Softening the Message of a Hard Truth
“If your art can get more press for anarchy, I won’t have to get arrested so often.”
- Lauren Canario
I got what I consider a very good comment on a recent comic strip- I Aim to Misbehave, that deserves a proper response. The comic focuses on a controversial activist, Lauren Canario, known for refusing to participate in driver licensing and car registrations, among other things, to the point of being arrested. It brought up some very good points about how we communicate our ideas. The videos of Lauren embedded with that entry get quite a lot of views and some of the YouTube comments responding to the videos make it clear that many people just don’t get it. Obviously she’s trying to make a powerful statement with her actions and it’s important that people get the message.
What is this hard message she’s trying to convey? At the risk of claiming to speak for Lauren, I’ll make an attempt to explain. It’s that government as we now know it is violence, through and through. The source of it’s authority is nothing more than a persistent threat of violence. A majority may consolidate power in the form of a government, but can’t ensure that it’s moral. A broad consensus, e.g. a vote, or an elaborate proclamation on a piece of paper can not create truth or morality and hence can’t create authority. Government isn’t just violent when it engages in aggressive wars. Every order it issues is backed by the threat of serious violence. Why rebel against something seemingly minor like a driver’s license to point this out? Should we pick our battles more carefully? Because it’s part of the hard truth that people aren’t ready to accept. Any order you resist, from a seizure of private land to a parking ticket, can ultimately escalate to serious violence including incarceration or even death if you continue to resist the orders or the punishments they impose on you. All punishments by government are for disobeying. The so-called little things demonstrate this particularly well. When the authority of government ultimately rests on nothing more than the threat of violence, any deviation from strict adherence cannot be tolerated or the illusion is threatened. By simply remaining passive in a seemingly small matter, Lauren causes them to show their true nature.
On the other hand, how small is the issue of issuing driver licenses? It may have been a small thing at one time, but that’s becoming increasingly questionable. The federal government is pushing for a national database of every citizen in this country tied to driver licenses commonly referred to as Real I.D. They’re already pushing to make this ID necessary not just to drive but to board an aircraft, and in fact this would already be the case if not for resistance by a number of states. They’re acting in numerous other ways to make this easily trackable I.D. nearly impossible to function without. How intrusive does a government need to become before resistance seems reasonable to the average Joe?
People do not casually abandon a deeply held belief. Irrational beliefs provide comfort even while causing us to engage in irrational behavior. How do you softly tell a child that Santa doesn’t really exist and prepare her for the cold reality that a mythical character is not bringing her presents Christmas morning? How do you gently convince someone their God doesn’t exist and that they won’t be going to Heaven when they die? How do you tactfully explain that the government they’ve trusted all their lives to provide their security is actually enslaving them under threat of violence? I’m not sure there’s a soft way to convey a hard truth, a cold hard truth that rocks the foundations of deeply held lifelong beliefs. Getting someone to see the truth amidst a pervasive lifetime indoctrination process takes proverbially grabbing them by the shoulders and shaking them. A message like Lauren’s is not likely to change someone’s views overnight, but in time and in the light of new experiences and new information, and when they’ve had time to get over the shock of having the foundations of their reality rocked, it may very well start to sink in.
Pretty wise post there muffin man.
Well done.
As for Santa Claus, the kids figure it out themselves as they grow up. Unfortunately, they almost never do with respect to government. It’s almost like a religion, except that you can prove government doesn’t exist.
Hey there,
I’ve got to admit, that ”God doesn’t exist” comment ticked me off a bit. I understand that religion has been the source of many of the worst state-based violences in the world (and still is, unfortunately) but it doesn’t mean that all people who believe in a God are mindless statists who seek to push their views down your throat.
I personnally believe in God, and yet I am a libertarian. I don’t consider myself a full-blown anarchist yet (that may change, who knows) but I sympathize with many of your views and I do look up to courageous people like Lauren Canario who simply refuse to be a part of this indoctrination. If I can suggest one of my own personal heroes, it would be Pierre Lemieux, who is frequently fighting a small but necessary battle against Canada’s insane gun control laws . You can read a bit about him here: http://www.quebecoislibre.org/07/070610-4.htm .
