The Secrets of the Templars in Assassin’s Creed III

When I saw the early trailers for Assassin’s Creed III there were chills, particularly the Rise trailer. For someone like myself who knows the historical, cultural, and philosophical backdrop for the series I expected this game to be a metaphoric call to arms challenging us – the players – the rise up to face the challenges of our own age. In this regard I was slightly disappointed when I played the game. The challenge was there, but it took a very different and more esoteric form than what I had expected.

What we have is not so much a call to arms but rather a revelation. This edition of the series might well have been called “The Rise of the Templars” for in no other storyline do we see the Templars so elevated and the Assassins so downplayed. So, for those who identify with the Assassins the narrative was more of an exposition into the lay of the land.

Within the Assassin’s Creed series there are hidden teachings. They are not hidden because of some diabolical plot. They are hidden simply because most discussion and judgement of games focus exclusively on matters related to general gameplay, such as the graphics or the combat system. The teachings are revealed the story, the characters, dialogue, and themes within the narrative and clearly visible to those familiar with the socio-political background, both historic and modern.

Perhaps teachings is too strong a word. I do not believe that the writers of the series, Corey May, Jefferey Yohalem, Joshua Rubin, and Danny Wallace, have consciously imbued their work with “teachings”, however in creating a series about two rival ideologies it is part of the nature of the beast that these ideologies are explored.

I must stress that when I use the terms “Templars” or “Assassins” I am not referring to any literal organisation, but rather ideologies as presented in the game in the form of these fictional secret societies. In real life, these ideologies are believed, expressed, and acted upon by many individuals who may or may not be part of some formal of organisation.

In Assassin’s Creed III we are given the clearest examples of the Templar ideology in any of the games. In fact, the representative for the Assassins, Connor Kenway, is constantly being derided by the Templars with no strong counter arguments like we saw from Ezio in previous games. Consider these three key quotes from the character Haytham Kenway, the Master Templar in Assassin’s Creed III.

The people never have the power, only the illusion of it. And here is the real secret: they don't want it. The responsibility is too great to bear. It's why they are so quick to fall in line as soon as someone else takes charge. They want to be told what to do. They yearn for it. Little wonder that, since all mankind was built to serve.

I see the world the way it is, not as I wish it would be.

 Even when your kind appears to triumph, still we rise again. And do you know why? It is because the Order is born of a realization. We require no creed. No indoctrination by desperate old men. All we need is that the world be as it is.

Compare these words with those of Shadia Drury, in Leo Strauss and the American Right (1999), she argues that Leo Strauss taught that the "perpetual deception of the citizens by those in power is critical because they need to be led, and they need strong rulers to tell them what's good for them."

Leo Strauss was a professor of political science at the University of Chicago from 1949-1969 and has since become a shadowy but pivotal figure in modern global politics as the “father of neo-conservatism”. Professor Harvey Mansfield, a Straussian philosopher at Harvard University, summed up Strauss’ message for the BBC documentary, The Power of Nightmares (2004).

“He did want to have a school of students to get others to see what he had seen, that Western liberalism led to nihilism. [It] had undergone a development that at the end of which it could no longer define itself or defend itself. A development which took everything praiseworthy and admirable out of human beings and made us think to the dwarf animals, lead us into herd animals, sick little dwarves satisfied with the dangerous life in which nothing is true and everything is permitted.”

The use of the word “liberalism” in the above quote seems to refer to classical liberalism, or what today we might call libertarianism, as opposed to the liberal socialism currently associated with the word liberal.

The story of Connor begins with him being duped. The ancient known as Juno appears to Connor as a “spirit” and sets him on his path with the purpose to prevent the Templars from gaining premature access to her temple, however the quest is presented in such a way that in Connor’s mind he is avenging his mother’s death and protecting his village. In the end he succeeds in protecting the temple, but discovers that the Templars were not responsible for his mother’s death and the Americans that he aided do eventually drive his people from their village, so he failed to achieve what he wanted even though he succeeded in his role as Juno’s pawn.

This is reminiscent of an idea of Leo Strauss. Basically, the he sees society divided into three groups. There are the wise that accept reality as it is in all of its cold brutality and yet do not flinch. The next group are the gentlemen, these are people of belief and honour who are willing to fight and die for their beliefs. The third are the vulgar masses driven by their animalistic desires for self-indulgence and consumerism. Society must be ruled by the covert manipulations of the wise upon the gentlemen to control the vulgar masses.

Juno, who is arguably representative of the Templar ideology, is the wise manipulating the naïve idealism of Connor, the noble gentleman. To put it into a modern context, Drury uses the example of the “wise” Paul Wolfowitz manipulating the “gentleman” George W. Bush into the Iraq War.

The examples above point to the American neoconservatives of the right-wing Republican Party to be analogous to the Templars. This can be supported by a thinly veiled reference to the modern anti-capitalist protestors. As Benjamin Church dies he tells Connor, “Are these the same men and women who fight with muskets forged from British steel? Who bind their wounds with bandages sewn by British hands? How convenient for them. We do the work. They reap the rewards”. This criticism is reminiscent of those levelled against the occupy protestors fighting against the very corporate institutions that provide the iPhones in their hands, their Levis, and the McDonalds they eat.

