the sword and the lie

An essential characteristic of man is that he acts. Action is purposeful behavior, that is the behavior of rationally utilizing means for an ends. We call means that have material embodiment “technology.” We call means that do not have material embodiment “techniques”. Mankind has always been a rational animal, therefore he has always used technology and/or techniques.

When a bee constructs a beehive, the method of construction is not a technique. Nor is the beehive itself technology. This is because the bee itself does not “act”, strictly speaking. It exhibits behavior, but the “purpose” in the behavior is that of its genes, and not of its mind. Only mental purpose (rationality) makes a behavior an action. Most animal behavior is irrational.

Much human behavior is irrational too. When a human unthinkingly blinks, he does not “act”. The behavior has purpose (to clear out particles), but the purpose is that of his genes, not of his mind. Moderns tend to call what we consider ill-decided action “irrational”. For example, we often would call rain dances irrational. This is not so. Rain dances (as strange as it is to say) are rational. They are behavior with mental purpose. The rain dancer is utilizing means (the dance) for an end (rain). Of course it erroneous rationality, but it is rationality nonetheless.

Rational animals are always choosing between means to their various ends: “Do I fight, or do I run?”. The means of fighting and and the means of running are themselves mostly instinctual. But the choice between the two is rational. Rational animals are often choosing between means/techniques which they already know. But some rational animals can also invent new means/techniques.

For example, chimpanzees are known to strip branches of their leaves, and lower them into logs to harvest termites. They do not instinctively know how to do this. Therefore, some chimpanzee long ago must have figured it out, and other chimpanzees learned from observing him. That means the behavior is mentally purposive, and the stripping of the leaves qualifies as technique, and the stripped stick itself qualifies as technology.

While the non-rational behavior of instinct is passed on through heredity, technique is passed on through learning. Though it may dismay educationalists to hear this, learning doesn’t necessitate teaching. It only necessitates observation and reason. The learning chimpanzee sees (observation) the inventive chimpanzee utilize his new technique, and through his rationality becomes aware that the new technique could be a means to his end of eating termites.

Thus throughout the history of rationality in animals, technique was passed from one individual to another, and from one generation to the next, solely through observation until the development of spoken language. Spoken language enables the human animal to express his own ratiocinations to other humans using only sounds. This widened the range of techniques which could be passed on. Through speech, humans could pass on techniques such as “how to get a wife”, which they couldn’t pass on through observation. Through speech, techniques could be passed across great distances, especially in the memorable form of song (as in the agricultural poetry of Hesiod).

The development of the written language widened the possibilities yet further for the propagation of techniques. It made the verbal transmission of techniques more exact and less prone to loss. Writing also enabled people to invent techniques which required the use of arithmetic and geometry. In ancient Phoenicia, merchants used written arithmetic to improve their business practices. In ancient Mesopotamia, priest-bureaucrats used written algebra to improve their grain management techniques. And in ancient Egypt, priest-bureaucrats used written geometry to improve their land-surveying techniques.

Technique is a sub-class of means, and it is also a sub-class of knowledge. All new knowledge is attained in one of the following ways:

1. Instinct: Instinctive knowledge is knowledge that arises within the mind without any observation or ratiocination.
2. Authority: Belief in accounts told by other humans
3. Observation or Empirical Knowledge: Belief in sensory impressions
4. Induction: Finding patterns in facts and anticipating that that pattern will continue
5. Deduction: Finding necessary implications of certain facts

Techniques, by definition, are not instinctive (see above). Techniques also cannot be considered solely observational knowledge. Thinking, “That chimpanzee is getting termites with that stick” is observational knowledge. But thinking, “Perhaps I could get termites with a similar stick as well” is induction. Thinking, “When I planted seed this time last year I got a huge harvest” is observational knowledge. Thinking, “Perhaps if I do so again, I will get another big harvest” is induction.

