The most important thing we can do is learn how to learn. Figure out what you are good at and explore how that impacts others things. Find the comfort zone in your head and work from there. Even if what you are good at isn’t often very productive for yourself or society it is often the only starting point for so many people. Anger, fear, and suffering are common in ever changing ways ranging from intentional invocation of such emotions by others to unintentional consequences of others’ actions.
So learning best for me is about breaking down concepts through the incessant asking of ‘why’ and ‘how’ and being able to explain my every action and idea. This is my path because my father was a strict disciplinarian. He couldn't explain to me how he wanted things done, why he wanted them done a certain way, so he resorted to physical punishment and verbal hostilities as his father did before him. He wasn’t calm and collected in his mind. He was frustrated and angry. That clouded his judgment further. In turn it was compounding his frustrations which he unleashed on me only making him more upset because of my slow compliance induced by the fear he instilled in me. He wanted immediate compliance and satisfaction but couldn’t think clearly enough to understand why he wasn’t getting it.
I was fearful of him and learned to hide my thoughts that I didn't think he would agree with. When he was joking around about cute girls that he thought I might like, I felt humiliated deeply and personally attacked. I didn’t want to talk about those things with him. I was confused by his temperament because I was a child learning only one consistent lesson; fear! He never knew I was interested in girls until one day I introduced him and my mother to my now ex-wife.
When my father would become angry I cowered away. That made him upset. It infuriated him in a way that I wasn’t able to fully empathize with until I had my own teenage child to teach. When she refuses reason it upsets me because I want to help just as my father did with me. Though, unlike my father, I don’t yell at my daughter. I break down concepts and discuss the importance of what it is I’m asking her to do. I’m closer to my daughter than I ever was to my father whom I am now all but estranged from because I made the time to self invest.
And what did my father’s insecurities grant me? Something similar to the way public schools create educational standards.
My father’s actions, like those of popular Prussian model school systems or the akin, created a fearful order follower in me. I obeyed to avoid punishment despite insistence that I was disobedient and out of control. Fear was my motivation to learn, not honest curiosity. Fear stifled my ability to learn faster. Fear kept me in hiding from attempts to make me interact more with my family and classmates. I didn’t learn skills that would help me survive in the future. I learned skills that helped me survive in the present, at the time. And when I realized in my mid twenties that I was more than 500 miles away from him and all those whom I feared, I had my first epiphanies.
It was then when I began to think about why I was afraid. It was then when I began to think about what they could no longer do if I simply didn't pick up the phone to listen.
And guess what?
It's similar to how government works. We pay taxes and obey law enforcement commands because of what we know they think they are allowed to justly do to us. They have power, because we fear them. But if we listen to what popular liberty movements say, we may think that government officials and supporters fully understand what their actions are doing to us. The truth is that they don’t understand anymore than my father did. (People like the Rothchilds banking clans understand fully, but the average politician and voter does not.)
Government, like my father, does not entirely realize that we obey because we fear them; but when we treat them in the same style they treat us there will be fear in their eyes. And it has already happened. That is what the 'thin blue line' idea is all about. Though I don’t agree with killing others outside of immediate self defense, supporting police with a blue line symbol is born of both sides not fully understanding what the issue is. Those angry at police and murdering some of them who did not partake in the outrage fueling their murders directly only served to create more cannon fodder for others to cling to their beliefs reinforced with the idea that more bad people out there exist than previously thought; all the while never making time to fully understand the context of the situation.
People like those are even in my home town; people like those whom run the Combs Pizza restaurant in Aurora, Indiana are making profit off promoting the defense of their beloved law enforcers. They bought signs with thin blue lines on them saying they will protect their law enforcers. They bought company tee-shirts supporting the Fraternal Order of Police with their company logo on them. They can do whatever they want with whatever messages they want. But do they understand the culture of fear they promote anymore than those they speak out against for killing police offers the media hyped up?
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No. They do not. The namesake owner is very much like my father. He's never wrong because such admissions would counter what he did his entire life. He's never wrong because spending time in the U.S. Army and later as an Indiana State Patrol officer would be seen as a wasted life. Like my father’s time in the National Guard and a State of Georgia employee for 40 plus years, the namesake owner of Combs Pizza will not accept the fact that what he did out of a noble cause was a mistake because the means were contradictory to his goals. They won’t even acknowledge the possibility that they could be on the wrong side of the issue morally. Why?
Because it’s the same as making a mistake and being seen as wrong! They won’t admit to making such a mistake lightly. Just as calling out my parents for working within state government for 40 years themselves comes across as saying ‘I am ungrateful for their hard work to feed, clothe, and shelter me’, the same goes for Mr. Combs.
Being seen or ousted for making a mistake that was perpetuated for a year, five, ten, twenty, or more is a tough critique to entertain, let alone accept in full. It says at first appearance that the life of the criticized was wasted.
It's not a waste of life if they recognized it is just a very expensive lesson in the unintended consequences of following orders and not contemplating decisions deeper. They could make amends and denounce such things. But to do that would require consistency. They would have to give up their state government pensions. Why?