It is easy to see the Templars as corporatists or Republicans and the Assassins as their liberal opposition, but that is narrow thinking. If we imagine the Templars as presented in the game, then no doubt they would hedge their bets and play both sides. Church goes on to say,

“It's all a matter of perspective. There is no single path through life that's right and fair and does no harm. Do you truly think the Crown has no cause? No right to feel betrayed? You should know better than this, dedicated as you are to fighting Templars - who themselves see their work as just. Think on that the next time you insist your work alone befits the greater good. Your enemy would beg to differ - and would not be without cause.”

What Church is suggesting is the very simple adage that there are two sides to every story, but the implications are incredibly complex. He is describing a context in which no path is without a potential victim and every alleged villain sees himself as an angel fighting evil for the greater good. Connor answers with the weak retort, “Your words may have been sincere, but that does not make them true.”

The answer to Church is not whether someone is morally in the right, either in fact or according to their intensions. The questions are how far they are willing to go to force their will on others and what the natural consequences of their actions are. Connor should have known this, but he was ill-prepared.

When the time came for Connor to become full-fledged Assassin, Achilles decided to forego the ritual. Looking back, we are reminded of this vow taken by the initiate:

Assassin: "Where other men blindly follow the truth, remember..."

Initiate: "Nothing is true."

Assassin: "Where other men are limited by morality or law, remember..."

Initiate: "Everything is permitted."

Assassin: "We work in the dark to serve the light. We are Assassins."

Questions of right and wrong in the conventional sense are merely social constructs and therefore simply the products of many minds in unison. None of it is true. What is true are the consequences of actions. What we see in the traditional right vs. left paradigm are two moral sides operating on the same principles. There is not much in action and consequence to separate the likes of Leo Strauss from his liberal counterparts, like Saul Alinsky and Carroll Quigley. The essential philosophy is the same. People must be controlled, manipulated, and lied to for the greater good as interpreted by the “wise”.

Carroll Quigley was a history professor at Georgetown University and a mentor to President Bill Clinton. In his book, Tragedy and Hope, Quigley writes:

The argument of two parties should represent opposed ideas and policies, one perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinate and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can “throw the rascals out” at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. The policies that are vital and necessary for America are no longer subjects of significant disagreement, but are disputable only in details of procedure, priority, or method.” (1966)

No matter if you choose the path to the left or the right the final destination is the same. Think of it like “good cop/bad cop”. The “Right” is portrayed in a largely negative context in the media, whereas the “Left” in a positive light as those desirous to help people through social programs and welfare. One is the stick and the other the carrot, but the destination is still the corral.

Consider the post-911 world. Avoiding all the conspiracy theories surrounding that incident, the fact is that under the presidency of George W. Bush we saw a huge consolidation of power to the executive office and numerous civil rights losses, both foreign and domestic, particularly under the Patriot Act. The world was outraged; however these policies have been continued and expanded upon under Barack Obama, most notably with the passage of National Defence Authorization Act 2012 which allows for the indefinite detention of American citizens without due process of law and the murder of US citizens on American soil without trial. The only difference between the policies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama are how they are packaged. Where Bush outraged the world as the evil rich, white Republican, popular opinion readily swallowed the same medicine from the caring, black Democrat. But the outcome is the same.

Looking back at Haytham’s statement: “All we need is that the world be as it is. “ It is the natural flow of power to consolidate. The goal of the Templars is to be the ones to whom the power flows, whereas the goal of the Assassins is the dissemination of power from the few to the many.

On the surface, popular opinion is all for the Assassin’s way of things, but in practice this is not the case. As Ezio says in Revelation, “To say that everything is permitted is to understand that we are the architects of our actions and that we must live with our consequences, whether glorious or tragic.” What he is talking about here is the responsibility that comes with power. Power is the means by which people work their will in the world and with these actions come consequences; with freedom comes responsibility. When we take responsibility and consequence from people, they lose their freedom.

In Assassin’s Creed III, the Templars seek to purchase the tribal lands of Connor’s people in order to preserve it from encroachment and thereby protect the Mohawk there. On the surface this looks like a positive act. If Connor went along with it, he would have succeeded in saving his people. However, the Templars wanted to preserve the land not to protect the Indians, but rather to have free access to the temple site and they were more than happy to allow the natives to remain provided they did not interfere.

When William Johnson tried to convince the tribal elders of the Templars’ humanitarian goals, they rejected him citing the idea of personal responsibility. If you want to project us, then give us the means to protect ourselves. When someone seeks to do for you they have taken power from you. You become like a child. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; give him a fish everyday and he becomes your slave.

So when Haytham Kenway reveals the secret that the people do not want power because “The responsibility is too great to bear” this is the principle that he is evoking. If leaders provide the people with bread and circuses (sustain their lives and entertain them), then the people will naturally obey because they do not want to lose their benefits or accept the responsibility that comes with freedom. The state will see to your child’s education, provide benefits when you are unemployed, look after you in your old age, and provide medical care for you. You don’t have to worry about a thing, so you can now focus on reproduction, entertainment, and consumption. All that they ask for in return is your obedience and your taxes.

