The humanity haters

There are many things in common, I think, between all the political ideologies today – whether “left,” “right,” or of any other persuasion. Socialism, communism, fascism and deep green environmentalism, for example, are all much the same underneath. And that commonality is reflected in the ways in which the promoters and supporters of those ideologies think and act.

They want to impose, or even to force, their ideology on to others, whether they like it or not. They show no concern for individuals; for them, the collective is everything, the individual is nothing. They show no qualms about causing unjust harms or inconveniences to ordinary people. They have no worries about violating rights, or restricting or even destroying freedoms. Indeed, they seem actively to enjoy harassing or impoverishing people they don’t like. By their actions, they show themselves to be extremely selfish and uncaring. Yet, they often project their own faults on to others, and accuse their victims of being selfish and uncaring!

Their approach is generally one-size-fits-all. They seem not to understand that different people need and want different things. They seem not to understand that different people – urban and rural dwellers, for example – are in different situations, so policies which might work for one could cause catastrophic damage to the other. Moreover, they show little or no care for truth or facts. And they are never satisfied; give them an inch, and they’ll take a mile.

They hate anyone – other than themselves and their buddies, of course – enjoying life, or having anything good. And many of them show a hatred of human civilization, and of human progress.

They all favour the state, and want to increase its power. They worship the political set-up which, far from defending people against mass-murdering psychopaths like Hitler and Pol Pot, actively gave those psychopaths licence to wreck the lives of many millions of people. And today’s politicians, instead of defending us against civilization-wreckers like Maurice Strong and Extinction Rebellion, kow-tow to their demands.

Any half decent system of governance ought to defend ordinary people against humanity haters like Hitler, Pol Pot or Maurice Strong – and against their henchpersons and supporters. But today’s system of political states and super-states does exactly the opposite. Not only does it encourage the worst to seek power. But once they are in power, it lets them act with impunity, until someone else gets sufficient power to topple them.

Left versus Right

Many people think of political ideologies as being either on the “left” or the “right.” In recent times, however, this distinction has become more and more blurred. You hear feverish, and always inconclusive, arguments about, for example, whether fascism was (or is?) left-wing or right-wing.

The way I see it is that, historically, the left have been driven mainly by political agendas. They want power in order to do things to people. And, when faced by ideas beyond their comfort zone, they try to enlist them and to pervert them into supporting their own agendas. The right, on the other hand, are more driven by selfishness and greed. They want power because they enjoy it, and in order to make themselves rich. And their response to ideas outside their comfort zone is usually to ignore them, or to try to suppress them.

Moreover, there are hatreds common to many on both left and right. Notably, both hate people who are different. And most of all, those who are different from themselves. Almost no-one in politics, either left or right, has any empathy or real concern for the individual human beings they seek to rule over. The worst of them, on both sides, even go so far as to hate humanity as a species. But while the left hate most those who develop their talents and make themselves good at anything, the right hate more those who have the wrong skin colour, culture or religion. And both of them hate anyone who tries to be individual and independent, or dares to disagree with them in any way.

All political ideologies today, from my point of view, are no more than a mixture of these two tendencies in one proportion or another.

The proper functions of governance

I haven't been writing much new "serious" stuff lately. This is mainly because I've been going over what I've written in the last couple of years, trying to fix some inconsistencies and clarify things that didn't come over quite right. In the process, I've written six new, or substantially revised, sections. I'll try to publish them over the next week or so. Here's the first.

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The first step towards solving the political problems we face today, I think, must be to understand what the valid functions of government (or, as I prefer to call it, governance) actually are. In my view, proper governance has a total of six functions; three principal and three subsidiary.

The first function of governance is to maintain peace. This includes the defence of the governed against external attack or internal violence.

The second function of governance is to deliver justice. This function includes the just resolution of disputes. Justice, as I put forward earlier, is the condition in which every individual, over the long term, in the round and as far as practicable, is treated as he or she treats others. And governance must be fair, objective and meticulous in all its decisions.

The third function of governance is defence of the rights of those who respect others’ rights. Those rights, as I discussed earlier, include fundamental rights like life, property and privacy; and rights of non-impedance, such as freedom of speech, religion and association.