All professions have a tendency toward self-importance. So it should be no surprise that historians have a distinct bias towards eras in which their own forerunners (ancient chroniclers and historians) were existent and employed. Thus, societies without chroniclers are termed “dark ages”. Of course these ages are dark, as in “obscure”, since we necessarily know little about them. But too often, this “darkness” is also given a decidedly judgmental connotation. To many historians, an absence of their own kind must signal social despair and economic desolation. However great the recent dividends of literacy, however, for most of history, literacy has actually been largely a tool for elite domination. It was the literate classes who lorded it over the non-literate classes, using the written language as a class barrier and a tool for greater efficiency in their criminal statecraft.

Another bias of historians is one which they share with all “academics”: one favoring the non-practical studies over the practical. Thus, mankind only really achieved “glory” in the world of thought when they began to contemplate the stars as did the ancient Babylonians or tried to discover laws of nature as did the ancient Greeks. Never mind that the Babylonian priest monitoring constellations did so fed by grain forcefully extracted from a hard-laboring serf. And never mind that the fruits of the astronomer’s labor never resulted in any actual increased prosperity for ancient man. The careful thinking and experimentation of the working man who improved his tools and techniques, thereby increasing his prosperity, is the realm of “science” which did, by far, the most good for mankind; i.e. the woman who figured out a better way of stiching a grain pouch, or the man who judged, based on profit-loss calculations, what was the best price for his wares.

According to these biases, the oppressive regimes of Chinese emperors are glorified because glorious philosophers staffed their mandarinates. The economic stagnation of the Roman Empire is seen as a glorious time of order when the literate classes held their rightful place at the top of the heap. And the amazing industrial revolution of the medieval era which resulted in a tremendous increase in the standard of living, is falsely seen as a dark time of superstition and squalor, since the only deep thinkers of the age (priests and monks) were humiliatingly cloistered.

The cogitations of the learned classes throughout history have been largely vain or pernicious. It is the hard-thinking of the common man trying to improve things for himself and his family (which, in aggregate ends up improving things for everybody) that should be honored.

The state was likely born out of a cult. The former would not have been supportable with the latter. Further, it is unlikely that the latter would last long without evolving into the former. Thus it is reasonable to believe that both would have originated in the same place. In my post “Between the rivers, before the state“, I argued that archaeology shows that mankind in the near east lived in a prosperous, agricultural, anarchic society, until a new culture, dominated by priest-kings, arose and spread from the south. Where did this “Ubaid” culture start and how? It seems likely that that culture, and the very ideas of cult and state first arose in Eridu. My evidence for this claim is as follows.

Evidence from Literature
The “Eridu Genesis”, found in a tablet dating from the 18th century BC, calls Eridu “firstling of the cities”. And the Sumerian king list states:

After the kingship descended from heaven, the kingship was in Eridug. In Eridug, Alulim became king

It is uncontroversial that the first “city-states” arose in Sumer. And here we find a Sumerian text pointing to Eridu as the first Sumerian city-state. And here, in the words “kingship descended from heaven” we have an indication of false legitimacy fostered by religion being used to establish a worldly power.

Alulim is considered the first king of Eridu. But there is a yet more important figure in the city’s foundation story: the mysterious character of Adapa. According to ancient tablets, the legendary figure of Adapa was:

the wise man of Eridu, Ea had created him as chief among men, A wise man whose command none should oppose, The prudent, the most wise among the Anunnaki was he, Blameless, of clean hands, anointed, observer of the divine statutes

Each city in Mesopotamia had its chief deity. The city’s temple for that god was considered to be its home, and the priests of that temple were its servants. Eridu, throughout its history, was considered by all of Mesopotamia to be the home of Enki (known to the Semites as Ea) the god of fresh waters and fertile land. According to the above passage, the first god of the firstling of cities chose Adapa as his chief priest.

Furthermore, Adapa is often associated with the mythic character Oannes, who according to the later Babylonian scholar Berossus:

taught (the people of Mesopotamia) to build towers and temples; and to establish laws;

If this myth has any basis in cultural memory, then perhaps Adapa was a real person who introduced a cult to the area now known as Eridu. As the new cult’s chief priest, it is easy to imagine this ancient Jim Jones amassing power.

Evidence from Archaeology Eridu is the oldest Sumerian city known to archaeologists. And it is the first place in which evidence of the “Ubaid” culture is found. In fact, the early phase of the Ubaid period is known as “Eridu”.