I have read some reviews of Assassins Creed III in which people seem very disappointed in Connor as a character, whereas his father, the Templar Haytham Kenway is amazingly popular. We see the Assassins through the eyes of the Templars as naïve fools fighting for a world that can never be. As General Pitcairn on his deathbed says to Connor, “You wield your blade like a man, but your mouth like a child”. Likewise, Thomas Hickey mocks Connor for chasing butterflies, ideals that can never be realised. We are also given examples of Assassins who turned to the Templars: Haytham Kenway, Lucy Stillman, and Daniel Cross. At the end of the story our hero, Desmond Miles, chooses the way of Juno and the Templars rather than the path of the Assassins as represented by Minerva. Even Achilles seeks to dissuade Connor from becoming an Assassin. Assuming Connor to be a boy with full knowledge of what he is asking of him, Achilles says, “Oh you might dream of being a hero. Of riding to rescues, of saving the world, but stay this course and the only thing you're gonna be is dead. The world's moved on boy. Best you did too.”

Death, pain, hardship, loss, and public disdain are recurring themes throughout the series. Haytham Kenway recognises that it is the creed that sees the Assassins through the painful life they choose as outcasts and rebels destined to be alone. He rejects the creed as the indoctrination of old men and since many assassins are born into the order one might rightly call the creed an indoctrination of their children. This is a life rejected by Benjamin Tallmadge whose father was an Assassin, but he chose a different life so that he could have a family outside the order. The same can be said of Desmond who was born and raised in the order but ran from it. We are given more examples of people born into the Assassins than we are of those who chose it, whereas all the Templars join as adults.

It can be said that the modern world was born during the Renaissance, but it not come into full maturity until the beginning of the Romantic Era in 1776. The picture presented of the Assassins is one where the Templars embraced the Modern and evolved new strategies to exploit it, but the Assassins are still bound to medieval notions that simply no longer apply.

During the Middle Ages the Templars sought to control people through brute force and during the Renaissance through the force of religion. Both Altair and Ezio were capable of responding on these terms. However, during the modern era the Templars discovered the value of cultivating the illusion of freedom in order to create a plantation of free range humans managed by the Templars. This is something the Assassins are ill-equipped to confront, and we see this in the cynicism of Achilles and the naiveté of Connor.

One might easily see Assassin’s Creed III not as a call to arms but as a revelation of the world as it is. The message is that people by nature value security more than they value freedom. This means that they will willingly submit to any authority capable of providing it. The Templars recognise this fact, so rather than being simply cruel authoritarians according to the stereotype, they are looking to help people by providing security not only from physical threats but also natural ones, like the need for food, shelter, clothing, and medical attention. On the surface this may seem like benevolence, but consider that of the so-called 1% controlling the bulk of America’s wealth, roughly 43% of them live in the counties surrounding Washington DC. The Templars and their cronies are getting rich at the expense of everyone else, nonetheless as long as people feel secure, in every sense of the word, they will accept and even defend the current status.

An important often over-looked point concerning the American Revolution is best exemplified by the Boston Tea Party. Due to changes in the East India Company the price of tea in Boston had never been cheaper, even with the new tax. The people of New England paid far less for tea than the people of Old England. What people miss is that the tea party was not about the amount of tax. The issue was the tax itself as a matter of principle.

The same can be said of arguments against slavery. The average slave was well cared for with food, shelter, clothing, entertainment, and even spending money provided. The issue was not whether the slaves were cared for. It was the principle that no human being should be owned as property.

To put this is a modern context, when people engage in an activity that either national or local government does not approve they seek to ban it in the name of the public health. This was first tried with cigarettes in which a fine, a penalty for usage, was built into the cost of the product and wrongly called “a tax”. Many people supported this because they either did not smoke so the fine did not affect them or they were smokers who knew they should not be smoking anyway. But these health concerns were irrelevant. The principle being established was the power of government to regulate, ban, or fine any legal activity it chooses. Now we see governments placing similar fines on gasoline, trans fats, and even banning large sized sodas in New York City.

Why protest a tea tax when tea has never been cheaper? Why protest slavery when Southern slaves have a better standard of living than Northern factory workers? Why protest fines posing as taxes when I don’t smoke? Because there should be no taxation without representation, because owning another human being is wrong, and because government should not have the power to regulate our consumption. It’s a matter of principle.

Until society as a whole comes to rediscover the concept that principle is more important than immediate benefit, there seems to be no end to this Templar plantation. However, the writers of the game provide two courses of action for the Assassins in response to this subtle form of Templar control.

The first is the way of Minerva. “Let it burn”. This idea in a modern context is that as the system becomes more unstable it begins moving towards its inevitable collapse which is constantly being predicted either through environmental, economic, or social means. Minerva tells us to prepare for it and let it happen so that new life may emerge from the ashes.

