Authoritarianism is a disease of the mind. It criminalizes the act of asking “why?” It is the obedience-sickness that turns good people into perpetrators and victims of atrocities great and small.
|
|||||
|
We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people. Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house] Authors
Arts, Tech & CultureCivil LibertiesCommentary
EconomicsSamizdatistas |
6 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
Who Are We?The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling. We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe. CategoriesArchivesFeed This PageLink Icons   |
|||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||
I often think that the people at the levers of power are like kids with the ultimate model railway. My uncle collected model railways for many years. While he had little lead passengers waiting on each platform, I can guarantee you that the trains weren’t being run for their benefit.
We are just a canvas for these people to play out their own private psychodramas, extras in their movies in which they naturally have the starring role.
A great deal of authoritarianism arises from the natural frustration of the ‘heroes’ when they find that the extras (us) aren’t following their script correctly. We are supposed to be like The People in their head, dammit and if we refuse to be, we will just have to be broken down until we see the light.
No other avenue of life offers a greater opportunity for talentless individuals utterly bereft of exceptional qualities to maximize their impact on the lives of others and validate their need to be somehow exceptional.
I’m not sure it is a disease. It is natural for some humans to want to rule others and demand obedience from them. The difference these days is that those with a lust for power pretend they need to tell us all what to do for our own good. I’m sure the big strong caveman wasn’t so dishonest when demanding that his weakling neighbour give him his wife, spear, food or whatever.
Yes it is ‘natural’ in the same way that cancer or typhoid is ‘natural. It is something our species is prone to… a disease of the mind.
The desire to tell other people what to do, boss others around, seems to be the (main manifestation) of the main cause of problems in the world. The “Lucy” syndrome. Of this I am firmly convinced.
The concept of Jay’s train set is true to an extent, and that we like to believe things should be well ordered and smooth running and get angry and frustrated when we are thwarted in the attempt to achieve this. But I do not think this is the motivation that enrages our “masters”.
I used to love playing Sim City in its first few releases. And I could never get to grips with the manufacturers sales line around the idea of: Create your own world and rule over it. Exercise power!!
I used to just love getting to see how I could organise everything so it worked the best and most productively (I wound up with an insane fortune in Sim money). But I never had the desire to lord it over my Sims. Perhaps I am not normal.
It is that “lording” motive, quite separate from the desire to organise productively, that is the monster in the back room.
John B: I suspect most people have a desire to see themselves as better than others in some sense if they are honest with themselves. That can mean being richer than others, being more attractive, being a better athlete, being smarter, being more ‘cultured’ a more talented musician or better at telling jokes. The sheer variety of ways we can tell ourselves we are better than our peers means we can each choose the yardstick that is most flattering to ourselves when indulging in the private vice of feeling smugly superior.
Lots of these actually produce positive externalities. I think plenty of socially positive outcomes are driven by human vanity.
However the yardstick ‘I get to impose my will upon others’ is a profoundly destructive one, pretty much the crappiest most immoral one it is possible to choose. Unfortunately it seems to be the one that people who go into politics almost invariably choose.
Cory Doctorow is a strange person to quote on this front. He’s all about freedom in the bedroom, not so much when it comes to healthcare etc. Classic social liberal fiscal socialist case. Good sentiment, mind you. Too bad the author himself doesn’t understand what he’s said.