The archaelogical site of Eridu reveals that a series of successively larger temples was built on the same spot, starting with a simple, tiny one-room building, and ending with a vast sprawling proto-ziqqurat.¹ This is the first instance in the archaeological record in which any kind of heavy centralization of power is evidenced by a few buildings being dramatically larger than the rest. And one can see that centralization of power growing as each successive temple is built with ever greater opulence, while the surrounding buildings stay humble.

The temples of Eridu are numbered such that the most recently built temple is numbered 1, and older temples are successively numbered higher.

Temple 17, the earliest discovered temple on the site (and most probably in the world), is a small square building (no more than 4 meters square) with a simple, small square pedestal inside. This is possibly the site of the first ever “offerings” to Enki (or to any god for that matter), with ovens outside for baking the offerings.

Temple 16 is a larger reconstruction of 17, with two pedestals, one surrounded by ash. The construction is of higher quality than preceding temples, with plaster bricks. Pottery was found outside, as well as an oven.

By the time we reach Temple 11, Enki’s home has grown to be 15 meters long. And now it is raised on a platform (to suitably represent the superiority of the god and his servants), with a 1 meter ramp leading up from a lower level (there are signs that the platform was extended at some point). It has a large central chamber, a sanctuary conjoined with an offering room, and a private room for the priest(s).

Temple 10 has a yet larger podium, and the platform is extended by a further 8 meters.

Temple 9 has thicker walls, a large door before the altar, and a bench (perhaps for votive statues). This arrangement is very similar to level 13 of the archaeological site, Gawra.

Temple 8 is greatly enlarged (21 x 12 m). It has even thicker walls, false doorways behind the altar, and the remains of fish offerings. This is particularly interesting as Berossus depicts Oannes as wearing a mantle which looked like the head of a fish.

Temple 7 has a special priests-only entrance to the altar-end of the sanctuary.

Temple 6 also has a bench for votive statues.

At some point, a separate palace is constructed one kilometer north of the temple site. This palace site, the earliest known in the world, also undergoes a series of upgrades through the ages. However, most of the palace levels were not archaeologically recoverable. Level 2 is the most complete. It bears resemblances to palaces in the city-state and later holy site of Kish. It is distinguished from temples in the absence of altars and the presence of gates, chambers, courtyards, guard’s rooms, and living quarters.

Perhaps this palace, and palaces in general, developed as a residence for top priests, who evolved into kings. Alternately, perhaps the priests gave some local uneducated ruffian command of the army, so they would not themselves need to get in harms way. This “general” acquired a power-base of allegiance of his own among the soldiers, and evolved into a king, then demanding his own lavish quarters.

Did Adapa come into Eridu, convince a small fishing village that he had the ear of the god Enki, translate that influence into great wealth for himself and his temple, pass on his position to his sons, and thus create the first temple-state? We will never know with certainty exactly what happened. But what hardly admits of doubt is that

1. according to both literary and archaeological evidence, Eridu really was the “firstling of cities”,
2. Eridu is the earliest archaeological instance of acute centralization of power and pelf (as indicated by its buildings),
3. Eridu’s centralization of power and pelf fell upon the first great cult (as indicated by the fact that the earliest great buildings were also the earliest great temples),
4. in this firstling of cities, the cult antedated the secular state (since its temples andedated the palaces), and
5. the first great cult gave rise to the first ever secular state (it is too much of a coincidence that the first great temples arose in the same exact place as the first palaces)
.

Eridu’s place on the King’s List also indicates that it was something of an empire. The King’s List is known to have only included kings whose cities reigned over (or were at least hegemonic over) the entire region of “Sumer-and-Akkad”. This jibes perfectly with the fact that the Ubaid culture which first arose in Eridu was later found throughout the region. And given how, throughout history, the most centralized nation-states have also been the most war-thirsty, it seems very likely that the priest-kings of Eridu would not be satisfied with completely subjugating only the local population. And also seems very likely that an all-powerful central cult-state, with the ability to dragoon its young men into war, would be able to put under the yoke village after peace-loving village as it marched up the Euphrates.