The second course of action is somewhat similar and provided in a more subtle form through the example of the Homestead. For readers of Ayn Rand, this may be called “Going Galt”. For survivalists, it’s called “living off the grid”. It involves separating yourself from the Templar plantation, denying their “free stuff”, and living in a community where power is dispersed with each member contributing their time, energy, and skill to others to tend to their mutual needs for food, shelter, clothing, education, medical care, and protection from outsiders.

It seems very likely that this is the final word on the subject. How does the game series end? The Templars win and Assassins Creed III shows us how they won despite the initial victory of principle in the American Revolution. Fast forward two hundred years and the Templars are the mega-corporation called Abstergo and the Assassins are scurrying around like rats in a cave grossly outmanned and out-gunned both militarily and economically.

In a recent interview, Ashraf Ismail, the director of the forthcoming Assassin’s Creed IV, described Assassin’s Creed III as depicting an attempt at democracy that succeeded whereas Assassin’s Creed IV will depicts an attempt that failed.

In many ways it is true that the American Revolution heralded a new era in freedom and the path of the Romantic Era from 1776-1929 has people in a constant movement towards greater freedom, this includes economic freedom for the individual to freeing literal slaves both in America and worldwide. It can be easily said from a Nineteenth Century perspective that the Assassins achieved their goals. Hooray, now we can all go home.

However, from a Twenty-first Century perspective we have seen in the previous century an unprecedented consolidation of power from the individual to the central government, and now local governments can bravely ban anything that a select group decides the people should not have. It seems petty, but it is the principle of the thing.

The Templar secret is just as it is spelled out by Haytham Kenway. People want the freedom to act as they choose, but they do not want the responsibility that comes with the power to act, so they satisfy themselves with the illusions of power, and therefore the illusion of freedom, and look for someone to tell them what to do.

Does that sound crazy? I recently watched a marketing lecture in which a discovery was disclosed. When you ask people what kind of coffee they prefer, the most common answer is dark rich coffee, however when you provide them with various samples to taste and rank the truth is that most Americans prefer weak milky coffee, but who will admit to that?

To those of us conditioned to the ideals of democracy and freedom it may seem absurd to suggest that people do not really want freedom, just as it is absurd to suggest that people prefer weak and milky coffee over a dark roast. The proof of what people are like is expressed in what they choose to do or not do and not in what they say they would do. Historical incidences of people rising up to fight for their freedom are extremely rare in the big picture despite the levels of hardship they endured. Of the few uprisings that succeeded, most quickly fell into another form of authoritarianism. The American War of Independence is more of an exception than a rule and even then only a third of the population supported it.

The Templars accept the world as it is and require no creed.  The Assassins however realise that without a creed, a code of beliefs to discipline oneself to, that our natures would drag us down into complacency and we will accept the unacceptable as “just the way things are”.  As Wendell Phillips said in a speech addressing the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in 1853:

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty—power is ever stealing from the many to the few…. The hand entrusted with power becomes … the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continual oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot: only by unintermitted Agitation can a people be kept sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.

Assassins Creed resonates because we all know who the real-life Templars are. They may not be as obvious and extreme as presented in the game, but on some level we know that there are powerful people in government and commerce consolidating their power. When people lose the power to choose and to act on their choices, then they have lost their freedom. Who are the true Assassins? They are the outcasts who resist these powers.

Author’s Note:  It was a bit of a struggle to finish this one because I had an idea that kept distracting me.  Due to the popularity of my previous article on Assassin’s Creed, with nearly 19,000 views over two years, I have decided to expand it into a self-published book to be sold through Amazon.  I hope to write more on the history and mythology that inspired the series, examine the philosophies expressed, and demonstrate how these apply to the modern real world.

Idiot of the Western World

I finally saw the film, The Cabin in the Woods. I do highly recommend it if you have not seen it. The film introduces five figures which can be viewed as either archetypes or tropes in modern horror films: the athlete, the scholar, the virgin, the whore, and the fool.

The virgin and the whore are well-worn topics. The athlete is the alpha male warrior-type man and the scholar is the beta male who essentially has run human society since the beginning. The alpha may hold the reins of power, but the betas make things happen. The last one is the most fascinating. The archetype of the fool is mislabelled. He is not a fool, he is an idiot.

The word idiot comes from the Greek word idiotes meaning a private citizen or individual. Moving into Latin it becomes idiota meaning the same, an ordinary person or layman. In ancient Athens, the idiot was someone seen as being self-centred and concerned exclusively with private life as opposed to the public life of the citizen. This state of mind was equated with children who were born as self-centred but matured through education to be citizens involved in the public life with others in their community; therefore any adult who possessed these traits was seen as being immature or mentally undeveloped and widely considered to be dishonourable.

As the word moved from Greek to Latin to late Latin to Old French and then into Middle English around 1300 AD, the original meaning of individualism and selfishness was lost and the word idiot came to be defined exclusively as a mentally deficient person.

Marty, the character of the fool in The Cabin in the Woods, is by no means mentally deficient. He is an avid pot smoker, slacker, and social drop-out. He represents an increasing class of people in the West who look at public life and turn their back in disdain. He is an idiot not because of pure selfishness, self-centeredness, or ignorance. He is aware, both cognitively or intuitively, that civic life is a con, and his seemingly paranoid belief in the puppet masters proves correct.

