EH&D 7

(This is a serialization of the draft for my book, Expectations, Hopes and Dreams.)

False Activism

There is a sense in which all activism is inherently false. That’s because the concept of democracy is one of the most harmful mythologies of all. It presumes objectivity is possible, that humans can be more or less rational, and that systems of organization can restrict human venality. Those are just the most obvious problems with it.

As noted previously, you cannot separate the person from the position. Human government is people wielding power over others. Volition is required; it is the nature of the thing itself. It requires volition for one to exercise authority and volition to accept authority. There are inducements to that volition, but in the end, if people consciously refused to obey, there would be no government. There are several factors in favor of those who assume power, not least being our social nature, too often expressed as herd instinct.

Herd instinct can be enhanced by the fear of death. Short of actual physical expiry, most people dislike physical discomfort, boredom and shame. Those three are the backside of the three things that motivate virtually all human behavior: fleshly satisfactions, entertainment and a sense of significance. These three can be combined in all sorts of ways, but you can boil down almost all human aspirations to variations on those three. They are our primary appetites and our primary weaknesses. Anyone seeking to rule us has to enter through these gateways, and it becomes much easier when we tend to adapt to the human context, particularly in terms of how we can be influenced.

We are wired to seek only enough power to satisfy those three basic appetites, though that seeking is highly conditioned by the context. We don’t normally long for something that we haven’t experienced or can’t imagine. While power itself may feed our sense of significance and enable entertainment and creature comforts, it’s a lot of work in reality and can be quite frustrating to those who aren’t suffering serious delusions. It doesn’t take too much valid human experience to teach us that holding authority is a lot more work than we really want, so we wisely avoid it.

This, of course, assumes we are born into a society that answers to our genuine human condition. We are wired to live in a tribal society. Whatever flaws there might be with that, everything else is far worse. The very concept of the modern secular state requires a vast layer of delusion in which the population as a whole is drowned. Everything in our human nature fights it except the delusional power of reason. Feed the mind enough bullshit and your reason can be led to all sorts of delusions. Thus, if you convince everyone that this universe and our life in it is all we have, fear becomes a ubiquitous factor in all reasoning. It makes us ripe for manipulation through the three basic appetites.

This is what lies behind the power of the secular state and all its abuses. It causes us to imagine we can and must design a particular form of government based on the pretense of democratic assumptions. We quickly discover that democratic power must of necessity be condensed into few hands or nothing will ever move. The degree and pace of movement varies widely with all sorts of factors, but introduce any sense of emergency and everyone surrenders far more authority than could possibly do them good. As always, a certain handful of people will recognize, either instinctively or consciously, that this is a rich opportunity to reduce their liabilities while assuming vast powers. If the folks in power are selected totally at random, you will eventually have a reasonable selection of decent folks who would rather not actually rule. Only a few are likely to be ogres. Any other system of selection guarantees a predominance of those who lust for genuine godlike dominance.

Activism arises from the delusion that the victims of this dominance can do something to fix the situation. Never once will you see them suggesting the sort of change radical enough to restore our natural tribal social structure; that’s excluded before the brain cells even start signaling each other. Rather, all activism presumes we must remain within the delusion that anything is better than tribal lifestyle, and that we are stuck in this universe with no hope of anything better elsewhere.

While we are at it: If you want to suggest that any part of Western Christianity holds a genuine conviction in favor of the afterlife, compare their stated belief against their actions. The entire organization and programming of activity assumes this realm of existence is far more than a mere shadowy prison. Instead, Western Christianity acts like things in this world can be truly critical and worthy of vast expenditure of time and resources for its own sake. Practitioners seem convinced it is absolutely necessary to adjust and perfect this world.

At any rate, activism requires a religious ardor of that sort. This is no different from any government demanding respect as semi-divine at least. Activists are offering a de facto alternative government, a form of rebellion seeking to change or replace the current government. They offer a narrative that includes the delusion that we can push back and make the folks in government act differently, maybe even force them to think differently.

That delusion is by far the most pernicious and pervasive chain on humanity today. While there are many good and righteous reasons for choices that may resemble activism, what spoils it is the assumption of effectiveness and lack of broad cynicism. Don’t operate with the goal of changing the world, but of changing yourself only. Do what’s right in any give context because it is just, not because it seems effective. Instead, prepare for things to only get worse until the hand of God changes them in His way. Don’t presume on His divine agenda, as if it could possibly be understood on our level. He has warned repeatedly that this world is nasty and we should get used to it.

We are now at the point in the natural cycle of aggregate human behavior that most of the people in government are frankly hostile to any input from those they govern. We could go on at length describing the details of social psychology with all the whys and wherefores, but the fact remains that current governments in this world are dominated by an entirely different kind of people than the rest of us, a virtual alien race. For the most part, they pretend to be like us, and would love for us to believe they care. But if they cared, they would not operate as if keeping power is worth your blood. The same can be said for those at the top of private corporations. In our world, power and money inevitably pervert human nature because of how our mythology works.

So even if activism seems to have some effect, it will ever only be short lived. Some governments are more open about crushing dissent; others prefer to play head games. Some are sophisticated enough to expend considerable resources steering us in whatever direction they can by all sorts of manipulation. In many cases, they will steer their cattle in multiple conflicting directions just to keep them away from any possible effectiveness in taking away the advantages that the powerful hold.

That includes hijacking anything and everything, to include decent people who manage to find a way into the halls of power. If you can’t be hijacked, you cannot stay. The means and methods vary, but the results are the same. Jesus faced the same crap and knew better than to allow the rabble to push Him into that stupid game. He was not an activist and clearly avoided trying to fix this world. Instead, He pointed out how to exit this world, then provided a startling example of how to do it. Things have gotten considerably uglier since then.

Human politics is a delusion; activism is simply a standard feature of that delusion.