People tend to implicitly assume that the state has always been with us, and thus it is somehow a natural fact of life. This assumption is greatly assisted by the fact that, even though agriculture pre-dates the state, the state predates writing and written history. Writing itself played a key role in ratcheting up the power of the state. I will discuss that role in my next post.

¹ Reconstruction of Eridu, http://babel.massart.edu/~tkelley/v5.0/eridu/. This is an excellent HTML model of the archaeological site. I highly recommend taking this stratigraphic “tour” of Eridu. For more information see this excerpt from the Cambridge Ancient History (on Google Books).

As I argued in my post The sword and the lie, the state is a symbiosis of violent criminals (the sword) and propagandizing intellectuals (the lie).

The sword needs the lie. Rulers always outnumber the ruled, so a reign predicated on bald criminality (like a protection racket) would shortly be overthrown. To maintain its power, a regime must transmute murder into justice, tribute into taxation, and slavery into citizenship in the minds of its subjects. To do that, it needs intellectuals.

The lie needs the sword. Elaborate scams based on lies and manipulations (like cults) are difficult to maintain. Eventually some people begin to see through the lies and speak out. To keep its hold on its flock, an elite must be able to silence or coerce dissenters. To do that, it needs thugs.

So which came first in the original state, the racket or the cult? And how did the first-comer bring its partner into the scheme?

Let us consider the sword preceding the lie. Thomas Paine speculated that:

“It could have been no difficult thing in the early and solitary ages of the world, while the chief employment of men was that of attending flocks and herds, for a banditti of ruffians to overrun a country, and lay it under contribution. Their power being thus established, the chief of the band contrived to lose the name of robber in that of monarch; and hence the origin of monarchy and kings.”¹

But how exactly could the bandit chief have established such false legitimacy? The easiest thing to do what have been to brainwash the children. While the banditti’s first “subjects” would never forget the criminal basis of their subjugation, the malleable minds of their children could be molded to accept just about anything. And as keeping brains sufficiently washed became a bigger part of the enterprise, some of the bandits may have come to specialize in it. Thus, through division of labor, might the sword have begotten the lie.

How, then, might the lie have given rise to the sword? That question is easier to answer, because we’ve seen this happen in our own age. After the cult leader Jim Jones had acquired enough influence over his flock and managed to lead it into isolation from the rest of the world, it was quite easy for him to arm his most loyal supporters and thus gain coercive control over the rest. One can imagine a similar development happening in antiquity.

In fact, as I will argue in my next post, I believe just such a development was indeed the origin of the very first state in the world.

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¹ Thomas Paine, excerpted from Liberty and the Great Libertarians, edited by Charles T. Sprading

I normally wouldn’t quote another work at such length, but the following seven paragraphs are devastatingly true and important, and need to be disseminated as widely as possible. I couldn’t summarize or abbreviate it without losing something crucial. I can only hope to encapsulate its lesson, as I try to in my own contribution after the quote.

From The Ethics of Liberty, Chapter 22, by Murray N. Rothbard:

Ideology has always been vital to the continued existence of the State, as attested by the systematic use of ideology since the ancient Oriental empires. The specific content of the ideology has, of course, changed over time, in accordance with changing conditions and cultures. In the Oriental despotisms, the Emperor was often held by the Church to be himself divine; in our more secular age, the argument runs more to “the public good” and the “general welfare.” But the purpose is always the same: to convince the public that what the State does is not, as one might think, crime on a gigantic scale, but something necessary and vital that must be supported and obeyed. The reason that ideology is so vital to the State is that it always rests, in essence, on the support of the majority of the public. This support obtains whether the State is a “democracy,” a dictatorship, or an absolute monarchy. For the support rests in the willingness of the majority (not, to repeat, of every individual) to go along with the system: to pay the taxes, to go without much complaint to fight the State’s wars, to obey the State’s rules and decrees. This support need not be active enthusiasm to be effective; it can just as well be passive resignation. But support there must be. For if the bulk of the public were really convinced of the illegitimacy of the State, if it were convinced that the State is nothing more nor less than a bandit gang writ large, then the State would soon collapse to take on no more status or breadth of existence than another Mafia gang. Hence the necessity of the State’s employment of ideologists; and hence the necessity of the State’s age-old alliance with the Court Intellectuals who weave the apologia for State rule.