All these three principal functions of governance can be seen as different aspects of a single whole. Namely, the delivery of peace and justice to all individuals.

There are further functions of governance which, while not as important as the first three, are nevertheless necessities. The fourth is co-ordination of the building of infrastructure. This is needed because, although infrastructure must be created and maintained at the local level, some degree of co-ordination is required to ensure that the infrastructure forms a coherent whole. For example, that a new road doesn’t suddenly dead-end at some arbitrary community border. But these functions must always be delivered and paid for in a way that is just towards every individual.

The fifth function is the maintenance of good relations with other, friendly communities.

The sixth and final function of governance is quality control of itself. It must maintain a constant ethical watch on the actions of governance as a whole, and of the individuals who constitute it. It must assure that the functions of governance are being performed as they should be. That those whose job is to maintain peace are indeed doing so to the best of their abilities. That the justice system is, and remains, just, objective and fair to everyone. That no-one in governance violates the rights of innocent people. That any decisions governance needs to make on behalf of those under it are made objectively, fairly, and taking into account the costs and benefits to every individual or group. And that governance – including the quality assurance function! – keeps meticulous and publicly accessible audit trails of all it does, and of the reasons behind every decision it makes.

In my view, these six are the valid functions, and the only valid functions, of governance. It is not a function of governance to impose any particular political or religious ideology. It is not a function of governance to try to cure perceived social ills. It is not a function of governance to pick winners and losers, or to re-distribute wealth from one group of people to another. And it is not a function of governance to provide education, or insurance, or any other good or service which can be effectively provided by individuals and groups in the free market.

On the Personal Transition

The following is an extract from the novel, “Going Galactic,” which I published in 2012. It describes some of the changes in thinking, which I expect people will go through as they move from the Copernicus moment, at which they come to see the individual human being as the centre of the political Universe, to becoming full members of the convivial army of people, who are seeking to save and to renew the rightful human way of life, the “economic means” of honest work and trade. I am repeating it here, because I don’t think I can describe that process any better than I did back then.

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But then, the Personal Transition began to kick in among human beings. Many people, at much the same time, woke up from the zombie state in which they had been held by the battering of lies and propaganda from the politicals and their media and “educators.” People started to think: Why should I put up with this claptrap any more? And they started to feel better about themselves.

It was as if, after decades of ever increasing madness and badness, some threshold had been reached, beyond which the political system could not hold together. It was as if, after a long, dark night, there had come a sudden, bright dawn. And people began to see clearly where they were, and what was around them.

Good people, who all their lives had been bombarded with false guilt by politicians, educators and media, snapped out of it. They no longer felt guilt for using energy, or failing to recycle, or because they were – falsely – accused of wasting natural resources, causing dangerous global warming or endangering species. They no longer felt guilt for being successful through their own efforts, or being prosperous, or looking after their own interests. They no longer felt guilt for spending their fairly earned wealth on the goods and services they wanted, and on the people who provided those goods and services.

They no longer felt guilt for driving cars, or flying in aeroplanes, or eating meat, or not eating enough fruit or veg, or drinking alcohol, or smoking. And they no longer accepted any guilt at all for anything they as individuals had no control over.

People came to understand that as long as they behaved up to basic human standards – such as honesty, peacefulness, responsibility and respect for others’ rights – they were not guilty of anything. And it didn’t matter what “laws” anyone made.

Instead, good people started to feel pride in their own achievements. They felt a renewed love of individuality, independence, economic productivity, progress and justice. They felt change for the better in the mental climate. They felt a new atmosphere of optimism, of expanding horizons, of confidence in themselves and in the future.

Very suddenly by historical standards, people stopped believing, or even being interested in, what they were told by the politicals and their media. They began to understand the frauds that had been committed against them. People fell out of love with politics, and with the political state. And they began strongly to react against its worst abuses. Against aggressive wars. Against violations of rights and liberties. Against lies, dishonesty and double standards by politicians, officials, celebrities and media. Against re-distributory or confiscatory taxation.

