Monday 7 July 2008

Basic Lies At The Heart of The System- We're Not Governed By Consent



The system works basically, by covering over falsehoods.

It works by trying to hide the logically indefensible. There are certain blatantly obvious facts that it would rather you didn't sit down and think about. That's why they put Coronation Street on the TV. So after your hard day at work, you won't sit there mulling over the way your world is structured.

And actually ask questions like 'On who's authority?'

But ultimately, the system creates little logical questions that confuse us. At heart we can see that the fact the system raises the question, shows there is something wrong with the things we take for granted.

And the classic case is 'Should western leaders, apologise for the slave trade?'

Most people think that there is something bizarre about the idea.
Should we the living apologise for the actions of the dead?

And who are we apologising too? Because the vast majority of the descendants of slaves carry the blood of slave owners in them too.

So most people scoff at the concept as a ludicrous example of political correctness gone mad.
But is it mad?

Yes, in a sense it is, the living apologising for the actions of the dead.

But logical.
Logical if you're going to in the next breath say 'We must keep immigrants out. This land is our birthright.'
Our birthright? See, now it suits us. Now it suits us to claim rights we acquired due to the actions of the dead.

And we live in a world where the distribution of power, authority and control is controlled by the mandate of the dead.

Much of the labour and the intelligence that has gone into creating the infrastructure that feeds, houses, clothes and transports us, was provided by the dead. And they appointed their heirs. But should we consider the wishes of the dead binding on the living?

The main flaw we'd say that Monarchy has, is simple. Whilst the founder of a kingdom is usually a man of talent, his successors may not be. We reject the idea of having the heads of our executives being hereditary figures. We also reject the idea of any ruler having the sole say on his successor.

And yet governance over a large part of the infrastructural environment of this world is decided this way. The existing cliques who rule over any corporation do so by being co-opted into the clique by those already in it. They are self-selecting elites, who's ultimate authority to govern over that part of the world's infrastructure, is a mandate from dead people.

Not us, the living.

Now they tell us that we kind have a say, consumer power, the invisible hand of the market.
Not really, we need this stuff to live our lives. The fact is, we have no control over any of the decisions made relating to say, the extraction and refining of oil.

Our so-called 'elected' governments can try regulate the companies concerned, but that's as far is it goes. The actual executive decisions made governing such an important part of the human infrastructure, are made by people who derive their authority from a kind of apostolic succession proceeding back to people who have probably fertilised full grown trees by now.

So the idea of government by consent is kind of a lie. These governments we think we elect, don't actually control much of the infrastructure.

Ah but, they can pass laws. They have the power to lock up even the masters of these corporations.
Er- Enron? Worldcom? These corporations have to screw up bigstyle and even then, it's just a token punishment to hide the fact these guys run the show.

Because basically, no party is ever going to win an election in the civilised world, unless it has the tacit support of these corporations. It's not happening.

Where do you get most of your information from, in the run up to an election? From the Media. Who funds the Media? The people who make the adverts.

All Media has an interest in pushing whatever message its sponsors want you to hear.
It's quite clear that the opinion of these interests now, is it's time to let the Tories in, they think Brown is a liability. But they trusted Blair. They made us trust him, because he did what they wanted. As in, not very much, but he looked caring and sincere and at the end of the day, could be trusted to create an economy based on a bubble that ultimately would make the banks richer and everyone else in debt up to their eyeballs.



And these corporations can throw their rattle out of the pram and pretty much BULLY us to vote the way they want. Because we don't have control over them.

They can- and do- say 'If X party wins the election, we'll close down all our plants in the UK, shedding 200,000 jobs. And move production to Poland.'

And we just sit there and think that's OK. In fact the supporters of Y party will trumpet this fact as a fact in their favour.

Yet what it actually is, is blackmailing at LEAST 200,000 people.

And so much of the actual election campaign, is pretty much bribery. When we elect one or other of these teams to govern, what we're actually electing them to do, is negotiate with our REAL paymasters. Ones we have no power to appoint. The ones who actually inherited the earth. And inherit is the term. You and I are now communicating on one of the few aspects of global infrastructure largely created by the living.
But will their efforts give them right to appoint their successors till the end of time?
Why do we all, on our birth, not equally inherit a share in the labours of those who went before?

The fact is, the teams have to keep the corporations happy, first and foremost. If they keep the corporations happy, the corporations keep us happy, we vote for who the corporations tell us to, they stay in office as a result.

That's the pretence of government by consent.

And it's a pretence, because they won't allow us to actually make the decisions. We're too stupid to do that, apparently. We need to choose representatives for that. We abdicate our rights to legislate to others, and they condition us to think that you have to vote for a person wearing a coloured rosette. A 'politician'. If they don't wear a coloured rosette, we shouldn't trust them with our votes.

And how much of what they discuss actually affects us? Very little. They wonder why people are so apathetic towards politics. The reason is simple. Not much of it any longer achieves very much. Unless it comes to places we can send our armed forces to prove in some bizarre kind of way, that creation of warzones is somehow a validation of the benefits of the western way of life.

INGSOC is real. You are ruled by a shadowy elite, the members of which are known to you only through reading the second section of the Daily Telegraph, or the equivalent. The inheritors. Members of the co-opted elite. These people call the shots. It's not a conspiracy, it's just the way it is. They inherited their authority, not always in the sense they were born to it, but they inherited it because they were given it from above, the powers that be always having the right to decide who comes next.

And the whole thing is maintained by making sure nobody ever asks the obvious question; What does OWN mean? What does POSSESS mean?