For example, consider that the presidency of Barrack Obama is no different from that of his predecessor, George W. Bush, in terms of policy; and his challenger in the polls for the 2012 election, Mitt Romney, was not that different from Obama. So why bother voting? Why go through a pointless process like election campaigns and civic involvement when the outcome is no different? Why act when the “puppet masters” have predetermined the outcome?

The idiot looks at the world and sees his fellow man scurrying around competing for women always who seem to exploit and reject them in the end.  He sees people paying fortunes for worthless university degrees and end-up working dead-end jobs.  For those who get the great high-paying jobs the cost is freedom sold to employers, spouses, and children.  The view is not that different from the line of reasoning that led King Solomon to declare in Ecclesiastes that all is vanity and striving after the wind – or to put it in the vernacular, “It’s all bullshit”.

The fool in the films Clerks and Clerks 2 is the character Randall Graves who confesses that he behaves as irreverently as he does because when he looks at the world everything looks stupid to him. Likewise we have the Comedian from Watchmen or the Joker from Nolan’s Batman who see the world as one big joke. The idiot sees that the game is fixed and refuses to play, but if he does choose to act, then he acts against society. The Comedian and the Joker are both in the guise of “fools” but their actions veer towards destruction. Likewise, Randall looks to cut down others, and Marty brings about the end of humanity.

A valid question to speculate is whether the idiot in the sense presented here is an archetype or a trope. Archetypes are ancient images preinstalled into the human psyche, like the warrior or the fool, and can be found across time and space in human narratives. A trope is more of a modern convention that recurs in films, television, books, and comics. The idiot has its precursors, such as the fool and the rebel, but I see it as a wholly modern response to a modern context.

In the film, Pump Up the Volume, we have the character Mark Hunter in 1990 who assumes the guise of the pirate DJ known as Happy Harry Hard-on responding to a letter from one of his listeners.

'Dear Harry, I think you're boring and obnoxious and have a high opinion of yourself.' Course some of you are probably thinking I sent this one to myself. 'I think school is okay if you just look at it right. I mean I like your music, but I really don't see why you can't be cheerful for one second.' I'll tell you since you asked. I just arrived in this stupid suburb. I have no friends, no money, no car, no license. And even if I did have a license all I can do is drive out to some stupid mall. Maybe if I'm lucky play some fucking video games, smoke a joint and get stupid. You see, there's nothing to do anymore. Everything decent's been done. All the great themes have been used up. Turned into theme parks. So I don't really find it exactly cheerful to be living in the middle of a totally, like, exhausted decade where there's nothing to look forward to and no one to look up to.

Nine years later, we have Tyler Durden in the film, Fight Club:

Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.

The issues described by these characters over twenty years ago have not improved.  They have gotten more pervasive as more and more people are becoming idiots.

It is common to identify these idiots as rebels. We might contrive that in the case of Tyler Durden in Fight Club, but generally the difference between the idiot and the rebel is that the idiot sees the pointlessness of rebellion. In his mind, cutting-off the hydra’s head will only spawn two more, so what is the point? What Tyler Durden does have in common with the idiots is that he sees the only solution to be not a new head, but the complete destruction of the existing order.

In the world I see - you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.

Looking past the idyllic primitivism of Durden’s desired world, what we see is a life where life has purpose and actions are meaningful and appreciated. In 1980’s post-apocalypse films, we have raiding marauders or mutant monsters. Today’s expressions include shows like Jericho and Revolution that focus on community values, honest living, and a purposeful existence. It is almost as if we want Western Civilization to die.

The television show Revolution is a post-apocalyptic world where electricity stops working and society crumbles. One of the characters, Tom Neville, is a typical tamed man. He works as an insurance adjuster beaten-down by his corporate boss and goes through life meekly asking permission. He lets off steam with a punching bag hung in his basement and tells his son, “We only hit the bag, not people”. After the blackout, the chains come-off and he proves himself to be capable, ruthless, and tough. With civilization gone, he is able to live to a potential that he never knew he possessed. The character may be a villain, but I think many viewers can relate to his position. They cannot articulate this, but they feel trapped.

We live in a world where people seem in practice to define freedom as a state of being free from oppression. When in fact freedom means being free to act without prevention. These may seem very similar, but the difference is vital. A person might say that they are free because they do not fear jackbooted thugs patrolling the streets and harassing citizens, an image that they identify with oppression, true, however neither is there the freedom to act without fear that the government may punish actions through arrests, courts, and penalties. Whether there is active oppression or subtle nudging, the power to act is removed from the individual and without the power to act there is no freedom.

Idiocy is a reaction to this sense of fear and powerlessness, this absence of freedom that the idiot alone recognises. When society at large accepts a particular narrative that they consider normal, then anyone who rejects it is not normal and therefore weird, alien, and outcast. This social exclusion may even exacerbate his rejection of society. He does not want to reform the plantation. He wants to burn it.

They say, “Don’t rock the boat, especially when you are standing in it”. It takes an idiot to do something that stupid, but maybe that is what we need to shake things up.

