Radix Fidem Blog

Scripture uses the image of a thick thorny hedge to keep predators out of our lives.
It’s not as if someone can’t get through such a hedge, can’t cut themselves an opening. But doing so will be slow work, and draws attention. Someone who is expecting trouble will catch the predator and react. No one with an ounce of wisdom expects to sail through life with total security and ease. There will always be those who try to steal your fruit. That’s the way life is here on earth, but God offered a way to even things up a bit. It’s not magic; it’s morality. A pattern of moral care raises a barrier to all those threats so we can at least get a chance to respond.
It requires periodic maintenance. Even if you are able to build a stone wall, you still need to check every now and then to see stones aren’t working loose. There will always be parts of your life which remain morally dynamic, never entirely settled. And some parts of your life are too busy for a hedge. You have to put in a gate, allow others to come and go. You’ll never be able to harvest it all by yourself, and somebody has to buy and consume that productivity or there’s no point in having a life to protect.
In keeping with the previous post, we sensibly choose dependencies which we can negotiate. In reality there will always be a constant haggle over details, but there’s no question of shared dependency itself. The problem is leaving the gate untended. Too many people open dependencies without the slightest thought simply because that’s the local custom. We idolize a culture where we can leave the keys in the car, the doors unlocked, etc. We assume a shared community of trust where hedges simply aren’t necessary, because all that security takes up time away from more entertaining pursuits.
That society never existed. It’s a myth. Where you encountered anything which seemed to feel like that, it was artificial, and someone somewhere did indeed mean for you to be deceived. It was thoughtfully designed to feed you false expectations which don’t at all match with reality. You might be somewhat guarded against little problems, but you’ve left a wide gate open for oppression in your life because you’ve allowed them to convince you they would never do the exact thing they plan to do.
Let’s go camping. For a few days we’ll go out in the wilderness and almost everything we need we have to carry with us. Some provision for life is out there, but in a raw form. The provisions you don’t carry will require tools to extract from nature. We leave behind many modern conveniences, and try to experience things at a lower level of existence. Suddenly, just eating and drinking consume a greater portion of our daily routine. Ordinary sanitation is a huge burden, and we quickly decide some of those little habits just don’t matter. The more primitive we make it, the more we become reacquainted with brute survival. It’s good for the soul.
Have you ever found yourself having to work around someone who is helpless? You don’t take them camping if you can help it. Then again, it might teach them to stop being so wretchedly open and vulnerable, demanding so much from the world. These are the people who swallowed the myth, and we want to disabuse them of it, but it seems the lie is so deeply ingrained, nothing can awaken them.
This is what we have come to in Western Civilization. In some ways, there is not a single Western government which has not worked night and day to make people that way. You don’t have to go to war against society, but you darn sure better not stay inside that bubble of false happiness. The mental exercise of going camping serves as a reminder of the ways we have swallowed that mythology, and we have left the gate open for demons to come and go at will, regardless of what form they assume.
If you were one of the victims of that horrible storm which struck places like Ohio, leaving them all without electricity still yet these ten days later, would you be ready to cope with life? Would this make you suddenly unfruitful? Stop and consider just what fruit are you growing in the first place. What really matters? Then consider all the ways people and systems around you keep demanding you open the gates. Sometimes you have to say no, and accept the consequences for being different. You can’t stop everything, but without some conscious choices, you’re just renting your life at someone else’s whim. You may not believe in my God, but I can’t imagine anyone being fruitful if they allow the State to be their god, either consciously or in effect.
Scripture says the Devil uses people. While the people are not our enemies, they are the weapons and tools used against us. Military training teaches you to sleep with your weapon and gas mask. You need whatever counts for armor against the most likely form of attack and at least one means to hit back at evil. In this fallen world, your moral habits are your armor, and your assertion of moral choices is your weapon. Your greatest vulnerability is ill-considered dependence.
Is Facebook the place where you let your hair down? It’s hard to imagine having a bigger gate more wide open to abuse than Facebook. The greatest threat today is data mining. I was permitted to see some early forms of government data gathering when I helped set up the computer routines at that first Military Police station I was assigned. That was quickly replaced with a mandated software system we couldn’t adjust. Whenever some genius has found a way to improve data aggregation and mining, the government simply steals what it cannot buy. If the designer complains, the government treats them as a dangerous criminal. Ever hear of Inslaw and Promis? Look it up. Or Catherine Austin Fitts and her efforts to let communities know what government wanted to keep from them. Bad enough people were required during hiring interviews to allow the HR representative to see their private Facebook stuff, but the government has bought software which allows cyber-snoops to maintain a large number of fake Facebook identities. The Facebook “community” is shot through with spies and represents a near complete loss of any privacy hedge.
The government’s new favorite gate is data mining. Your thoughtless participation leaves you standing naked before the lictor. It’s too late now to go back and hide that stuff, but it’s not too late to begin reducing other ways in which you leave the gates of your soul open for exploitation. At the very least, you can stop updating everything which says too much about you. Don’t be paranoid, but thoughtful. Not in fear of what you don’t know, but using what you know already. The point is not how much they know about you, but how you can’t make it through the day without spilling your guts to someone.
You need the habit of mind to choose consciously and carefully who gets inside the hedge, because God isn’t willing to help you fight the demons if won’t participate.

