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How the "State" whether backed by a church or republic can enslave people.

Governments and the ruling classes no longer take their stand on right or even on the semblance of justice, but on a skillful organization carried to such a point of perfection by the aid of science that everyone is caught in the circle of violence and has no chance of escaping from it. This circle is made up now of four methods of working upon men, joined together like the links of a chain ring.
The first and oldest method is intimidation. This consists in representing the existing state organization – whatever it may be, a free republic or the most savage despotism – as something sacred and immutable, and therefore following any efforts to alter it with the most cruel punishments. This method is in use now – as it has been from olden times – wherever there is a government: in Russia against the so-called Nihilists, in America against Anarchists, in France against Imperialists, Legitimists, Communards, and Anarchists.
Railways, telegraphs, telephones, photographs, and the great perfection of the means of getting rid of men for years, without killing them, by solitary confinement, where, hidden from the world, they perish and are forgotten, and the many other modern inventions employed by government, give such power that when once authority has come into certain hands, the police, open and secret, the administration and prosecutors, jailers and executioners of all kinds, do their work so zealously that there is no chance of overturning the government, however cruel and senseless it may be.
The second method is corruption. It consists in plundering the industrious working people of their wealth by means of taxes and distributing it in satisfying the greed of officials, who are bound in return to support and keep up the oppression of the people. These bought officials, from the highest government ministers to the poorest copying clerks, make up an unbroken network of men bound together by the same interest – that of living at the expense of the people. They become the richer the more submissively they carry out the will of the government; and at all times and places, sticking at nothing, in all departments support by word and deed the violence of government, on which their own prosperity also rests.
The third method is what I can only describe as hypnotizing the people. This consists in checking the moral development of men, and by various suggestions keeping them back in the ideal of life, outgrown by mankind at large, on which the power of government rests. This hypnotizing process is organized at the present in the most complex manner, and starting from their earliest childhood, continues to act on men until the day of their death. It begins in their earliest years in the compulsory schools, created for this purpose, in which the children have instilled into them the ideas of life of their ancestors, which are in direct antagonism with the conscience of the modern world. In countries where there is a state religion, they teach the children the senseless blasphemies of the Church catechisms, together with the duty of obedience to their superiors. In republican states they teach them the savage superstition of patriotism and the same pretended obedience to the governing authorities.
The process is kept up during later years by the encouragement of religious and patriotic superstitions.
The religious superstition is encouraged by establishing, with money taken from the people, temples, processions, memorials, and festivals, which, aided by painting, architecture, music, and incense, intoxicate the people, and above all by the support of the clergy, whose duty consists in brutalizing the people and keeping them in a permanent state of stupefaction by their teaching, the solemnity of their services, their sermons, and their interference in private life – at births, deaths, and marriages. The patriotic superstition is encouraged by the creation, with money taken from the people, of national fetes, spectacles, monuments, and festivals to dispose men to attach importance to their own nation, and to the aggrandizement of the state and its rulers, and to feel antagonism and even hatred for other nations. With these objects under despotic governments there is direct prohibition against printing and disseminating books to enlighten the people, and everyone who might rouse the people from their lethargy is exiled or imprisoned. Moreover, under every government without exception everything is kept back that might emancipate and everything encouraged that tends to corrupt the people, such as literary works tending to keep them in the barbarism of religious and patriotic superstition, all kinds of sensual amusements, spectacles, circuses, theaters, and even the physical means of inducing stupefaction, as tobacco and alcohol, which form the principal source of revenue of states. Even prostitution is encouraged, and not only recognized, but also even organized by the government in the majority of states. So much for the third method.
The fourth method consists in selecting from all the men who have been stupefied and enslaved by the three former methods a certain number, exposing them to special and intensified means of stupefaction and brutalization, and so making them into a passive instrument for carrying out all the cruelties and brutalities needed by the government. This result is attained by taking them at the youthful age, when men have not had time to form clear and definite principles of morals, and removing them from all natural and human conditions of life, home, family, kindred, and useful labor. They are shut up together in barracks, dressed in special clothes, and worked upon by cries, drums, music, and shining objects to go through certain daily actions invented for this purpose, and by this means are brought into an hypnotic condition in which they cease to be men and become mere senseless machines, submissive to the hypnotizer. These physically vigorous young men (in these days of universal conscription, all young men), hypnotized, armed with murderous weapons, always obedient to the governing authorities and ready for any act of violence at their command, constitute the fourth and principal method of enslaving men.
By this method the circle of violence is completed.
(This article was written in 1894, translated from "The kingdom of God is within you")

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iehuvihs bump bomb

iehuvihs bump bomb

Just thought this article could help someone wake up.

I don't believe people are ignorant by nature, but even an educated man can be ignorant of truth if given the wrong information. As for the soul, whether or not it exists seems a waste of time to research, since we will all discover without effort one way or the other when we die.
grant

I didn't know if Rand was or wasn't an atheist.

In your previous post you had said Rand was an atheist. I was just pointing out that the author is a Christian.

I added the paragraphs, hope it is easier to read, sorry.

This article is written from the veiwpoint of a Christain Anarchist, so I am sure Rand as a Atheist, would have much to disagree with in terms of the soul. But I am glad it generated thought.
grant

No

Rand leaves open the question of of theism. She argues, it makes no difference, but despite that and maybe a little because of that, she was an atheist.

We all have our roles.

To read, I encourage.

I am guessing you are young, maybe a student.

Enjoyed much, I did.

I love grassroots inpired thought.

I do have a few disagreements.

Spirituallity, supercedes humanity, and while humanity can corrupt religion, a soul, if it exists, it can not.

I encourage you to read Rand. She, while an athiest, leaves the question of a soul open. She argues that ethics are innate despite or without regards to the existance of a soul and spirituality.

If you exist, these arguements can not be.

If you argue that the conspiracy is to beat death into the masses, then I may, possibly agree to a point. But at the core of humanity, we as individuals still have a choice.

I think you assume something that is easy to assume. That most people are ignorant.

As for me, I am an optimist. I believe in the individual.

I believe that we are all born to be industrialists, but we make choices. Risk, is a key factor in the choices that we make.

The fact is that the power elite may be reducing the risk for the masses and in the long run encouraging innovation and individualism on a mass scale. They do this because of their pessimism. They do not believe the individual is powerful and that an individual can make choices that can change the course of humanity.

Inspired much thought in me, you did.

We all have our roles.

Aaaah! Get some paragraphs in there...

and I might read it!
Cheers

lol

that's what i was thinking! ack! but i sorta made it through it!