Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Saturday, June 9, 2012
For everyone out there that
wishes to see a new and better world, you must follow the Mahatma Gandhi’s
advice and “be the change you wish to see in the world”. Nothing will be fixed and it will continue to
seem as if the whole world is broken, if you cannot first act upon your own
vision of what you think the world should be like. This is my vision of the world; it is not
perfect and likely not even right, but it is mine. Change is inevitable and will come. Though, if someone does not try to direct change
in the right direction, you will not see the change you wish to see. Each person must act on their own; separately
from each other. No one can change for
someone else. Each person must train
themselves and not wait for a leader to follow.
“I
learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in
the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has
imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an
invisible boundary; new, universal and more liberal laws will begin to
establish themselves around and within him…. In proportion as he simplifies his
life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not
be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your
work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
- Henry
David Thoreau, Walden
Individual sovereignty is
what should the goal of all change should be.
Individual sovereignty is the identification of the individual person as
the sole and ultimate ruler of themselves.
No other person would hold power over any other person and no person
would be able to deny any other person their right to their own individual
sovereignty. The idea of individual
sovereignty finds its roots in the writings of John Locke[1], a 17th century
British philosopher. John Locke states
in his Two Treatises on Government
that “[every man] has a right to decide what would become of himself and what
he would do, and as having a right to reap the benefits of what he did”. This principle may be hard for most people to
adopt because it is contrary to all previous political belief in human
history. Never before has the individual
been allowed to be their own ruler without the aid of an outside source. Individual sovereignty is not anarchy and
would not result in a leader-less society; instead everyone would be the leader
of themselves.
In this quasi-perfect society, the only true rights are
life, liberty and property. No person
anywhere or from anywhere would ever be denied their life, liberty or
property. Every person would have
citizenship and no person would ever have power over another. I say ‘quasi-perfect’ because these rights
are already there for the taking, the 13th and 14th
amendments to the US Constitution codify the principle and the 14th
even says explicitly that “[No] state shall deprive any person of life, liberty,
or property, without due process of law.”
Now we only need to truly provide this protection to all persons,
regardless of location of residence, national origin, sex, race, or age.
The principle of individual sovereignty, when it is
finally afforded to all people will result in the creation of a government I
call “the Common Law Republic”. The
Common Law Republic will be a government, not only figuratively, but literally
be of the People, by the People, and most importantly for the People. In the Common Law Republic, all people’s
voices will carry the same weight. No
matter how crazy, radical, or out of the mainstream someone’s opinion may be,
they will at least have the dignity of opinion and have the reasonable
expectation of having someone there that will actually listen. In the Common Law Republic, people will
actually be able to decide for themselves; no representatives, no presidents,
or kings, or leaders, only themselves.
Only then will War, Hunger, Violence, Poverty and the Conservation of
Ignorance cease to exist.
Tax resistance is important because
money is the primary source of power that the governments and oppressors of the
world exercise. By refusing to pay
taxes, I am refusing to submit myself to the whims of the military. I would be more than happy to pay taxes, if
my money only went to roads and parks and schools and libraries, but neither I
nor anyone else gets to earmark their tax money to go to these things. A good way to get around this is to refuse to
pay traditional taxes and instead donate your money directly to those responsible
for the creation and maintenance of roads, parks, schools and libraries. If those in power do not have the resources
to impose their law upon everyone else, it will be easier to circumvent them
and begin the process of change.
By voting to abstain, I am refusing to put someone in
power in the first place. If there is no
legitimate and consensual leader, then society becomes more egalitarian and it
becomes possible to communicate with all others on an even playing field, where
no one holds power over any other. Voting is abstain is not the same as not
voting altogether, instead I’m letting the ‘leaders’ of the country know that I
refuse to elect them, any of them. No
matter whom I vote for, my voice and my opinion will not be heard; instead only
the opinions of the rich donors and the party leaders will matter. Without people in power in the first place,
then they aren’t there to circumvent in the first place and then the process change
can truly begin.
Gandhigiri is a term that originates from the 2007
Bollywood movie Lage Raho Munna Bhai[1], which is about an
underworld don in the Indian city of Mumbai called Munna Bhai who sees the
spirit of the Mahatma Gandhi. The image
of Gandhi teaches Munna Bhai about Satyagraha, truth, and non-violence, part of
the whole philosophy which Munna Bhai calls Gandhigiri. Munna Bhai begins to employ Gandhigiri to
help random everyday people with their problems. Since the movie premiered in 2007 Gandhigiri
protests or spontaneous expressions of individual civil disobedience have begun
to appear both in the United States and India.
In 2006, in the Vidarbha region of India, farmers staged a protest
against food prices utilizing flowers as a form of Gandhigiri protest. Going forward Gandhigiri will be the primary means
of resisting civil government everywhere.
