Statism: The belief in the legitimacy of a central authority and it's rule of written law by violence and coercion.
Cognitive Dissonance: Mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time.
To believe in the legitimacy of central authority is to contradict the basic morality that we all share. What is basic morality? It is the understanding of one's own mortality, one's own vulnerability as a self conscious being. To know what will destroy you is to know how to destroy others. Even though rapists and thieves and murderers choose to violate others this does not negate universal morality as they would defend themselves from the same attacks; they don't want to suffer and die either. Every culture, every individual has varying degrees to which they may feel violated, but there is not one person who in their heart of hearts doesn't know that rape, theft, murder, coercion, and trespass, are wrong.
Government is a contradiction of morality. It is an involuntary relationship with terms that nobody would accept from an individual, yet framing it in authority allows for great exception. If your neighbor steals from you it is clearly theft. If the government steals from you they call it taxation, but it is theft by definition. If your neighbor kills you it is murder. If the government kills you, well, they have lots and lots of terms and excuses for that: collateral damage, national security, negotiations, spreading democracy, operation Iraqi freedom, Vietnam... War. Nobody does murder better than when governments go to war.
War is murder plain and simple. The massive and pervasive idea that it is justified by collective defense and security is why opposition to it fails. When you use the proper magic spell, the proper words, people suddenly accept all kinds of atrocities. So long as we are convinced that bombing innocent people is somehow keeping us safe from similar attacks we are fine with it. This contradicts our basic morality and gives rise to moral relativism: it's not OK for those people over there to kill, but it is OK for these people over here. See the costumes and symbols they wear? That means they're special!
So when I hear weeping and wailing for guns to be taken away from good innocent people on the claim of reverence for the sanctity of life, it makes me wonder where the deep compassion really comes from. In fact I almost never hear gun control advocates denounce war for the same reason, or at all for that matter. The vast majority of these folks say nothing in the way of opposing war, yet they are compelled to take to the streets and the airways at the command of the TV when their heartstrings are plucked in the way they've been programmed. How can one be so inconsistent? Cognitive dissonance.
Government can kill and murder and steal all day every day and hardly anyone bats an eye. Every now and then a lone nutjob (which none of the proposed legislation concerning gun control would effectively stop) kills some people and everybody loses their minds. It makes zero sense if you don't understand how cognitive dissonance disrupts logical consistency, and perfect sense if you do.
We have been trained by government to hold two opposing views in our minds partitioned by emotion. This is akin to how schizophrenia functions, and is exactly what composes George Orwell's “doublethink” in his indispensable dystopian novel 1984. The infallibility of Big Brother, or the state, is pounded into us from birth by ways of fear, anger, intimidation, inferiority, and false collectives. Even when BB contradicts inarguable logic he is correct (2+2=5). If the government murders and steals, it is right. The term “the greater good” is a perfect example of false collective: individuals are expendable to the group; the group is more important than the individuals it is comprised of. Killing a few people to benefit everyone else is perfectly justified. Yet if you were the one being expended by and for the group, you would see the folly in this thinking pretty quickly. It is the people cocooned by their culture and government, spoon-fed by mass media and unable to think for themselves that accept these terms without question and are thus all the more susceptible to further programming and indoctrination.
If we are ever going to have peace in this human existence (there will always be a bad apple somewhere) we must address the root causes. We cannot allow some people to have rights that others do not. We cannot say that one person may violate without consequence while others may not. We must apply consistency in logic and reason and morality. What will that look like? I have no idea, all I know is that this is the first step on the path to get there, to get free, to get good.
This is essentially a rewrite of my last article just with an added perspective. I hope you are enjoying my content, please give me some feed back so I can continue to improve and provide more coherence and value!
Nice work. Upvoted and RSed. One little note of feedback: separate the end note with line if asterisks or something and/or put it in italics.
Awesome thanks for the boost and advice Adam!
Your article is well written and explains massive cognitive dissonance in a clear way.
Thank you.
upvoted and followed
Sadly that meme is factually inaccurate
The last living veteran of World War I (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918) was Florence Green, a British citizen who served in the Allied armed forces, and who died 4 February 2012, aged 110. The last combat veteran was Claude Choules who served in the British Royal Navy (and later the Royal Australian Navy) and died 5 May 2011, aged 110.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_last_World_War_I_veterans_by_country
The last American WW1 veteran was named Frank Buckles. Consider this, the globalists with all their media and corporations and politicians and money and political censorship of social media over this gun issue have failed to convince half of people that they are right, I take heart in that. Half of people see the truth no matter what bullshit they are sold.
Wow much obliged for the fact check sir, clearly I was not aware!
I think half is being quite generous, but regardless of the clichéd nature of the statement "we are living in interesting times" I can't help but think it and say it--shit is changing big time and if the good guys who see it coming play their cards right, we just might be alright. Thank you for your consideration and historical knowledge.
Very nicely written and your thoughts align well. The root causes though go deeper than the state. It's humans. We are not all equal. The anarchist revolution will not happen any time soon. Because it won't be a revolution. It will be enlightened evolution and this article is one more step towards that!!
We hold these truths to be self evident, that all are created equal .....
Can you outrun Mr Bolt? Can you write music like Prince? Can you out bench press Arnold? Could you win a fight with Mike Tyson?
We are not created equal, some people get more smarts, some get more brawns, some get more raw desire and will. We can all become what we wish to be and we can all train and learn anything we wish but some are naturally gifted for certain things.
Agreed but you and I had an equal chance of being those people. If we were brought up in the same environment as they and trained as they, ate slept, drank, etc. It could have just as easily been you or I, we each had an equal chance of being born those people. I don't see any difference. If I trained as much or more than Bolt I'd pass him at the finish, if I pump iron like mad and juiced my body with roids I could have outlifted Arnold, if I boxed with the conviction and passion of Mike I may have bit his ear off. It could have just as easily been you or I.
hahaha maybe not bitten his ear off come on lol, I guess we have an equal chance of being born with various talents but I still don't think we are all equal, in the sense that the traits required to push someone to train as hard or to study as hard are not found in everyone either we each have different temperaments which are more suited to certain things. The one thing we do all have equal though is the capacity to be understood. We may learn in different styles but we all have an ability to learn something. We also all have an ability to communicate. Maybe equality isn't that important after all but instead capacity. Nurture everyone's innate capacity for something and you nurture the soul.
This article should be posted in every Journal, magazine, news paper, napkin, box of milk, anywhere and everywhere a person might find it to read.
To the printing press!
Thanks for sharing this. Cognitive dissonance is the major reason our blatant paradoxical society can feasibly exist. We are trained to think in hypocrisy thanks to our government education.
Trump quickly went from Emanuel Goldstein to Big Brother very fast!
You're doubleplus right about that!
Sir, you have summed up it beautifully, it was so interesting going reading through this.