Because when taxation is realized to be theft then their continual demands for payment for things they did while nescient about their actions only encourage their former employers to continue taxing and terrorizing others to make good on promises to pay for services. The pizza man will not give that up, nor will my parents give up their pensions. It would mean living in poverty again for all of them; just for a short time if they are clever. And if one spreads this logic a little more, those receiving social security payments, medicare, and military compensation will need to reject that as well.
Who is willing to do that? Very few are. And why? Because when taxation is imposed it creates dependency upon a single currency that is used to pay these salaries, pensions, welfare, and contracts. And because all people subjected to this taxation believe they will be punished or negatively targeted for being noncompliant, they obey. So Mr. Combs and my parents perpetuate fear of noncompliance in others for no other reason than their own potential fears of instability or change to accept philosophical consistency.
And that is only if they are willing to even consider thinking about such consistency!
So why did I bother writing about this?
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Because fear is a powerful motivator that when refined becomes terror. And when employed it is terrorism. So what does this mean? (Read: Government is terroristic in nature; even if it is a simple majority of 9 to 1 or even 6 to 4 as the compulsion to comply is strong with adult versions of high school peer pressure.)
It means that terror has effectively been used to override reason in a string of long moments through the ever increasing regulation of what people may do with their economic choices. It means that the same people proclaimed by pop culture and mythos to promote peace, security, and freedom by demanding obedience often fail to realize they need to be the change they want to see in the world, that others need to see in the world. But who wants to role model someone struggling?
No one!
And why not?!?
Because change often leads to having to make uncomfortable sacrifices! That’s why!
Many of these sacrifices are akin to what I made in order to be free of the fear instilled in me by my father. I had to distance myself from him and everything I knew without having a single clue as to why I was doing that. Yes, I ran from something I didn’t understand. The few friends I had were left behind. My family, lost. I was condemned and told I was loved at the same time by my parents.
Basically the more clarity I achieved in understanding the purpose of morality, economics, and freedom, the more alone I became. But why did it have to be this way for me?
The answer is because I was taught fear. I was taught to withdraw from others. I wasn't taught how to problem solve or to connect with others. I was taught to comply and obey, or else. Just as my father would condescendingly laugh at me for being naive when discussing voluntraryism a few years ago, so too did Mr. Combs when I brought up the issues of taxation being theft in our personal discussions. They wanted me to conform to their ideology. They wanted me to accept them or be ridiculed and ostracized while claiming they were trying to help me.
Help me from what? The loneliness that I’ve struggled with my entire life which they induced because they didn’t realize the unintentional consequences of their actions on a developing mind? Help me today from the much harsher ridicule of others who won’t even give me the time of day to plead my case to be rejected by them through laughter? Help me to avoid the fear they are teaching me about why I should conform to something they repeatedly told me was unavailable for me to comprehend since I didn’t join the military and do what they did?
That is what government teaches, fear, momentary obedience, confusion, and inconsistency. But advocates of government are not sociopaths. They are not demons. They are not all mean spirited people. They are almost all nescient, without knowledge and understanding, of what their actions do to others.
Government is not the problem, nescience is the problem. So while I was smacked in the face and told fire is hot as a kid, my daughter was carefully monitored in an interaction with it. She learned how to interact with fire through patience, respect, and compassion. I was taught through fear and conformity devoid of critical thinking to understand why.
And that is what government does versus what freedom does. The unintended consequences of our actions that do not operate with a transparent path of thought progression to show how our means do not counter or contradict our goals becomes the very tool used by others to justify walking away from us and digging in their intellectual heels to resist us. This is why so much of freedom advocacy fails, because our defense of it is so lacking, because our ability to clearly explain it is clouded.
By offering people clarity in thought we give them a choice. They can make the time to change themselves after seeing how an idea works from start to finish potentially or they can reject changing themselves. No matter the choices they make, they are their own. And if we present the information to them in such a manner that is reverential of peace, creation, and compassion then, we can do no more than to be there when they are ready to take their first steps into a larger world of comprehension.
To offer a little more clarity, the noblest goal of all organizations promoting defense is built around protection. Protection of what or whom, though? Islam does this for a certain group within its own parameters, the men generally. Christianity does this for those whom are Christians. Governments do this for those whom obey them. The noble sentiment is in protecting others but their means often contradict their goals. Yet if we expanded that to include a more universally applicable set of parameters then, fewer people would be motivated to hurt others outside of their own self defense because of lack of clarity leading to frustration which invokes hostilities when not recognized in proper context.
However, to make this happen requires communication. And communication requires understanding how to break down concepts simply enough to answer questions about them. And lastly, time invested in yourself to make this happen so you can answer questions about such things is the first requirement; but not to answer questions for others, to answer questions for yourself.
I’ve already done that for me. If you’d like to see what I did to define liberty and morality check out my other works, Liberty Defined and Morality Defined.
The solution is not to attack others or encourage violence. The solution is to stop violence and hostilities to create an atmosphere where people know they will be respected and compassionately accepted during their internal processes of comprehension and adjustment to new information and the increasing clarity it will bring in their progression of understanding. This is why harsh constructive criticism and laughing at others increasing hostility, causing people to dig in their heels resisting ideas that could benefit them. So patience in your own mind first to choose words carefully with intent to create and enlighten is key. The solution is to change yourself first!
-JLD
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