“The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.”
~ H.L. Mencken
Consider and accept individual critical thought, self-interest, total independence and freedom, non-aggression, and consider compassion; shun at every level any form of nationalism, ‘patriotism’ to state, conformity, compliance, and obedience. To become an individual is to become free, and being free awakens the soul, opens and cleanses the mind, exposes the beauty of life, and sets one on a course to an inner peace that has been disappeared from what is called the dominate society. All society should forever be subordinate to the individual and individual needs, so long as aggression is absent. In this state of mind, harmonious coexistence is possible. This is the essence of true liberty.
The attitude explained above clarifies that the rule of one over another is a fatal blow to all independence, freedom, joy, peace, and tranquility. It makes clear that all government, (rule by force) regardless of structure, is in total opposition to humanity, and the cause therefore, of aggression, hatred, and division among men. When the few rule over the majority, when the few make and control the decisions for the vast masses, propaganda and lies become the norm, and the truth is purposely hidden, and viewed by most as conspiracy. This scenario can only occur and prosper when mass conformity by the people is evident. Conformity requires silence in the face of tyranny, and conformity leads to collectivism or a non-thinking herd mentality, where all dissent is squelched and enforced from within voluntarily by the very people being ruled. This is of course, a self-perpetuating acceptance of slavery.
Yet ultimately all States rest on hypocrisy and myth.
From ancient Sumer to the present, all governments have been composed of elites. All states originate in conquest and exploitation, and as elite oligarchies, exercise a monopoly of crime over their subjects through war and taxation, indoctrination and propaganda, and the conscription of resources and persons. All states or regimes are characterized by the brutal struggle for power in its diverse open and concealed forms by competing elites. The most significant political division to be observed in such internecine warfare is that between the rulers and the ruled, the “ins” and the “outs,” the elite and the non-elite.
The primary object of every government ruling elite is survival — masquerading under the rubric of “national security” — the jealous maintenance of its power, prestige, opulence and privilege against all potential rivals. All governments, no matter how ruthless and despotic (or seemingly benevolent and just), rest upon the “engineering of consent” of the gullible majority, largely by propaganda beamed at the populace by the rulers and their craven apologists in the complacent and compliant news media.
The rule of the elite is based on force or fraud. This force may be hidden or threatened, and the fraud sustained by a political formula, usually expressed as a generally accepted state religion, ideology, or series of myths. But it is the physical force of the gun that lay behind it all. And it is at your mind that every government gun is aimed.