The Age of Hades

The typical school day for Victorian children consisted of Classics, followed by Classics, then Classics, and then, just to mix things up a bit, Classics. Of course there were other classes too, but much of a student’s school day was devoted to the Classics. As late as the 1920’s, a person was not deemed educated unless he spoke Latin. Today, the Classics are the ghost towns of academia. It’s a pity really.

When I was a boy I studied Greek mythology for fun and much of my adult knowledge on the subject stems from this period, however I have lately been dipping my intellectual toes into these Greek waters once again and I had a rather fascinating realisation.

The word zeitgeist means “the spirit of the age”. It is not a literal spirit; rather it refers to the General Will of the people manifested. Yet, looking over certain periods of history, and taking into consideration the human tendency to see patterns, it is easy to assign a guiding force over the ages of humanity and the Olympians make ideal metaphors for the spirits of the ages.

For example, looking at the Romantic Period (1776-1929) we see a surge in invention, commerce, human understanding, and above all freedom. These are all under the auspices of the Greek goddess Athena. Her image is found in countless works of art and sculptures of the period (including the Statue of Liberty), not to mention federal and local government buildings and seals. Even Britannia and Columbia, the symbolic representations of Britain and America, are based on her. The Romantic Era was the Age of Athena.

This got me thinking. Which Olympian is the spirit of our post-modern age? Apollo? No, he is more suited for The Enlightenment. Dionysius? No, the social chaos is not as widespread as one might expect from the ultimate party god. We supposedly had a sexual revolution and we are obsessed with love, but this is not the Age of Aphrodite. Ares? We’re not so medieval. Hermes? It is the communicate age after all, but that did not seem right either. It’s difficult to truly recognise your age when you’re in the middle of it let alone identify the driving “spirit of the age”. Then it hit me. This is the age of Hades.

After the Olympians defeated the Titans, the three sons of Kronos divided the spoils of earth, sea, and sky between them. Zeus got the sky, Poseidon the sea, and Hades the earth, well, not the earth exactly. The surface of the earth was neutral territory. Hades got the hidden earth underneath. He is the Lord of the Underworld which includes the mineral riches as well as the bodies we bury. He is the ruler of the dead, their judge, and the god of wealth. His name means “the Hidden One”, but he is also known as Pluton in Greek and Pluto in Latin – the Lord of Riches.

Many scholars argue that the Romantic Period ended with World War I. I see the war as part of the beginning of the end, but not the end itself. The true end came with the collapse of the stock market in 1929, financial mismanagement that exacerbated the Great Depression, and the fear that drove the world towards government central planning. It seems fitting to begin the age of Hades with the word depression, a loss of faith and hope.

The spirit of an age is its driving force. For example, some may smirk at labelling the Romantic Period as the age of freedom because of the existence of slavery, but what they fail to consider is that it was a century that saw an active movement to free slaves and it succeeded. The driving force was the process of liberation and not necessarily the absence of slavery.

Likewise when looking at the age of Hades we are looking for the general thrust of the age, the movements of events towards a conclusion. The Romantic Period saw the birth of the Modern and the apex of Western Civilization while our post-modern age is the movement towards its death. Many cultural historians have observed that the patterns of Western Civilization over the past near century indicate a death wish leaving them to conclude that we are a suicidal culture.

Of course this view may be an example of apocalypse porn. The term apocalypse porn was coined to describe the phenomenon in which people derive a perverted pleasure in reading about or theorizing on the end of the world. The fear began in earnest in the 1950’s with the Cold War nuclear scare, then predications of environmental disaster starting in the 1960’s till today, and now its economic collapse we fear or government tyranny. This is not an overt fear, but a lingering one as if it is slowly consuming us from the inside making us numb.

We live in the deadliest age with an estimated 231 million people dying in military or civil conflict during the 20^th Century. The irony is that as a culture we seem to place more value on human life than ever before, and yet our attempts to preserve human life are overshadowed by a massive death toll.

Hades is the god of riches. Traditionally this meant the mineral wealth hidden underground like gems and precious metals. Contrast this with Athena as the goddess of invention and commerce, the creation and exchange of values, therefore Athena is the goddess of capitalism. Hades on the other hand governs existential wealth. It is not created but found wherever it is hidden and once found it is hoarded, for Hades is a greedy god.

In the age of Hades money is still created, but the focus is in moving existential wealth around rather than commerce. Where the Athenian Victorians demanded commerce flow for the sake of prosperity, today the children of Hades demand invisible wealth is transferred from rich to poor with only a sparse choir calling for an increase in production to alleviate financial woes. Even so, the poor are not that poor. The average standard of living far exceeds that of medieval nobility.

Pluto, the Roman name for Hades, gives us the word Plutocracy, rule by the wealthy. There has always been a symbiotic relationship between government and the rich. Politicians want the wealth and the wealthy want the power of force. It is when this relationship becomes a bit too cozy and rulers govern not to defend the rights of the people but to legislate the interests of the rich that we see the hand of Hades at work. Today this is called corporatism or crony capitalism, while some erroneously call it capitalism from their occupying tents.