Perhaps the strongest reaction was against the environmentalist or green agenda. At the end of the Nasty Noughties, the greens had almost succeeded in taking over the world with their humanity-hating agenda of destroying prosperity, stopping progress and ending individual freedom. Of course, they didn’t put it like that. They bleated about the environment, or polar bears, or “saving the planet” from climate change. But they put no value at all on us human beings, our nature and our rights and freedoms.

But, with the Personal Transition, people saw this agenda for what it was. They came to understand that the environment which we must preserve and cherish is the environment for human beings. That peace, prosperity and justice for human beings are far more important than polar bears or saving a few watts of energy. They saw that there was a way to a sustainable future, and it wasn’t the greens’ pipe-dream of using less and less resources. Instead, the way forward was to create more and more wealth.

And people felt a new kind of fellowship. They cared about the good people they dealt with in their daily lives. They cared about their customers and their suppliers. And they cared about those good people worldwide, who shared their basic human values like honesty and peacefulness. But, on the other side, people also came to understand that those that failed to make the effort to behave up to human standards were not their fellows.

There were other changes in people’s perceptions too. The idea, that people owed allegiance to some country or state, began to seem strange. The idea that governments had rights to stop people from passing across arbitrary lines, or to take a toll of goods passing across such lines, was seen as ridiculous. The idea that governments had a right to tell you who your friends and enemies were, was seen as crazy. For it was now obvious to everyone, that your friends are those who treat you well, and your enemies those that treat you badly.

And the idea that those who happened to live in a geographical area were owed compassion and support from others in that area, no matter how badly they behaved, began to seem even odder. Honest people started to think, why should I care about the dishonest? Peaceful people started to think, why should I care about the warlike? Dynamic people started to think, why should I care about the lazy? Those, who had been victims of bad political policies, started to think, why should I care about those that assaulted me?

Not that anyone was any less inclined to be charitable than before – as long as the recipients deserved it. But those that didn’t deserve charity – the lazy, the dishonest, the aggressive, the violent, the political – were shunned. And that was entirely their own fault.

At a higher level of thinking, people began to see politics for what it was – an outdated way of dealing with others, based on nothing better than violence, dishonesty and intimidation. They came to compare and contrast it with the way of dealing with others, which is natural to human beings – economics. A way based on being a value to others, and trading with them in an environment of peace, honesty and justice.

All along, so good people now understood, it had been the political way of doing things – their system – that had been unsustainable. There was nothing wrong with our way of doing things, the economic system, that couldn’t easily be solved given the will and a bit of effort.

People came to see political policies, designed to harm innocent people, as assaults against those innocent people. And to see those that promoted, supported or enforced such policies as criminals and worse, deserving nothing but contempt and loathing.

So, those that robbed good people through re-distributory or confiscatory taxation, were seen as the thieves they were. Corrupt corporate bosses, that ran to government to get subsidies, or to bring harm to their competitors, were seen as the crooks they were. Those that ordered aggressive wars, were seen as the mass murderers they were. Police, soldiers and others, that behaved with brutality, were seen as the brutes they were.

Those that spied on innocent people were seen as the stalkers they were. Those that lobbied for bad laws were seen as the perverters of justice they were. Governments that oppressed, impoverished or aggressed against innocent people were seen as the criminal gangs they were. And those that promoted the “human activities cause catastrophic global warming” fraud – wanting, as they did, to destroy industrial civilization for the sake of nothing more than a pack of lies – were seen as the traitors to humanity that they were.

There grew also, in the minds of good people, a divide, a separation, from the politicals. Good people began to see the politicals as something different from themselves, as less than members of the human species. Neanderthals, some called them.

And there grew in the minds of good people a demand to bring the politicals to justice. All those that had taken an active part in politics deserved to be thoroughly investigated, scrutinized and judged as individuals. And those – whether politicians, lobbyists, bullying bureaucrats or officials, media, corrupt corporate bosses or other vested interests – that were found to have used political ruses to harm good people, or to profit at the expense of good people, deserved to be made to compensate their victims, and to be treated as the criminals they were. It was now their turn to feel fear and guilt.

But the most significant change of all was that people came to think of themselves, and those around them, as individuals. What mattered was not where people came from, or what colour their skin was, or even what religion they had been brought up in. What mattered was how each individual behaved. That, and only that.

One by one, the zombies awoke, and found that they were human.