My general opinion towards politicians is similar to what I imagine the puppet master’s opinion towards his puppets is: pull enough strings and they are bound to dance. It’s inevitable when two men debate one another or compete or try in some way to get the best of the other simultaneously that one man must win; one man, for whatever concretely superfluous value, must be the better of the two. The aim is simple in most cases. Yes, dear reader, there are rare times when the aim is not simple, mostly when this aim is married with propaganda and general fuzzy feelings meant to reinforce some grandly grotesque idea. But, even in these (rare) cases, the aim is the same: win the argument, beat the competition, rise in power.

And this is the heart of politics: the dynamics of power, or how to control a large segment of the population using, largely in democratic politics, rhetoric. Power is the simple aim. Power over the other man; power over those who oppose you; power over each other.

There are many in the world who find themselves born into a society not governed by a democratic set of ideas. I do not know, or pretend to know, what life is in any country other than the United States of America. A man can visit the bazaar, haggle with someone over the price of a tuna filet, go back to his hostel and find some way to cook the dead fish, but never understand what that process means to the society. That, however, is culture, and though culture is intertwined with political structures, the two are distinct and separate. But still, through all my ignorance of the exotically mundane, I am solidly with Winston Churchill who said, Democracy is the worst form of government besides every other form.

The more evolved form of human relations, the purest vein of human existence, is the absence of government. Opponents, ones mostly scared of the idea or in no way can comprehend what is being described,  coin this anti-government sentiment as “anarchy.” Anarchy, through propaganda and rhetoric mixed with politics, immediately pulls images from news reels, from films, from imagination of chaos: mobs running, looting, killing, stabbing, shooting; people like cattle in an uncontrollable stampede, like cattle without funnels to show them to the slaughterhouse, like cattle who realized they are trapped in a system that forces a them to eat a certain way, to drink a certain way, to live a certain way. Chaos is panic, the adrenaline in a person’s heart, the realization that the populous is nothing but a herd of cattle in political systems. But, just like panic, chaos is temporary and fleeting. Political pundits broadcast over free air the examples of chaos and interpret it as anarchy. This is what anarchy is like, they say, the chaos of waking up from a coma, of realizing you are cattle. Anarchy, therefore, cannot be trusted, because the insidious truth at the end of the tunnel is the belief that people cannot be trusted.

This idea, this insidious idea, has led to a fractured human psyche. Romantic relationships to race relations to how to treat a homeless man on the street: this belief has infiltrated the subconscious human mind. Romance can’t be trusted because men are only looking for sex and women are only looking for security. Different races can’t be trusted because they only care about furthering their genetic pool. Don’t give a homeless man a dollar because he’ll buy crack with it. Don’t trust anyone because people will let you down and take from you and mistreat you and the only way you can survive in this world is to shut yourself off, just shut yourself off, and always be skeptical. Don’t trust anyone, except for the governing bodies, the political system. Trust the system, work hard, and you’ll prosper.

Prosper: like a person has a choice in the matter. Whoever came up with the idea that the only way a man can rise in the class structure is by increasing wealth through working, laboring, and torturing his existence in this world was clearly on the side of the aristocratic class. The idea that a man should work in society, that work is inherently good and honorable — even, or some times especially, at the expense of personal happiness — is by all means in opposition to happiness. Industry, innovation, exploration does not have to come from or be subsidized by governing bodies. Separate power dynamics and the need for power from these natural aspects of human culture and they will not die. Many have the notion that, if not governed, people would be unable to survive or thrive. Death would come to humanity, quickly and without mercy.

And perhaps it would now when the people still want to be governed, still buy into the idea that people can’t be trusted. This want inside people has been prevalent for centuries, from the creation of mythological gods who rule over them from the skies to democratic forms of government that manipulate through rhetoric and marketing. Perhaps, the evolution of the human being is not yet compliant with the independence and confidence needed to want to be free of political structures and restrictions. I suggest no glorious and permanent revolution, as one now would be unable to separate the lust for power from a human collective, but instead suggest waiting. Wait for the governed, the power hungry, to die — do not kill them, but instead tolerate them. Build your character and sharpen your intellect. This evolution of man will not happen in your lifetime or your children’s lifetime, but in thousands of year when humanity is ready. You will not be alive — you will have died from life long ago. You will not see humanity as you’d like, but do not find depression in this: find purpose. Begin to develop humanity for its evolution, find like minded people and begin a collective of humanity without corruption from power. Pass on what you have learned. That is your purpose, that is your goal.

JFH