And it means 'Having the legitimate authority to make decisions governing'.

In other words, I own this PC. What that means is, I get to decide who uses it and how.
Now in the case of this PC, I don't think there's much of an issue to 'Having the legitmate authority to make decisions governing'.

But normally, when we see a phrase such as 'Has the legitmate authority to make decisions governing', we should be asking 'Is that authority valid?' 'By who's mandate?'

In the case of so much of our world, that mandate isn't ours, it isn't the mandate of the living. It's apostolic succession leading back to the long dead.

Most of the decisions made in our world are made by people who do not have a legitimate authority to make such decisions. The basis for their mandate to do so rests in a mode of doing things that most of us, if we thought about it, would recognise as invalid.

Owning, means having legitimate authority to make decisions regarding. The objects we acquire, our furniture, the things we class as private possessions, of course, by very nature, we acquire the right to have legitimate authority over. We have the right to hand them on.

But the fabric of the world the species has created? The infrastructure that is necessary for our basic survival? How can we think we're governed by our consent if we cannot control how decisions affecting this are made?

How can we think we are free when we have no power to decide who is responsible for deciding how to feed us, clothe us, house us, transport us?



If we have no control over these things, we have no control over ourselves.
If we sit here accepting the fact that these things can be 'owned' by self appointed cliques, we are accepting that WE can be 'owned' by self appointed cliques.

There is nothing democratic about how the west is governed. Our governments are little more than paid arbitrators between our real rulers and us.

And we didn't choose our real rulers.
Their mandate doesn't come from the living, but the dead.

We are NOT governed by our consent.
We are governed by our submission.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting post and while I don't agree with all of it I do agree with much of it.

Particularly your closing two lines.

Anonymous said...

I maybe missing the point here but if we all done as we wished and not followed some rules, imagine what chaos there would be in the world.

Anonymous said...

Crushed, I think I get some of what you mean. But= you seem to have a problem with the idea of inheritance.

The idea that we should be able to dispose of our stuff as we see fit. How about when we are still alive?

Do you have a problem with me selling stuff I own, or just giving it away? and If I died would that suddenly invalidate it?

How about my own labour. Do you want a say in what I can do with that… Are you heading back to the subject of slavery by a roundabout route?

Anonymous said...

Hey Crushed, I understand completely, pulling back a corner of the curtain is subject, of course, to the perspective of witnesses, so don't be discouraged that all is not immediately perceived.

The problem with hereditary power (which is what it is) is that given time, a caste system develops, and all the insidious discriminatory practices that accompany such systems.

The point is not to do as we wished, but rather to have a choice--a voice--in the decisions that affect our lives. When we choose to ignore our natural rights and let others make decisions for us, they typically make decisions in their best interest, that is the nature of power.

We need to wake up and realize that our lives have purpose and they shouldn't be traded so someone else can buy a bigger trinket.

Anonymous said...

Pimpernel- Always know when to close. :)

Nunyaa- Rules, yes, but they have to be valid ones.
We are encouraged to follow rules that have as much validity as the divine right of kings.

The basic theory at work here, can be found in Rousseau's theory of the social contract.

It is possible to have a social contract without aritrary rights to rule over portions of the infrastructure.

Moggs- OK, I'd distinguigh between what we'd define as PERSONAL possessions and what are clearly not.
Your sofa, yes. Warwickshire, no.

As for Labour, what i'm prposing is that instead of SELLING your labour- as you now do- you getan equal portion of the yields of that labour.

Rather than someone else make a profit out of you.

Helen- Couldn't have put it better.
And the point about a caste, is that has the arbitrary right to self select entry.
As is the case now.

Our natural rights ARE being ignored, and those who control the infrastructure DO do it for their benefit- hence boom and bust.

They charge us to live in their world, basically.

Anonymous said...

Crushed, But what about if I buy, say a farm. Is that still small enough for me to get to keep it? Clearly by your logic there comes a plot size where your rules will not allow it. Clearly a plot of 701976 acres (Warwickshire) is beyond that point, at least in the UK. Are your rules different for say Australian sheep farmers?

As for selling my labour. That is governed by a contract, a formalised agreement between me and whoever I am working for. I can agree to it or not.

The value of that Labour, or of anything at all depends on what someone is willing to pay for it. How much they want it. It doesn’t matter how much it actually cost to make a betamax video recorder, I would not be willing to pay you anything for it. The same goes for a camel. Maybe a sub Saharan nomad would snap one up, but to me it would just be a nuisance, I would require you to pay me to take it off your hands.

If 1,000,000 people can do the same it is less scarce than if only 25 can do it.

I do resent that the state can arbitrarily prevent me from doing some jobs, or prescribes what/how. I also object to the sheer total percentage that it takes in one for or another, I don’t consider what the state provides in exchange for the money they take to be a fair exchange.

Anonymous said...

Moggs- Not at all. I say that land, should not be owned, period.

It goes back to the idea of 'Nrgative Communism', which actually, is what Marx advocated, and which is a thousand miles removed from state communism and about six hundred from Capitalism.

What it means is that instrad of there being a state which owns everything, NOTHING is 'owned', it is all governed by a democratic process.
Buildings, land, infrastructure, not owned, used.

Something you personally created, by your own efforts YOU would be responsible for.

Its about the whthering away of an apparatus of state.

So you can either call it negative communism, or if you like, positive anarcy.

But what actually means, is a true democracy. A democracy grown up enough to be its own Executive, Legislature and Judiciary.