The Age of Hades has also brought us the death of the family. Should we be surprised by declining birth rates in the West, after all the god of the dead is infertile? Liberated women are now free from life-long familial responsibilities and many men and women now choose to opt out of the family game altogether.

Neo-pagan orientated feminists indulge themselves in Olympian fantasy, but the truth is that Athena hated other women, Hera is the goddess of marriage and family, and Aphrodite is the sexy beauty queen. None of these fit the feminist ideal. A flimsy case could be made for Demeter the goddess of fertility and farming and more so for Artemis, the lesbian huntress, but the best goddess to represent feminism is Persephone, the wife of Hades.

Hades adored his wife and would often acquiesce to her demands to such an extent that she could be rightly considered the co-ruler of the Underworld. In a similar vein, feminists like to believe that they took the power they now have, but the fact is that men gave it to them just like Hades relinquished power to Persephone. The thing is that she hated him for it.

As the judge for the dead, Hades divided new arrivals into three groups: the good, the bad, and the average. Seriously offending the gods resulted in eternal torment. A life un-extraordinary meant being reduced to mere post-mortem sheeple grazing the Asphodel Meadows. Only those who really stood-out from the crowd got the good stuff and this meant being heroic, but very few gained the special rewards or the special torments. The bulk of the deceased were sentenced to a blissful limbo where they forget who they were in life and mechanically pursue routine monotonous activities of no consequence. Film maker George Romero portrayed this metaphorically in his zombie films with people shuffling about in constant consumption continuing their routines long past their sell by date. The state of humanity in the Age of Hades is the walking dead.

Athena loved heroes. She counselled or sponsored Asclepius, Bellerophon, Hercules, Odysseus and Perseus. Likewise during the Age of Athena young boys were inspired to live heroic lives through the body in strength of arms, or through the mind in creation or invention. The greatest challenge for any hero involved a journey into the Underworld to match wits with Hades. Of those who ventured into that dark realm, only Hercules and Orpheus returned (and he left empty handed). Heroes may have been rewarded after death, but in life Hades was not a fan of heroes.

After the Age of Athena ended, the pervasive social mood was to tear down the ideological statues that had been erected to honour Victorian heroes. Individualism gave way to collectivism as the dominant social philosophy. Victims replaced heroes as models for action. Social status went to whichever group could argue themselves as the greatest victims while the heroes of old were repainted as villains. For the first time in history, the losing teams were awarded the trophies.

The thing is that human beings need heroes. The concept is engraved into our DNA. So we quarantine them. Heroes get relegated to works of fiction to be outgrown. We indulge our need vicariously through narratives in television and cinema or in video games, but frown on those who make them legitimate role models for life. Sure, some men might strut around thinking themselves the tough guy, but never have the opportunity to test their imagined mettle, and this makes them arrogant. Rather than lead us to extraordinary lives worthy of the Isle of the Blessed, heroes subjugated by either this dismissive attitude or arrogance lead us deeper into mental limbo as slaves to Hades.

The Age of Hades is one of fear, sorrow, and hopelessness, despite great wealth, in a life without conscious direction, subjugated by the corrupt, and without heroes to save or inspire us. Of course, what I have written here is no more than an interesting observation, a flight of fancy. Yet, one feels obliged when pointing something out to follow with a prescription.

The Age of Athena ended with a general loss of faith. Sure, we lost faith in heroism and the nation-state after World War I and we lost faith in capitalism with the Great Depression. Since then, we have been abandoning many of the virtues of Western Civilization (those being competition, science, medicine, property rights, consumer society, and the work ethic with competition, property rights, and the work ethic being the big losses).

That being so, we need a traumatic event to shake us from our slumber and bring about a great awakening. Not some fanciful “Age of Aquarius” nonsense, but a real fundamental shift in the collective consciousness of the zeitgeist. For thirty years before the end of the Romantic Era people in academia were laying the foundations for this hell on Earth. So it seems reasonable to assume that the best way forward is to lay some new foundations. If we fail, then we may well see the end of Western Civilization as a worst case scenario and the best case, should we fail, will come the Age of Ares.

The Story of Us

I have come to the belief that one of the great casualties of post-modernity is us. Here’s what I mean by that. The human brain is the most complex computer in existence. This particular computer comes with preinstalled software developed about 50,000 years ago. This brain has the ability to perceive roughly 100-150 other humans as being unique individuals; everyone else is just them. You can use other terms to describe them, like randoms, non-player characters, or simply the extras and supporting cast in this film which is your life. The human brain draws this very clear distinction between us and them. I call this the UvT (Us versus Them) Mentality.

The problem is that a basic tenant of post-modernity is that there is no us or them; we are all part of one great, big global village. So the archaic tribal brain is at odds with the post-modern social conditioning. We are trying to force a round peg into a square hole and this denial of reality may prove to be our doom.

Okay. That may seem a bit extreme, but I am not so sure. Some rules of nature are pretty obvious, like jumping from height will be painful or lethal. Other rules are more subtle and the results of violating them are more gradual. It’s kind of like smoking. One cigarette is innocent and harmless enough, but after a pack a day for twenty years the habit takes its toll. The sin is not the cigarette, the sin is the lifestyle. It’s these subtle long-term violations of natural law that are the most dangerous. The denial of the UvT Mentality is just such an insidious sin against nature.