The first modern political theorist who saw that all States rest on majority opinion was the sixteenth-century libertarian French writer, Etienne de la Boetie. In his Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, de la Boetie saw that the tyrannical State is always a minority of the population, and that therefore its continued despotic rule must rest on its legitimacy in the eyes of the exploited majority, on what would later come to be called “the engineering of consent.” Two hundred years later, David Hume—though scarcely a libertarian—set forth a similar analysis. The counter-argument that, with modern weapons, a minority force can permanently cow a hostile majority ignores the fact that these weapons can be held by the majority and that the armed force of the minority can mutiny or defect to the side of the populace. Hence, the permanent need for persuasive ideology has always led the State to bring into its rubric the nation’s opinion-moulding intellectuals. In former days, the intellectuals were invariably the priests, and hence, as we have pointed out, the age-old alliance between Church-and-State, Throne-and-Altar. Nowadays, “scientific” and “value-free” economists and “national security managers,” among others, perform a similar ideological function in behalf of State power.

Particularly important in the modern world—now that an Established Church is often no longer feasible—is for the State to assume control over education, and thereby to mould the minds of its subjects. In addition to influencing the universities through all manner of financial subventions, and through state-owned universities directly, the State controls education on the lower levels through the universal institutions of the public school, through certification requirements for private schools, and through compulsory attendance laws. Add to this a virtually total control over radio and television—either through outright State ownership, as in most countries—or, as in the United States, by the nationalization of the airwaves, and by the power of a federal commission to license the right of stations to use those frequencies and channels.

Thus, the State, by its very nature, must violate the generally accepted moral laws to which most people adhere. Most people are agreed on the injustice and criminality of murder and theft. The customs, rules, and laws of all societies condemn these actions. The State, then, is always in a vulnerable position, despite its seeming age-old might. What particularly needs to be done is to enlighten the public on the State’s true nature, so that they can see that the State habitually violates the generally accepted injunctions against robbery and murder, that the State is the necessary violator of the commonly accepted moral and criminal law.

We have seen clearly why the State needs the intellectuals; but why do the intellectuals need the State? Put simply, it is because intellectuals, whose services are often not very intensively desired by the mass of consumers, can find a more secure “market” for their abilities in the arms of the State. The State can provide them with a power, status, and wealth which they often cannot obtain in voluntary exchange. For centuries, many (though, of course, not all) intellectuals have sought the goal of Power, the realization of the Platonic ideal of the “philosopher-king.” Consider, for example, the cry from the heart by the distinguished Marxist scholar, Professor Needham, in protest against the acidulous critique by Karl Wittfogel of the alliance of State-and-intellectuals in Oriental despotisms: “The civilization which Professor Wittfogel is so bitterly attacking was one which could make poets and scholars into officials.” Needham adds that “the successive [Chinese] emperors were served in all ages by a great company of profoundly humane and disinterested scholars.” Presumably, for Professor Needham, this is enough to justify the grinding despotisms of the ancient Orient.

But we need not go back as far as the ancient Orient or even as far as the proclaimed goal of the professors at the University of Berlin, in the nineteenth century, to form themselves into “the intellectual bodyguard of the House of Hohenzollern.” In contemporary America, we have the eminent political scientist, Professor Richard Neustadt, hailing the President as the “sole crownlike symbol of the Union.” We have national security manager Townsend Hoopes writing that “under our system the people can look only to the President to define the nature of our foreign policy problem and the national programs and sacrifices required to meet it with effectiveness.” And, in response, we have Richard Nixon, on the eve of his election as President, defining his role as follows: “He [the President] must articulate the nation’s values, define its goals and marshall its will.” Nixon’s conception of his role is hauntingly similar to the scholar Ernst Huber’s articulation, in the Germany of the 1930s, of the Constitutional Law of the Greater German Reich. Huber wrote that the head of State “sets up the great ends which are to be attained and draws up the plans for the utilization of all national powers in the achievement of the common goals . . . he gives the national life its true purpose and value.”

