I want to start this brief post with a proclamation:
Fear is the key.
Fear of government.
Fear of other people.
Fear of differences.
Fear of unknown.
Fear of freedom.
Lack of fear IS freedom.
Without fear I am free. Without fear I can be different. I can disobey. I can do things that are illegal. I can do anything. Without fear nothing can stop me from being who I want to be. Without fear I am not compelled to conform. I am free in the fullest sense possible.
Fear is what supposed authorities use to control everyone else. Fear is what people use to control each other. If you can make another person be afraid, you can easily subjugate them, in the name of their own protection, protection from that which they fear. It can be anything. It doesn’t matter so long as they are convinced enough that it is a threat to be afraid. At the top of the order of the first decade of the 21st century seems to be terrorism. And then terrorists themselves come to your protection, using your fear to strip you of your rights, your dignity, your privacy, your humanity.
V for Vendetta is an excellent movie, in that those who are open minded enough, curious and inquisitive enough, will find this truth within it, the truth about fear. Mr. “V” in the movie is a violent person. He is “V for Vendetta”. He is a person that has been monstrously treated by those who believe in violence and he became violence because of that, but only against those who he perceived as the violators. I hold no illusion that what he did was mere self defence. It is not. I believe what he did in the movie were crimes. But at the same time this murderer they forged into being knows the truth.
Those who exercise more than sloppy thinking will be able to discern a person from the idea.
I for one propose another kind of V. It is V for Voluntary, for everything that is great in human relations happens after a voluntary agreement, not after a threat of force. Let all human action be voluntary, some time in the far future.
Meanwhile, this non-violent (r)evolution can start with me and you and the few people who want to learn how to cast away consumption of fear that they’ve been taught to consume and embark on a new kind of journey through life, where we control our each and every step, our each and every decision, based not on fear but on what we as human beings really want to accomplish in our lives. No gunman can take your freedom away when you have no fear, as lack of fear IS freedom.
V for Voluntary. Let’s turn that color of blood into the color of the sun, and the warmth that comes from voluntary relations as opposed to those with cold red blooded coercionism.
Let the evolution continue.
Notes:
August 2nd, 2008 at 6:43 pm
“Lack of fear IS freedom” reminds me of a quote I think is attributed to Nietzsche: “Fear is the the lack of power”. I think he then goes on to talk about - in one of his books, might have been Ecce Homo - how the ultimate power is power over one’s self. To put both quotes together we could get something like “freedom is power”, or “freedom is empowering”. (Although there are problems with such simple equations.)
I generally agree with your statements about fear; it has been abused so much by humanity, fear of retribution if you speak out; fear of Hell; fear of a conservative society; fear of being yourself. It would be great if humanity could move on from such oppression, which may be possible under the voluntaryist thesis you advocate.
August 2nd, 2008 at 7:04 pm
Nietzsche was a smart man.
Yeah, freedom is power over oneself. Power that men like politicians usually seek is power over others. Once I believed that this power of theirs included power over themselves with power over others added, but now I am beginning to think that those who seek power over others actually do not have power over their own self - they fear losing control of others and so they are essentially slaves to their own supposed authority.
And this becomes so apparent in movies like V for Vendetta when supposedly great leaders face the possibility that their power over others is slipping away. Their fear turns to rage and once they finally face their end, one they themselves called upon, they cry like cowards. I don’t mean this as condoning violent revenge though. Corrupt politicians (and most of them are, because it is in the nature of the job) may sooner or later face the conseqences of their ways, and I don’t believe they accept them with much dignity.
Not that their personal feelings matter much to me.
Cheers