In discussing matters of society, politics, climate, war, education, and such like – the substance of the conversation is fundamentally determined by the participants’ cognizance of “empire”. Without knowledge of empire, the veracity of any discourse is severely restricted.
As an exercise in grasping the gulf between Imperially conditioned responses and free-thinking observations, I drew up a representative list of subjects to illustrate the extraordinary polarization. These are from real conversations, experienced by myself and/or respected colleagues.
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Imperially Conditioned Responses – Unapprised Of Empire |
Free Thinking Observations – Fully Apprised Of Empire |
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Government |
Freely-elected agents serve the people. Keeps civil order. Promotes harmony. |
Selected governments administrate Imperial business at the expense of the people. Prevents natural order. Promotes conflict. |
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Money |
Sensible way of paying for goods and services. Brings freedom. Natural market forces shape wealth and distribution. |
System of indebtedness. Brings dependency. Imperial monopolies on currencies and interest dictate wealth distribution. |
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Colleges & Universities |
Educate people and help to prepare them for success in life. Honor knowledge. |
Kill learning and transform individuals into vocational robots. Honor empire. |
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Corporations |
Big businesses. Everyone has an equal opportunity to the profits of their own labor. |
Often criminal. Real profits for management only. |
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War |
Necessary evil that helps to enforce a healthy balance of world order. Rarely used. Defensive. Everyone participates. |
Weapon of empire to punish rogue states and secure resources. Frequently used. Offensive. Proactive industry of private specialists. |
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Certificates, Licenses, & Permits |
Help to authorize and legitimize skills, things, and privileges. |
Harvesting consent to sign away personal sovereignty, skills and rights. |
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Mainstream Entertainment |
Harmless fun. |
Behavioral engineering. |
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Exoteric Mainstream Religion |
Brings people closer to God, the prophets, and savior(s). Encourages good behavior. Wisdom passed down through generations. |
Distances people from natural divine contact. Encourages unthinking obedience. Willful misinterpretations and omissions impede growth. |
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Climate Change |
Due to humans. |
Due to the sun. |
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Race & Immigration |
We are all mature enough to live together in harmony. Many cultures are compatible. |
We are not all mature enough to live together in harmony. Many cultures are incompatible. |
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Obamacare |
Affordable medicine for everyone. |
Mass experiment in social submission. |
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Terrorism |
Mainly disgruntled fundamentalists. |
Mainly an instrument of statecraft. |
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Legalization Of Recreational Drugs |
A triumph of personal liberty. |
Breeds apathy. Mass corporate sequestration of legit plant medicine, transforming into harmful synthetic analogs. |
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Choice |
Free to choose any products, services, and lifestyles. |
Limited choices from pre-determined, restrictive menus. |
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Private Gun Ownership & Carry |
A society without guns is safer from itself. |
A society with guns is safer from government and criminals. |
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History |
Old, irrelevant, indulgence. Few wonders. |
New, relevant, trail of empire. Many wonders. |
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Privacy |
A privilege bestowed from the authorities. Unnecessary if you’ve done nothing wrong. |
Individually claimed. My business is my business. |
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Self-Reliance |
The state will look after you. |
We should look after ourselves. |
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Nature |
Dangerous. Needs mastering. |
Benevolent. Needs respecting. |
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Change |
An opponent to evade. Usually something bad. |
An ally to embrace. Usually something good. |
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Life |
Biological accident. |
Spiritual training. |
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Death |
The end of existence. A door closing. |
The furtherance of existence. A door opening. |
NOTES & REFERENCES
1. What is empire?
Empire is an ethos that seeks to control humankind by restricting it to a lower state of being.
Empire is what happens when humans forget who they are and what they’re doing. Some of that is our fault, and some of it is not. Either way, we always have the power to change it. It is useful to consider empire as an ideology, rather than a collection of individuals. That’s not to say that many people who constitute empire don’t exist – they do – but the multi-generational timescales of empire always eclipse the significance of any current administrators.
The following two historical quotations from American statesmen, provide instructive context for the reality and scope of empire within the last two hundred years. Whilst far from perfect in their own being and conduct, Jefferson and Roosevelt expressed things in a remarkably honest way which suggests our current 21st century challenges are nothing new.
2. 1816 letter from Thomas Jefferson (US President 1801-1809) to Samuel Kercheval (Virginian lawyer & author).
“To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers.”
3. President Theodore Roosevelt; Opening of the Jamestown Exposition; Norfolk, Virgina, April 26, 1907.
“We of this mighty western Republic have to grapple with the dangers that spring from popular self-government tried on a scale incomparably vaster than ever before in the history of mankind, and from an abounding material prosperity greater also than anything which the world has hitherto seen.
As regards the first set of dangers, it behooves us to remember that men can never escape being governed. Either they must govern themselves or they must submit to being governed by others. If from lawlessness or fickleness, from folly or self-indulgence, they refuse to govern themselves then most assuredly in the end they will have to be governed from the outside. They can prevent the need of government from without only by showing they possess the power of government from within. A sovereign cannot make excuses for his failures; a sovereign must accept the responsibility for the exercise of power that inheres in him; and where, as is true in our Republic, the people are sovereign, then the people must show a sober understanding and a sane and steadfast purpose if they are to preserve that orderly liberty upon which as a foundation every republic must rest.
If a nation, whether free or unfree, loses the capacity for self-government, loses the spirit of sobriety and of orderly liberty, then it has no cause to complain of tyranny; but a really great people, a people really capable of freedom and of doing mighty deeds in the world, must work out its own destiny, and must find men who will be its leaders—not its masters.”