Thus, the State is a coercive criminal organization that subsists by a regularized large-scale system of taxation-theft, and which gets away with it by engineering the support of the majority (not, again, of everyone) through securing an alliance with a group of opinion-moulding intellectuals whom it rewards with a share in its power and pelf.

There will always be crime: assault, plunder, and enslavement. We will always have “the Sword”. But mankind has natural safeguards to defend against crime: including the ability to recognize justice, and the ability to strike back against criminals.

There will always be deceit: slander, fraud, and supersition. We will always have “the Lie”. But mankind has natural safeguards to defend against deceit as well: reason, skepticism, and the senses.

The state is a pernicious partnership of the Sword and the Lie. The Lie fosters the Sword through twisted sophistries which establish a false legitimacy and engineered consent to disarm our natural safeguards against criminality. The Sword fosters the Lie through compulsory indoctrination (state religions and public schools) and through using its ill-gotten gains to corrupt the persuasive classes (state-beholden media and academia), all of which disarms our natural safeguards against deceit.

The state has us in bonds, but also under a spell. The former could not hold us without the latter. In order to break our bonds, we must first break the spell.

It has been argued that man has only risen from the depths of squalor upon becoming “civilized”, that is, upon coalescing into a civitas, or state. Thus mainstream history textbooks include the origination of government as a crucial step in the “march of progress.”Great prosperity is the fruit of society, not the state. And society antedates the state.

Civilization first arose in Mesopotamia, the “land between the rivers”.   However, many societal advancements associated with “civilization” antedated the state in that region.  Paleolithic families commerced with people as far away as Anatolia and Palestine: many millenia before the rise of the Sumerian city-states.  Village life arose in Mesolithic times.  And the Neolithic agricultural revolution and introduction of pottery got underway quite nicely under stone age anarchy.

Three successive (though overlapping) proto-historical cultures arose in northern Mesopotamia: the Hassuna, Samarra, and Halaf cultures.  All three made great strides in art, trade, and the technologies of agriculture, building, implements, pottery, and even irrigation.  And not one of them showed any signs of having any central government.  There were signs of religion on a household level; but there were no temples, and no signs of an official cult.The Hassuna culture developed stamp seals, an important development in private property and trade, as well as a precursor to the written language.  The Samarra culture invented irrigation with which they produced amazingly abundant harvests, as evidenced by the remains of capacious granaries.  The Halaf culture even had cobbled streets and specialized centers which mass produced a distinctive pottery (which has been called by the French antiquarian Georges Roux, “the most beautiful ever used in Mesopotamia”¹) for peaceful exchange abroad. Anarchic Mesopotamian humanity was accomplishing wondrous things for itself.

Then something happened.   Several Halafian towns were for some reason depopulated.  And their exquisite pottery was replaced by a cruder style: an archaeological sign of cultural displacement.   A very different people, the Ubaid culture, had come from the south and supplanted the Halafians.  The Ubaid culture had shrines, altars, offering tables, and enormous temples: sure signs of a priestly elite.  And their temples consistently grew in size and grandeur as the ages went by: a sure sign of consolidating priestly power.   It is highly likely that the people of this culture are the famous Sumerians themselves in their proto-historical form.   If so, then the cult which originated in the Ubaid temples is the very tradition which evolved into the monstrous temple-states of Sumer, Akkad, Babylon, and Assyria.  The north Mesopotamian tradition of freedom that lasted for a millenium and a half was replaced by the systemic deceit and coercion of the temple and the state, which at this early stage, were one and the same.
¹ Ancient Iraq by Georges Roux

Aristotle argued that the state is the form of society with the highest purpose:

“Every state is an association of some kind, and every association is established with a view to some good; for mankind always act in order to obtain that which they think good. But, if all associations aim at some good, the state or political association, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.” ¹  

