Violence by proxy...

We definitely live in a world where things aren't as they seem.  People like to think they live rather peaceful and rational lives but it's quite the opposite.  It's very violent, chaotic and we're basically out of control.  It only appears that we're not because we've learned to twist reality through the manipulation of language to buy us some time before we feel the effects of our actions but like the Merovingian said in Reloaded, 'You cannot escape the nature of the universe.'

The reason why many think their world is generally peaceful and, for the most part, in order is because they're so far removed from the actual violence that is taking place to create that peace and order.  Sure, there are instances of 'random acts of violence' you hear on the news but that's just to maintain the illusion that anomalies are a fact of life.  But rest assured, it is just another reason to maintain the illusion.

People generally are good and moral in their own little world.  They're not going to walk over to their neighbor and point a gun and start threatening them.  They don't eat food off their friend's plate in a restaurant.  When it comes to their immediate actions, they understand right and wrong and understand property rights.  Even the religious folk, you often hear, "I wouldn't force my beliefs onto another."  There's a general respect for a person's mind, body and property in the immediate realm.

It's outside this realm that things get interesting.  People tend to equate "doing good" by doing it directly and have difficulty seeing it indirectly.  At the same time, people see "doing bad" indirectly as easily as they do as if done directly.  Let me illustrate with some examples:

Doing good directly: Going to a soup kitchen for the afternoon and volunteering to feed the poor.
Doing good indirectly: Donating money to the Red Cross.

Doing bad directly: Approaching a stranger at knife-point and stealing their money.
Doing bad indirectly: Hiring a contract killer to kill your business partner.

As you can see, if you act through a third-party to do good, for some reason it's less noble in the eyes of society.  Is this fact?  No, but it's the impression I get.  However, if I ask you if I'm more or less culpable of murder if I hire someone to do it for me rather than doing it myself, I'd bet some good money that you'd say there is little to no difference.

This is why Fathers Day and dads get less love than moms and Mothers Day.  You can immediately see the kissing of the boo-boo and understand the goodness and love from mothers.  Fathers, usually the breadwinners, go out and work and provide for their families.  There's lots of goodness there but it's indirect and therefore unseen.

I'm starting to digress here but my focus is on the indirect violence.  If somehow I could teleport some dark-skinned person from the Middle East and put them in front of you and then handed you a gun and claimed they have information that would put your fellow citizens at risk and you had to kill them, would you pull the trigger?  I'd think you'd have a very difficult decision on your hands.

But this is what we do but it's done indirectly.  Through the political system, the military and the "chain of command" we are doing exactly that.  It's only because we are so far removed from the actual pulling of the trigger that the moral rippling effect make very little waves personally.  Make no mistake, because through the voting process, as I have explained in an earlier post, we lose our individual preferences for war or peace.  The group, embodied as the country's government through democratic representation, has decided to go to war in Iraq, Afghanistan and all the other countries we've gotten ourselves into.

All the laws for texting, drinking and driving, insider-trading etc. as well as all the countless regulations is simply another way of inflicting violence upon each other through local police.  We pay men and women in blue costumes to threaten the use of force if we do not comply.  How many of us sit there and talk about how important drinking and driving laws are and then go to a bar, have a few, and then get behind the wheel?  I have yet to meet a person who say they are in favor of drinking and driving laws who hasn't drank and then got behind a wheel.  Of course the law is to prevent "other people" from doing it.  If one of your friends had one too many and was about to get behind the wheel, how far would you go to stop him?  Sure you'd try to take away his keys or try to plead with him to crash with someone but what if he insisted on driving himself home?  Would you resort to pulling out some kind of weapon and start threatening him?  Would you bind his feet and arms and then kidnap him to your basement?  Sound extreme?  Well, this is what the police do almost on a daily basis on your behalf.  They are simply instruments of policy that you voted for so if you think it's extreme for you to personally do it, the extremity isn't diminished to any degree simply because there are proxies in between you and the drunk driver, or texter, or the tax payer, for that matter.

See, we all hire contract killers, against each other for every law that we pass by vote.  The contract killers don't really kill but they walk around with guns and will use them to subdue those who resist them.  Under the light of consensual proxies, our world is plenty violent.  Guns are being pointed in all directions.  It only appears peaceful because we're not the ones who are carrying the guns.  The enforcement of these laws aren't without repercussions.  All these wars inflicted upon other countries do not leave orphans who think their dead parents were bad people and side with the US.  This is what Ron Paul refers as 'blowback'.  Same thing goes with some inner city kid who can't get a decent education because of a state-run monopoly on education protected by a teachers-union who then tries to gain some unskilled employment but can't because of the minimum-wage laws.  What options are there?  Most of them are illegal but those become the only real choices to get out.  Either that or simply ride the gravy train called the welfare program.  Women go into prostitution and men go into dealing drugs or something else illegal.  It's only a matter of time some kind of altercation happens in this black-market and "random acts of violence" happens.  But make no mistake, this violence isn't random at all.  It is a natural consequence of the existing indirect violence we have placed ourselves into.

Of course, those who have been put in charge will make it seem like it's completely random and can't be predicted and so it further strengthens their argument to pass more and more laws.  This is why it's only natural for governments to grow at the expense of individual liberties.

The core of our problems is the collective belief that something false is true.  And that falsehood is the following:  You can protect property rights by violating property rights.

You cannot protect something by first destroying it.  It's a logical contradiction.  The reason I say this falsehood is because the concept of government is built on this falsehood.  Governments are established to protect people from murder and theft.  But how do governments get the funds to do so?  It must first tax the people.  But taxes aren't voluntary but imposed.  If one argues that people donate money for collective protection then we're no longer talking about a government but a free-market solution to the problem of theft and murder.  But take a look around.  Governments are the opposite of the free-market.  Taxes aren't voluntary.  There is no social contract.

We must first get past our denial.  We must accept that governments are built upon a contradiction.  That is the first step, in this twelve step program.  That is the choice that we all must make:  Do we want truth or do we want the world exactly as it is?  You can't have both.