But anyway, back on what I wanted to say: The philosophy of liberty is based on respect of each other’s values and opinions. I respect your atheist views, and I am sure we could have very interesting conversations on this. But I don’t think it’s fair to compare the peaceful belief in a God and the belief that the government must use violence on everyone and forcibly impose one single point of view for ”the greater good”, as so many statists put it. I think that putting every religious person in the ”tyrant supporter” basket is about as bad as putting every business in the ‘’subsidies-fed government leech” basket.
And by the way, don’t get me wrong, you have a great site and a great message, I just wanted to add my grain of salt. Keep it up!
I kinda agree with Jeff that putting the god stuff in the article makes it harder for the religious to accept. By having that in there, you are implicitly trying to make them come to terms with 2 bits of cognitive dissonance. Just repairing one is hard enough.
On another note, I really like the inductive argument that I first heard from the Advocates for Self Government.
—
If one person pointed a gun at your head and said “give me your money”, that would be wrong, wouldn’t it.
How about 2?
3?
4?
10?
OK, what is the largest number where it is still wrong, but where if you add one more person then it becomes OK?
[but then I'm a math guy]
thanks for the tireless effort, Dale.. and Laura.
Jeff: i didn’t get any Dale linking belief in God to violaent statism (though as you said it’s often used as a fig-leaf for it), i got more that he was likening (what he believes to be an illusion) to the illusion that government is our friend.
he may be right or wrong on the God thing and my personal position is that we simply can’t know with the wetware we’re saddled with (again, just an opinion, best i can muster for now), but i think he was just trying to come up with some examples of what he felt were common assumptions / misconceptions that were akin to those we make about government, and how best to address those misconceptions as they pertain to government.
and how best, indeed.. it’s such a bowl of spaghetti, such a runaway train, such a challenge to unravel it / slow it down, and even more a challenge to make the case to a culture that’s been conditioned to tune out the moment an issue becomes complicated.
“I’ve got to admit, that ”God doesn’t exist” comment ticked me off a bit.”
For what it’s worth, ticking you off is not the goal. I respect a person’s right to their beliefs but not necessarily the actual belief. If you feel you’ve come to rational conclusions regarding your theism, you shouldn’t respect my beliefs either. I’m glad you don’t force your religious beliefs on anyone which means you share my respect for rights to some degree, but I’m not going to lie about what I believe in order to not offend. If I decided to debate someone or simply to make a statement about religion, and I have in my comics (click atheism in the tag cloud), I would likely start by pointing out why I think it’s irrational. How can I honestly claim to respect a belief that I perceive as irrational? What sort of insights could be gained by either side in such an evasive discussion? That’s the point of this post, in fact.
I’m totally with you on the fact that the government only gets his ‘authority’ out of violence and the threath of violence.
Would anyone pay any attention to them if they didn’t use violence against people who oppose them?
I also think it’s a lot like the way maffia-esque groups work.
The only difference between the government and the maffia/gangs is that a majority of people (or at least a big part) give their rights away and say they are alowed to do what they do, if most people in the world would oppose the governments and not respect their ‘authority’, they would be seen as nothing more then a criminal organisation trying to get people to obbey them and profit from them.
Well, you can’t prove that God doesn’t exist; you can only argue there’s no evidence for God’s existence (and have to get into a debate with people who believe in God as to what constitutes evidence). But you can easily prove that government doesn’t exist. So the comparison to religion isn’t entirely perfect. A comparison to things that don’t exist, like the tooth fairy, might be more appropriate.
Oh, wait, I can’t prove the tooth fairy doesn’t exist either… uh…
On the NH Underground forum, someone said they don’t understand my hostility toward religion in this post.
How is speaking my mind honestly considered hostility? How do we expect to have any kind of useful dialogue about the world smothered under that sort of political correctness? I think this really gets at the whole point of my post, which at the most basic level was about how we communicate unpopular ideas. Both atheism and anarchy go against beliefs that we’ve been heavily indoctrinated into, which one must realize even if the beliefs we were indoctrinated into turned out to be true. There are some memes that are so pervasive simply by virtue of having been around for so long and hammered into us from all sides from such an early age that it’s difficult to even consider any thoughts outside of that context. In situations such as these, there is no way to convey the unpopular concept comfortably, in a manner that is not going to be unsettling. I believe that is why to even speak of it is irrationally interpreted as hostility.
