Might makes right

I have enjoyed Eastern European literature translated to English ever since I picked up The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem in 1995, which led eventually to Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov. This book is beautiful, well written with some of the best descriptions of snow and cold before or since Jack London. It is also a highly charged political allegory. I am a person who finds a book by whatever means, and if I enjoy it, I do research on the author, find all of their other works, and reads them as well.

Mikhail Bulgakov wrote many books, but they were summarily destroyed by the Supreme Soviet, or so they thought. Due to the inefficiencies of an overarching, insidious socialist government, copies were smuggled to the West, translations were made, and copies distributed for sale to interested readers throughout the wider world.

Even as I read the term Supreme Soviet I am prone to think of a quaint, old-timey, failed government system that really has no relevance in our world today. I have read a lot of Soviet Era Russian history, and I still fall prey to this tendency. Read your news feeds, people, the same techniques used in that time and place are back with a new name, and Power Point presentation.

Last year I read The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr I. Solzhenisyn, a 2064 page tome detailing the entire process from being arrested through release under the Soviet system. Under the rule of that government, there were tens of millions of people convicted under Article 59 of the Soviet Criminal Code, put in trains to the Gulag, and literally worked to death.

This is neither quaint, nor irrelevant today. The code is structured in 10 sections, each of which carried the death penalty, and were so broadly written that it is said that one could not wake up and cross the street without being subject to breaking the law under one of the articles. As soon as you make everyone criminals, you then have the freedom to choose how and when you want to arrest whom you would like. Living under a system like that would have the result of making you want to keep your mouth shut and staying out of the way of the police.

An overly vague law is by this reasoning far more offensive to freedom than an overly specific one. If a law is made to prevent a specific act, then all one must do to comply is to avoid perpetrating that act. However if the law forbids “Crimes against the Administrative Order” and does not specify those crimes, then watch out, you are at the sole whim of the person interpreting that law, and his mood that day.

In the same way, if you are served with a restraining order that enjoins you from “Disturbing the peace of the petitioner” with the penalty to be determined by the judge for contempt of court, then you must be careful not to call anyone who knows the petitioner, send a text message, write a note, clear your throat, or speak out of turn because the peace of said petitioner is a tenuous thing, and anything you do may disturb it, with life-altering consequence.

This is the most aggressive action that someone may take against another, and all semantics aside, will have the effect of bringing even the mightiest to their knees.

Well, I refuse to any longer live on my knees. I will live peacefully, behaving in a way that I believe to be right, my actions only those that I am willing to go to jail over. I will not subjugate myself to the whims of any other, and adhere solely to the strictures of my heart.

This is my creed.

Humans are not static creatures. We are driven, generation by generation, to new things. It is difficult to stop the march of human progress, but it can be done. Consider what was happening before Europeans came to North America. There were dictators of all sorts the world around. Kings, Czars, Barons, Kaisers, Sultans; Grand Poobahs of all description with faithful, forceful inner circles were enlisted to realize the human desire of the monarch.

These systems used a portion of their resources to quell the desire for change among the people, and a portion to send forth underlings to change the world to suit the leader. Explorers were allowed to pursue their own initiative only so long as the ends were seen to benefit the crown, or sash, or special pants. The coffers of the kingdom were held sacrosanct and money did not exist outside the control of the governing force. A lot of work to prevent the inborn desire for individual humans to find their individual bliss.

How long have humans been around? History goes back a long time in human terms, and not really at all in terms of geological time frame. It does not matter for the sake of argument. Humans developed to a certain point in a certain amount of time, then at another point something changed, and there were further developments.

At the point when America began to be called by that name humans had developed a mastery of fire, a rudimentary understanding of chemistry, and the ability to harness wind and water to mill grain. The most advanced systems of government were still much the same as from the beginnings of written history

Athens in days of yore is used as an example of democracy in action and, to those who do not care to think, justice.