But what would make the state the highest association: that it “embraces all the rest”?  It does not.   If two traders, one from Aristotle’s adopted city of Athens, and one from Athens’ mortal enemy Persia, contrive to evade political restrictions and trade with each other, then they are associating with each other.  They have an association: one which transcends the bonds imposed by the brutish quarrels between their two states.  Of course even broader associations than that existed, even in the ancient world.  Let us say the Persian trader exchanged some gold for spices from an Indian trader.   Then the Persian trades those spices for some pottery with the Greek trader.  This is the kind of trade that happened countless times over in antiquity.  And therein we have a super-national association that transcends a city-state, a kingdom, and an empire: and one which stretches from the Aegean Sea to the Indus Valley.  It is the society that manifests out of peaceful world trade, and not the state, which “embraces all the rest”.  Furthermore, I would argue that a state is not even an association at all. Would you call the relation between a bandit and his victim an “association”?  If not, then neither should you so term the relation between a ruling caste and its subject population.
¹ Aristotle, Politics, Book 1, Part 1

The only difference between the taxing state and a robber is that the former, through its apologists (ancient priests, modern experts, etc) makes you think its for your own good, and subjects you to a greater variety of injustice. In fact, the comparison makes the profession of robbery look downright benign.Lysander Spooner said it best…

The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the roadside, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful. The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a “protector,” and that he takes men’s money against their will, merely to enable him to “protect” those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful “sovereign,” on account of the “protection” he affords you. He does not keep “protecting” you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villainies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave.¹

¹Lysander Spooner, No Treason No. 6, The Constitution of No Authority, part 3

There is a moral code written in our nature.  When we take up an unused piece of nature and begin to use it, we instinctively think of it as our property.  We take instinctive affront when our person or our property is assaulted by others.  We feel instinctive outrage when we see the person or property of others assaulted.  And we feel instinctive guilt when, or at least after, we assault the person or property of others.  This instinctive moral code is only shoved aside when we enter conditions of extremity, in which circumstances have forced the human community to devolve into a war of all against all.  In those cases, we instinctively cast aside our communal moral feelings for the sake of extreme short-term selfishness.  We morally allow ourselves “necessary evils”.The state has deceived the bulk of humanity into believing that society is inherently in perpetual extremity, and that its own acts of murder, plunder, and enslavement are necessary evils.  This is a lie.  Society does not require for its survival, or even for its flowering, that certain men be above natural morality.  Far from it; the murderers, plunderers, enslavers, and liars who comprise the state are simply parasites who cripple society and threaten to destroy it.

Again, I am writing a series of posts called “A History of Truth and Prosperity”.  What do I mean my “truth” and “prosperity”?

Truth

By “truth” I mean the history of mankind’s search for knowledge. My theory is that human learning thrives in a condition of linguistic unity and  jurisdictional disunity.

Linguistic Unity

It’s obvious how a common language would help human learning.  If thinkers can collaborate, debate, discuss, and share freely with each other, they can together get at the truth much more quickly than a solitary sage might all by himself.

Jurisdictional Disunity

But for learning to truly thrive amongst a people of a common language, there must also be a fragmentation of power.  The temple and the state always tries to control thought and discourse in order to consolidate their power.  And controlled thought and discourse will always be slower than free thought and discourse at getting at the truth.  With fragmentation of power within a linguistic whole, unsanctioned thinkers can preserve their intellectual honesty by hopping from rival state to rival state.

Prosperity

Most historians are obsessed with rulers and those rulers’ wars.  As I’ve written before, What is more important to the mass of humanity is not so much which cast of thugs has managed to put them under a yoke in any given period: but what they themselves have managed to achieve in spite of them.  In my discussion of history you will still find the same cast of characters you might find in a history textbook: Alexander, Louis IV, Elizabeth I.  But rather than fixate on their characters or marvel at their personal success as they would have had us do (and as most historians faithfully do), I am going to discuss how their policies and actions have affected the livelihood of the people: which will be a mostly negative assessment.  And most importantly, I am going to explore how the people have contributed to their own prosperity: through innovation and hard work.Human prosperity is also dependent on linguistic unity and jurisdictional disunity.  But the latter seems much more important than the former.  Jurisdictional disunity is important because it leads to a larger number of economic actors freely competing and innovating: that is it permits markets. In my next post, I shall give an outline of the biggest economic and intellectual epochs in western history, and discuss how the developments that characterize each period seems to support my theory.