“Well, you can’t prove that God doesn’t exist; you can only argue there’s no evidence for God’s existence.”
True, but I have made the argument elsewhere that the notion of a supreme being who created the universe is logically inconsistent which is why I consider myself a hard atheist. On unicorns and tooth fairies, I am a soft non-believer, i.e. I don’t see any evidence for their existence and their existence seems extremely unlikely to me. I’ll save that blog entry for later so as not to put too much fuel on this fire of hostility. =\
Just wanted to clear some things up…
First, I think I overreacted a bit on my first post. After all, it was only a small sentence on a post that I agree with – or at least, I agree with 95% of it. And that person on the NH Underground is overreacting even more. You were honest and straight-to-the-point, but certainly not hostile.
I think what ticked me off was that I (maybe mistakenly) understood that, according to you, convincing people of God’s non-existence is part of the ‘’same battle” as is convincing people that we don’t need a government. The Soviet Union was officially atheist and that hasn’t prevented them to be one of the worst dictatorships of recent history, just as murderous and violent as many religious states.
In many libertarian and anarcho-capitalist circles, religion is almost a taboo subject. Many people tend to assume atheism as the ”official” position that any liberty-loving person should have (a bit ironic since Karl Marx once stated that ”religion is the opium of the people”).
As for my personal belief in God, my reasons for it are a mix of rational thinking and personal experiences. Since I don’t have any proof for the latter, I don’t try to convince people, and I don’t expect them to believe me on faith (nor do I want them to, since I am a deeply rational person in every other aspect of my life). That’s why I said that I respect atheism as a logical and valuable point of view, even if I don’t agree with it for personal reasons.
I think the idea is we all accept as universal truth that gov’t has no legitimate authority, yet we don’t all accept as truth that God/some higher power does not exist. Therefore, the tie in the article, though it works to draw people with similar views further in, causes those who disagree with that point to almost question the entire post (which they would have otherwise agreed with. The tooth fairy may have been a more rational connection in the sense that the tooth fairy is universally accepted as a myth, even though its existence could not be disproven.
Cool article
People cling to the idea of government more than santa claus … because they will be hurt or put in jail if they don’t give in
Giggan, I don’t need people to accept the truth of the statement itself to see the analogy. The point of the post is that there is no simple and tactful way to challenge deeply held convictions that we have been thoroughly indoctrinated into and which provide us psychological comfort. Whether you agree that government has no legitimate authority or whether God exists, those are not the points I’m arguing here. The point is both are examples of concepts likely to rattle the foundations of a person’s reality, and that uncomfortable friction is probably unavoidable in the discussion of highly controversial subjects. Proposing that the tooth fairy does not exist is not going to phase anyone and so it would be quite silly to bring it up here. There is no good example that is not going to be controversial. That’s the point!
I’m going to expand on the reactions to this post soon.
Now, how is it that I am an anarcho-capitalist, yet still believe in God. I believe government exists, I can prove it. But I still don’t like it because it is VIOLENCE or the threat thereof. Unlike government, you CHOOSE to have a relationship with God. You have free will, the freedom to associate with those that you choose. Whether or not you like it, you have parents. My Dad lives in Vermont, but I’m in Utah. You believe me when I say that. But my father in heaven lives NEAR Kolob http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolob, and to say that I don’t know exactly where he is, doesn’t mean he doesn’t exist.
Cool, I get the point. Reminds me of a case in point. Two of my friends and I were talking to another friend about religion who was a strict catholic. Those two were agnostics, I’m a christian anarchist of sorts. We explained how if God was all knowing, and we had a set course in life, then we don’t have free will. We explained this in every way possible, but the devout catholic friend absolutely would not accept it, saying even though we can’t change the future, we somehow still have free will. Yeah, beliefs are pretty unshakeable, and unfortunately I’ve only seen time change faith, whether it be in God or gov’t. I certainly didn’t become a voluntaryist overnight myself.
SidewinderAnarchist’s account has been suspended it says
Nicely done Dale. I’ve been making the same argument recently and it gets frustrating.