Lots of small scale acts of kindness and non-violent civil disobedience
will add up and actually make a real substantial difference in people’s lives.
In 1906, while working as a
lawyer in South Africa, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi began to employ his
principles of Satyagraha or “insistence on truth”. Satyagraha was Gandhi’s philosophy of
non-violent resistance to civil government and as part of Satyagraha he set
forth several rules for non-violent civil resistance. These rules included prohibitions on the
harboring of anger, on retaliation, on insulting your enemies, and he even
instructs people to defend their enemies from the violent attacks of anyone. Gandhi continued to employ his philosophy of
non-violence throughout the rest of his life and through its use successfully
resisted British rule in India until 1947[1], when India and Pakistan
gained independence from the British Empire.
We can look at the Mahatma Gandhi’s rules for non violent
civil resistance as a sort of blue print for widespread, substantial
change. Through the use of tax
resistance, voting to abstain and the newer ‘Gandhigiri’ protests, while
following Gandhi’s rules, I believe that real change is possible and maybe even
likely.
In
Thoreau’s 1854 essay, entitled Life
Without Principle, he states that “if a man walks in the woods for love of
them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he
spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth
bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising
citizen.” This leads into the next problem
with our current system, which is money.
Wage slavery looms heavy over
the heads of workers in this country.
Too often people are forced to live according to the whims of their employers;
workers have no say in how much they get paid and rarely do workers get say in
when and where they will be working.
Wage slavery limits the creativity and imaginative ability of people and
chains them to the interests of the employer.
In a world where robots can manufacture goods for us and even perform
many services for us, why then is there a continued need for people to
manufacture things for consumption instead of devoting their time to pursuits
of progress, imagination and interest?
Is there even a need for everyone to have jobs in the first place? I say that those with the ability not to work
should not, and those who still must work should not allow their employer to
dictate the details of their lives to them, if possible.
So
what exactly is so wrong with our current system? It’s not exactly that there is something
wrong, evil, or bad with the current system, but that the current system is
just simply flawed. For the last 235
years, American government has operated via the system of representative
democracy, aided by elections, political parties and the tyranny of the
majority. It is quite true that our
American system of government has worked correctly up till recent times, but until
about the mid 2000’s, only the wealthy, powerful and wise had their opinions
heard by the masses, but the invention of and mass availability of the internet
has now given anyone and everyone a voice.
The internet has effectively rendered representative democracy,
elections and political parties as relics of an idolized past America and
replaced it with a world where corporations are people and one where candidates
can spend unlimited amounts of their supporter’s money in their attempts to get
elected to public office. The internet,
however, has not hindered the tyranny of the majority, if anything in recent
years the court of public opinion has become even more influential in our
system of government and politics. The
speed, of which information can reach the masses, means that now more than any
other time in human history, everyone can and often does have an opinion about
everything and the internet is an ideal place for anyone to voice their
opinion. The problems are though that it
can be very hard to defuse the more learned opinions with those who don’t know
a whole lot and there is no guarantee that anyone will even read about your
opinion in the first place. As a result
of these problems, real, substantial and effective change is very hard to come
by. Progress, not only in the political
realm, but in the social realm is plagued by gridlock caused by unlimited
debate by those who do not have the authority to create change. American society is more divisive now than
ever in the past, and this is due to the increases in population and the
diversity of the population. Divisiveness,
diversity and unlimited debate are perfectly fine, but we need an outlet for
anyone and everyone to speak their mind and have the reasonable expectation of
having a listening audience who is willing and ready to listen.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Do it youself rules for the 21st Century
In July 1846, poet Henry David Thoreau spent a single night in a jail after refusing to pay poll taxes, which he had not paid for the previous 6 years. After spending this single night in jail Thoreau wrote his famous essay, Resistance to Civil Government, also called Civil Disobedience, which is about his argument for individual non-violent civil resistance against an un-just government. In the essay, Thoreau states that “if a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the state to commit violence and shed innocent blood”. This radical statement of defiance was not unheard of in Thoreau’s time and has been heard from the mouth of humans since nearly the dawn of civilization. The problem is, though while many people sympathize with the sentiment spoken by Thoreau, few have the foolhardiness or the guts to act upon it. Very few people refuse to pay their taxes; mostly out of fear, whether it is out of fear of jail, loss of property or of public ridicule. I say, however, that it only takes a single fool to change the world; it only takes a single fool to end war, or end poverty or to end the conservation of ignorance. The “majority of one” can change; through the use of tax resistance, voting to abstain and Gandhigiri protests, the government can be changed for the better and can and will finally allow people to decide for themselves and be truly free.
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