How Did We Get Here?

The current situation and why so many are such disappointments.

It occurs to me, on a regular basis, that people are fucked. And I ponder as to the reasons for their fuckedness. But when you dig into it a little, it’s not hard to see why.

“Throughout the world, the vast majority of people have no control whatsoever over the decisions that most deeply and directly affect their lives. They sell their labour power, while others, who own or control the means of production accumulate wealth, make the laws and use the whole machinery of the state to perpetuate and reinforce their privileged positions.”

- Maurice Brinton

State as Saviour

There are no bad people, or at least very few. Bad people are the result of bad circumstances and this is what we have in spades. Principally our bad situation is a result of what can be called The State or The System, if you wish.

The State arose in ancient civilisation as a response to scarcity. When resources were limited, to the detriment of a few, an organised coercive force arose that exercised exclusive exploitative control. Out of this grew a hierarchy - initially a king or ruler and their subsequent military caste. This exclusive caste institutionalised theft, violence and murder for their benefit alone. Today we call this the state.

This process has been naturalised by all, so much so that the average person barely gives it a second thought. As Hobbes remarks in his book “Leviathan” that without the control of the state life would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Of course this is total bullshit as evidenced by the innumerable self-organised indigenous communities. But in the mind of the average Joe, this is self evident. Further reinforcement of this myth is to be found in the state as the default protagonist of history. After all, no entrenched system of power would voluntarily concede its illegitimacy.

Naturalised Abuse

Through this naturalisation of abuse the master-servant relationship becomes entrenched. Dismantling such a system is near impossible because we tend to think in terms of precedent; what has come before is the scaffolding of our future thoughts. Creating something anew requires more effort than building upon existing forms.

Spawned from this brutal state come the rules and laws that act to maintain control and further legitimise its violence. An elaborate system is maintained that, in its dazzling sophistication and bureaucracy, conceals the inherent corruption at its core - where debate is allowed, except that of the legitimacy of the actual system itself.

The criminal acts that constitute state power, have, in modern times been further obfuscated by the fictions of ‘liberty’ and ‘democracy’. So effective has this bewilderment of the masses been that they now willingly choose the tyrants that rule over them.

Greasing the wheels of the scam are the silver tongued political caste with their endless platitudes and outright lies. These degenerates are but one of the many toxic aberrations to have slithered out of the mire. Such is their dependency on the system, in keeping the status quo, that their very existence necessitates it. These corrupt institutions and spineless individuals become self-actualised by the criminality of the state. They are validated by its perpetuity and hence their prime purpose is to protect the system from any and all possible threats.

The Ills of Man

Politicians, priests, doctors, lawyers, social workers, police, etc and the vast institutions through which they operate have contrived to capture man. His suffering is the collective weight of these evils. And all of this is seemingly justified for it is his own fault -

If only he could be trusted to make life charitable and fair without the stern hand of the state. He is guilty. And if you are looking for evidence, just take stock of the many daily horrors that abound in our world. Imagine the carnage without our harsh but fair moderator! Man is a beast! Never mind that these evils are the result of the state, rather than the other way around.

So warped is our faith in the certitude of the state that even its most grotesque forms of disparity are relentlessly defended. Fixing my morning coffee I was treated to the clucking tut tuts of my idiot landlady. On the TV was what I consider the worst programming in Australia - breakfast TV. Mind numbing inanity combined with myopic Western moralising makes Australian breakfast TV so unpalatable that one would struggle to get down even the tastiest piece of Vegemite on toast. This particular piece of craven journalism depicted a man protesting at a tennis match. He was upset by the minor matter of a recent genocide. As far as the TV presenter was concerned, his interruption to this game of whack-a-ball over a meagre few thousand slaughtered people, was completely unacceptable. My landlady agreed.

Guilty of Nothing

But Man is not guilty of anything. Man only wants to live. None of us ever asked for this. No one ever agreed to be controlled by this amorphous evil entity. Our only crime is our stupidity in accepting it but we are not guilty. Just because everyone thinks this system is good doesn’t make it so. Sadly, we are completely enthralled to its all encompassing machinations.

The sheer wastage of the system in maintaining its hegemony, results in a high degree of human endeavour being utterly pointless. We have been removed from anything worthwhile: truth, beauty and goodness. Everyone is just playing along in the best way they can, fulfilling their roles as instructed while the cancerous rot of years of subordination and spiritual emptiness clogs our hearts and minds.