costumes, symbols, and rituals, all they are is the common mugger who says "Your money or your life." One need not get into the trenches to argue the ups and downs of any particular scribbles on paper that they insist one should distract themselves with, and instead remember they only exist because they feel virtuous in doing such a monstrous thing — and if it were up to them, they would continue to do this until the end of time. Therefore, anything they have to say about anything is redundant in light of them being totally devoid of the elementary, foundational morality that innately conducts peaceful human interaction day-to-day outside of their domain — politics.

It is government, not freedom from government, which is to say anarchy, that is utopian. All of the increasing interference and subsequent decline in one’s quality of life is not, and has never been historically, a consequence of the capacity to live on one’s own terms — freedom — but a consequence of the increasing inability of one to do so without punishment, for the betterment of others rather than themselves — government. And participating in the popularity contest that is democracy will not remedy that. It will only relieve whomever is the currently downtrodden and unload the pressure of political repression onto one’s ideological opposites; and it is just as immoral to rob and enslave one’s enemies as it is to be robbed and enslaved by them. One should look at elections as a pendulum swing, where wielding the evil of political monopoly — government — does not undo the evil done to oneself, it only ensures that the evil will be done in return, and thus repeatedly batted back and forth in a perpetual grudge match for ideological domination.

Both the politically left, right, and everything in between have the natural right to exist and prosper, so long as they do not impose this philosophy, their personal politics, onto others; and no one has the natural right to wield a metastatic bureaucracy of gangsterism to compel participation in their personal philosophy, to be the hallway monitor of the universe, that is, no one has the natural right to rule anyone’s life but their own.

I have spoken much about choice, which is to say freedom, and to confine something entirely to the private, i.e. the personal, means to have freedom. The privatisation of politics, therefore, means to make politics entirely down to one’s preference, meaning one has the freedom to conduct their own life according to whichever philosophy they individually prefer, and no one has the right to compel them to do otherwise. What this means is the abolition of political monopoly, that is, the abolition of the organisation that compels one to live according to the philosophical preferences of others: government. The result is the privatisation of politics, which is to say freedom from tyranny and being unarrested in exercising one’s natural right to own and rule oneself: rule by none, otherwise known as anarchy.

"The queen is dead, long live the king!"

The sentiment behind this proclamation is to both mourn the death of the passing monarch and assure the monarchy's subjects that the monarchy shall live on in the incumbent. But why would one outside of the monarchy's circle of influence — of whom have the obvious incentive to gain the incoming ruler's favour in order to gain influence, authority, and fortune for themselves — say such a thing and actually mean it, given that the relationship between the subject and the monarch is one objectively of servant and master? And in light of this unbalanced dynamic between the subject and the ruler, why is it considered an absurdity by the majority for one to bring voice to this absurdity?

The answer is patriotism, which is to say the conflation of love for one's country with love for one's rulers, whether they be monarchs, democratically-elected politicians, dictators, or any other flavour of government that has reigned over the population for so long that it seems absurd for the population to imagine a life without it. What this achieves over the course of space and time is normalising this way of things, whatever "this" may be, to the extent that after many generations, the memory of how this way of things came about decomposes in the population's memory. At a certain point, after this way of things has fully integrated itself into the minds of the population, the servant, at long last, begins to love their servitude — as was always the intent of the ruling class. This love manifests itself in the form of symbols, monuments, celebrations, and most of all, human sacrifice to honour and preserve its now long established order.

We stand in this latter point in space and time, where this order that was once new is now ancient. It therefore stands to reason that the common subject would find it rather difficult to comprehend one who would dissent from this long standing tradition embraced by everyone around them. But if one travels back to the formation of this order, my dissidence suddenly won't seem so peculiar.

As one knows full well, if one were to stop paying tribute — taxes — to the ruling class — government, of which the monarchy is apart and is in fact above — then one would most certainly find themselves confronted by the enforcers of its will, without whom none of its order would be possible — police — and the consequence of such disobedience is a lengthy stay in a cage — prison — or, if one attempts to violently resist, death. This being the foundation of its order, and the looming threat that influences all of one's interactions with it, the relationship between oneself and one's ruler cannot be said to be consensual. Since one cannot leave without violent repercussions to compel them to stay, this relationship is in fact an abusive one, and in a private context, no one would hesitate to condemn a relationship of this sort as such. But when dressed up in a pristine, well fitted, ceremonious looking costume, this basic understanding of morality and human interaction is totally abandoned by the majority of the population — and this is where the majority and I differ: I do not abandon basic morality because someone put on an outfit and declared themselves the "law", no matter how long they've insisted upon doing so.

Therefore, the origins of this "law and order" is akin to a resourceful mafia — now known as the government — approaching oneself and sticking a gun to one's head, or more accurately, hiring other thugs — now known as the police — to stick their guns to one's head and saying "your money or your life" — now known as taxation. One, after submitting to their demands, must continue to pay tribute to this mafia under constant threat of the same violence, and after a given number of years of this being the way of things — now known as the law — the mafia approaches one again and demands that the contributor — now known as the taxpayer — celebrate the day the now established order first began their reign over one's pocket and one's life — now known as the jubilee. And if one, such as I, voices anything but pride for this sort of order — patriotism — I am condemned as ungrateful for everything they do for me, when everything they do for me is done whilst holding a gun to my head with one hand and rooting through my pocket with the other.

If their order was not established in this manner — involuntarily — then I would have no such thing to say about it. But given that it was and continues to be so, only in a different arrangement, I cannot approve of its existence let alone mourn the passing of a figurehead of what is nothing more than a well dressed cabal of thieves. So I do not mourn the queen's passing, but nor do I rejoice at the news of her death — I am merely indifferent.