In terms of what the victim experiences, the only difference between a slave and a prisoner is the label.
Oppression is seldom pointless. The problem is we too easily get caught up in the discussion of who is doing what, instead of paying attention to the effects as a whole. It won’t matter what labels we apply to those who run the system, nor their names. Nor is it really necessary to examine all the various mechanisms of oppression and their plans. All we need to know is they plan to grab more power and wealth in such a way as to make executing their dreams less inconvenient, which typically means reducing resistance from those they intend to oppress.
It’s not a question of how much They want; They want it all, however much that is. And control results in slavery of one form or another. The ultimate issue for you and I is dependence. The one thing They must have at all costs is our dependence. Without that, none of it will work.
If all you really want in the coming days of trouble is to survive, just learn to accept any indignity and embrace your dependence. Let them see your distress and fear. You’ll do as well as anyone else, and better than most. For anyone who feels there is something about living which is worth more than life itself, you’ll need to understand how oppression works at the most fundamental level. It’s not about resistance, per se, so much as maintaining that certain little something they can’t take from you, that something which has to be surrendered.
You could play Superman, if you possess whatever talents and resources are necessary to actually defeat the minions of darkness, but people like that never listen to advice in the first place. I’m not any part of a Superman, and I’ll bet you aren’t either.
We will all surrender something, tolerate some measure of indignity, because it simply doesn’t matter against the thing for which we would die. As humans, we are a social species, and survival on any terms is greatly increased by compromise in favor of the group. The coming oppression has been built so far on convincing you the compromise has already been made, that it would be sheer madness to question the unstated assumptions of the oppressor’s hand inside the glove of false community. “Didn’t you elect us? Let us do our jobs!” Simply observing what They do, regardless of all the propaganda from all directions, we see they intend to claim unlimited obedience.
The path to such obedience is fear and dependence.
I’ll give you a sample. During my training as a Military Policeman, the trainers gave us the official outline of our mission using three “S” words: secure, segregate, and speed. Roughly that translates as subdue them, make them dependent, and move them. You have to understand the utter lack of intellect found in military occupational specialty training schools. Virtually all of the instructors ended up there because, while they aren’t trouble, they can’t be advanced to anything more important, either. A precious few get to choose the class they teach, but most get what’s left, and we as trainees are under the guidance of leadership leftovers, too. Much the same can be said of those who write the instructional materials. So rare is writing talent in those manuals, it’s remarkable when you find one you actually want to read. The whole purpose of military training is to lower the standards until an acceptable majority makes it through and graduates, which typically means dumbing it down and dragging the talented down with it. The young and sharp students always get in trouble until they learn to shut up. I went through the MP School somewhat older, and already with some military experience. I had something of what it took to analyze things on a different level. That three-S business was meant to disguise from the MPs the sort of nastiness our work involved.
I hated it right away, but there was no escape short of what actually happened totally unplanned. I was physically disabled just enough to justify separation. But not before I had plenty of opportunity to see quite how nasty they demanded I be. In handling prisoners, we were trained to keep them disoriented, focused entirely on what we demanded of them moment by moment. We never told them our plans, and did almost nothing by routine from their perspective. We were taught subtle, low level cruelty and arrogance. We never allowed them to get close enough to talk with each other any more than was absolutely necessary as dictated by circumstances. We rewarded any snitching, even when it was apparently dishonest. The most simple courtesies of human existence were called into doubt. We wanted them dependent on us.
There was a lot less work involved if our only contact with prisoners was transportation. I preferred that part of the job a great deal. There were ways to make myself tolerate doing the searches and pat-downs, and I seldom had to deny them standard human needs. I just had to make sure not to chat with them, as it was all strictly business. I did recall having to remind my partners to shut up all too often, but that was simply part of being the senior patrolman. It was as confining on me as it was for the prisoners. I never enjoyed much of it the way my soulless associates did.
A sick truth: We were taught from the start to distrust each other, to be ready to snitch about the slightest variation from instructions. We were always ourselves dependent and fearful of our superiors, of losing what little advantage of position we had.
Even now, right this moment, your freedom is already limited. There is the appearance of some routine liberty, but the moment you overstep the boundaries, you’ll experience the other side of what I just described. You’ll be handled by thugs who have little depth of understanding, just following orders, and very little patience with anything. Even though police work is increasingly less risky, they will insist to themselves everything is a threat, and it must be met with force. For some of the slightest variations from their subjective expectations in any context, you’ll be treated worse than you can imagine, until you see it up close. Now remind yourself the things which they’ll let pass will shrink daily, and the things which can get you in trouble will increase at the same rate.
Joking and clowning your way through it will often infuriate them, and you should expect handling to get rougher. They are taught to expect resistance, anger, incredulity, and even joking. They are taught to induce terror to get past resistance. The one thing that will make them most uncomfortable is a complete, almost robotic aplomb. Yes, most of them can spot the sort of involuntary cues our bodies give off when we are afraid, but when those are completely missing, it is they who become disoriented. Despite appearances, it is you who are in control.
You don’t have to be a victim.
For Christians, the lesson should be obvious. When we fear only God, and care for nothing in the world so much we tremble at its loss, we make Him look glorious. Nothing else matters.