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March 24, 2017
for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue."
Antisthenes
It's tantamount to cognitive dissonance:
But, and here's the rub,
we are not fish, and if we want to continue to be a progressively
evolving species on this planet, we are going to have to
think outside the box.
If we cannot do this, then we cowardly give in to indifference and ignorance, and we will be ruled by those who know how to gain power over indifference and ignorance.
As Plato pointed out,
In order to recondition our statist conditioning, we're going to have to imagine a world without masters and rulers. No mastery except for self-mastery; no rulers except for self-rule.
This seems counterintuitive to our statist conditioning, but it's not.
We simply need to be a little more imaginative about the ways in which we approach the ideas of leadership and rules. Leadership does not imply the need for masters, and rules do not imply the need for a ruler.
We simply need a fresh perspective, preferably one that can see past statist driven propaganda.
As Plotinus said,
No Masters Does NOT Mean No Leaders
A good leader does not seek mastery over others but mastery over the self. It is through self-mastery that a leader leads by example.
No masters means no seeking mastery over others (tyranny), and no bequeathing mastery over oneself to others (slavery). It does not mean no leadership.
Rather, no masters implies leadership through self-mastery, without the master-slave dynamic muddying up the waters of liberty.
The problem with growing up thinking inside the statist box is that we are brain washed into thinking that the mastery of the state, with its hierarchical power constructs and vertical oligarchy, is leadership.
We are conditioned to think that our obedience to the system (house slavery) is the price we pay to not be kicked out of the nation (house).
No masters means freedom. Not the pseudo-freedom espoused by the state, but real freedom.
As Epictetus said,
A good leader knows when to follow (obey) as well as when not to follow (disobey).
A true leader will not blindly kowtow to the state, but wisely question it, knowing that the state is mostly made up of individuals who tend to seek mastery over others rather than self-mastery.
It's because of this tendency that most states dissolve into authoritarian regimes that rule by force (fear and violence) rather than leadership (honor and prestige).
Lest we give into the inherent insanity of the state, we must remain self-empowered individuals seeking self-mastery through sound leadership rather than self-inured individuals blindly following the mastery of the system that keeps the state entrenched.
No Rulers Does NOT Mean No Rules
As it stands, we are a nation within which the majority of us do not engage in politics.
Is it any wonder we are governed by orange-faced bigots and dumb and dumber bipartisanship? Ad hominem aside, the powers that be only have power when we the people agree that they have power.
The problem is that the majority of the people are not proactively engaged in politics and tend to be ignorant to the ways in which power works.
This bodes well for those in power, for the entrenched masters and rulers, but not so well for those seeking self-mastery, self-rule, and freedom and justice for all.
As Lord Byron once said,
Lest we allow ourselves to become bigots, fools, and slaves, we must be proactively engaged with our own freedom and aware of how the powers that be are working to keep us that way.
"No masters, no rulers" is an extremely poignant phrase that keeps us circumspect and vigilant regarding our own freedom and liberty.
But even this phrase rarely gets through to the masses, because the masses are thinking and reasoning within a preconditioned statist box.
So the typical statist's knee jerk reaction to "no rulers" is…
Well, of course we need rules, but who says we need rulers?
And the statist says,
Easy! We will.
We the people, we the free, we the self-governed, we the self-empowered. We who choose to self-rule and who seek self-mastery without a tyrannical state blocking our freedom using outdated, fallible, man-made laws that don't agree with cosmic law, common sense, logic and reasoning, and the non-aggression principal.
There will always be rules. Our basic survival depends upon following certain cosmic rules.
The problem is most rules delivered by the state usually violate cosmic law. And so the typical naïve statist, unaware of how cosmic laws work, unaware of how power works, blindly follow the rules of the state without realizing that they are violating laws way more important than petty state laws.
This is because of fear-conditioning. Statists are conditioned through fear to follow state driven laws, and this fear acts like eye-guards to laws that really matter. But the fear is very real.
The question is, what are we going to do about it?
As Derrick Jensen said,
At the end of the day, we all have a statist box that we must begin thinking outside of if we wish to progressively evolve as a species.
"No masters, no rulers" is a useful phrase that we can use as a tool to leverage imagination and think outside the statist box.
The way forward is to become individuals who are responsible with their own power:
Let the Goliath state rant and rave all it wants with its petty laws and outdated reasoning. We are David...!
We alone are responsible for our own actions, because we are free, and we realize that anyone who says otherwise is a conditioned statist who isn't ready to be free.
Meanwhile, the statist box they so desperately need to think outside of, lies hidden in the shadows of propaganda just waiting for them to gain the courage it takes to see past the smoke and mirrors.
Like Brandon Stanton said,
The scary part is, they don't even know to be afraid...
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