Without dragging in too much detail, let’s consider a few simple facts:

1. Athens’s system of government did not survive into the modern era, and could not prosper on a scale larger than that of the city-state.
2. Athens’s system of government was not a well thought out, enlightened view of humanity with an eye on human potential, it was a direct reaction to tyranny; in fact it was a reaction to the man for whom the word tyrant was coined. Peisistratos was an Athenian general who broke the hold of the Aristocracy and ruled over the city with a single voice guiding. Upon his death one of his sons was assassinated, the other fled to exile, and thus his dynastic rule was ended. Only after that, did Democracy take hold.
3. This reaction to tyranny was not a selection of the best and brightest from among the people. Citizens were assigned to ten wholly invented groups, or demes. From these, 50 were chosen by drawing to represent the deme. So, rather than a concentration, it was a randomization of authority.
4. People considered citizens were adult males. Not women, not slaves. Only this minority of the population was allowed to make policy.

This was the single example of a system of government that was not the realization of a single individual’s will, it lasted 170 years, and reflected almost no forward progress of humankind in the grand scheme of things.

At the point that the founders of this nation were taken with the idea of leadership of, for, and by the people a great change occurred. In the 300 years since the decision to loose the human innovating spirit on the world there has been progress beyond the previous history of man. There were not suddenly new elements or physical laws, there were no greater resources here than in any other corner of the world, there was not a powerful leader that forced people to do as they were told.

The single defining characteristic that allowed for the growth of mankind was the free market of ideas and labors. Self interest, self-realization, thought unlimited by quest of permission. These denote the most powerful constructive forces on the Earth.

Once the great and powerful engine of human self-preservation is put into motion, there is literally nothing that cannot be done, given enough time, as well as the needed resources and/or popular support.

Any movement toward consolidation of power is a step away from the real and absolute freedom of each individual. Each among us must be free to move in circles of our choosing, paths to our own happiness by way of skills we have chosen to develop of our own volition, even if it leads to failures and even personal catastrophe, because out of this miasma of fiasco shines the bright light of progress. Each of us builds on the knowledge of our fellows, if they fail, they have shown us a way not to do a thing, if they succeed, that is one less thing that we will have to invent to move the ball even further down the field.

The success of others does not limit our possibility for gain, only our lack of imagination or an overweening government can do that, thus is the lesson of history, all of history, throughout the ages, not just since the 70’s.

Not all of us are meant to succeed, some of us are not even meant to try, but we should all be given that choice to make for ourselves. We cannot be forced into molds, or training camps, we cannot be forced into careers that offer us no solace, because that takes from us the one force that can bring about our success: freedom of choice.

There is no guarantee of outcome, good or bad, and there should not be. If we admit that all humans have a different potential for success, which we must, but we want everyone to achieve to the same level, then everyone MUST be treated differently. All of us will be held back to the least among us, because there is nothing that can be taught, or fed or pushed on an individual that will improve their chances to win at life.

The best equal outcome that can occur is uniform misery; there is no hope for better in terms of ‘equal’.

Some are meant to lead, some are meant to follow, some are meant to ignore the whole ugly parade and hole themselves up to sniff glue, but a fully realized society cannot function without every single one of those individuals making the decision to be what they will, based on the information they have at their disposal. The system breaks down without the influx of new and vibrant ideas, often from mercurial minds first softened by years of drug use or mountain biking.

Every single one of us plays an important role in the righteous further development of human society. No agency, outside of ourselves, can tell what is needed for our own journey, or the success of our families and friends.

Any government that stands between freedom to fail and man is a throwback and any individual that does not exert themselves in the realization of their own kind of greatness pushes with all of their strength against the whole of history toward defeat and dismay.

Humans are not static creatures. We move. We travel in the direction of further innovation and enlightenment or backward, away from these things, and it is our choices as individuals that determine which way we go.

I am only sure about what I feel. Sometimes there seems to be a correlation with the world at large, but I have recently given up looking for it.

I work very hard, murderously hard, for goals new and old. All of that sweat and discomfort will never seem wasted if I know there are good people in the world. Living and bringing life, teaching and learning, arrow and target, fish-stick and flounder.

I know there are lots of people that feel the same way, they are not heard, because they are shy or embarrassed. I, for one, am tired of lying back and resting on precedent to avoid the fall.

We are shuddering to a halt and I am tired of not celebrating the gifts that are all around us for the taking if we can manage to break the bonds of fealty to a system that has damned us.

No longer will I let things go by as they have; unadored, unreverered, unloved, untouched, unexplored, unplumbed, or lonely.

It is not labor to share love, it is relief. It is in us and when we can refuse the unnatural urge to be quiet, then we will get on with the productive work of living.

This I pledge to myself and the people of earth