Human social organisation has been pretty consistent over these past 50,000 years. Every living creature is driven to procreate. Among humans, males and females join forces to procreate, feed, and nurture their young. It is advantageous to produce as many off-spring as possible in case some die and to help support the family. These are the first three tiers of human society: the individual, the couple, and the family. But what about these children in the family? They need to procreate as well and keeping it in the family is not the best genetic option. Families need other families. This collection of families constitutes the tribe, the fourth tier of human social organisation.

There is another group that fits snugly in-between the individual and the family; call it tier 1.5. This occurs when a small group of men break away, either literally or metaphorically, from the tribe to seek their fortune and thus become a gang. If successful, gang members do eventual take wives, form families, and either establish a new tribe or re-amalgamate into their old tribe.

The tribe is the key. It is the mental template for human organisation. There are a few key features of note that need to be understood so that we can see how this template works and how it is applied to the higher tiers of human organisation.

The generic tribe that I am describing here is the typical form of human organisation taking into consideration the past 50,000 years. For the sake of perspective, imagine that the modern human brain has only existed for one hour. Agriculture and the city-state emerged in Egypt and Mesopotamia about ten minutes ago and the modern nation-state formed half a second ago. As far the human brain is concerned, non-tribal organisation is bucking the trend and by no means the norm.

The first key feature of the tribe is that it claims a defined territory that it exploits and defends. This is universal. The popular myth that Native Americans, for example, had no concept of land ownership is simply nonsense. All tribes recognise the territory used and defended by the tribe. This creates the fundamental delineation between us in our space and them in theirs. The UvT Mentality begins in this physical space. Within its defined space the tribe develops culture. This includes language, beliefs, rituals, history, and stories. This creates a second border that transcends the physical plane to become conceptual. We are different from them.

The tribe exists for one purpose. It exists to flourish. The first part of flourishing is survival, and then as survival becomes easier the tribe looks to prosper. These are the seeds of human morality. Killing, robbing, or lying to members of your own tribe runs counter to the tribe’s purpose because such acts diminish the tribe’s ability to survive. However, in order to prosper it may be necessary to kill, rob, or deceive members of another tribe. So a double-standard develops. Thou shalt not murder your own kind, but you can kill outsiders. There is one standard for us and another standard when dealing with them.

Likewise behaviours considered to be virtuous have their origins within the tribal context. There is an innate sense of co-operation and mutual concern for the well-being of others in the tribe. A man may willingly and happily sacrifice his time, energy, and skill to do a favour for a fellow tribesman. Similarly, he may readily obey a tribal leader directing the actions of the tribesmen for the good of the tribe because he knows that by helping others he is indirectly helping himself. This has to do in part with the interdependency among its members. Abstract concepts like duty, honour, altruism, and human value all stem from the physical necessities for survival found in tribal existence.

It is important to note that the UvT Mentality is not inherently hostile towards those outside the tribe. You may trade with them, ally with them; be friends with them; live among them, and you may even marry from them, but they are still them.

The next tier of human organisation is the nation, a collection of tribes sharing common language, history, culture, beliefs, values, and virtues. This commonality leads to the pervasive belief that the tribes comprising the nation are one people.

To us the step from tribe to nation seems small, but it represents a huge leap in consciousness. The key features of tribal existence are practical and immediate. The members of the tribe live, work, fight, produce, and endure together. Think of it like a family. Imagine two brothers who go their separate ways and form families and you are a child born of one of these families. You grow-up on an isolated farm among your brothers and sisters and led by your father and mother. You work your farm and defend it from outsiders. Then one day an man appears that your father introduces as being your cousin and therefore part of the family. This does not make any sense to you. How can this outsider be part of your family when he is a stranger? To understand this you have to make a cognitive leap and redefine your concept of family to include distant blood relatives who have their own farms where they live, work, produce, and endure with their immediate family, but are still part of your family.

It’s a common phenomenon in history where an invading army conquers an area by picking-off one tribe at a time. These tribes shared a common language, culture, and beliefs, but never united against their common enemy because they failed to make that cognitive leap from the practical tribal identity to the conceptual national identity.

The first four tiers of human organisation, from individual to couple to family to tribe, are straightforward and based largely on immediate and observable necessity. With the advent of the nation and conceptual national identity, human organisation starts to become more abstract. The birth of national identity marks the beginning of a process of transference in which many tribal features move to the national level. The final three tiers of human organisation, the nation, the nation-state, and multiculturalism, are phases in this progression.

The driving forces behind this progression are technological advances in travel times and communication. In eight hours a man can travel 24 miles, a horse 40 miles, an 1850’s steam train 280 miles, a car 480 miles, and a modern passenger jet 4,400 miles. If the nearest tribe or village was fifty miles away, then you could reach them in two days by foot or ride there in one day. With industrialisation you could be in the next town fifty miles away in less than two hours, and today you could drive fifty miles to the other end of the city in less than an hour depending on traffic. The same applies to communications. A letter once travelled as fast as man or horse could carry it but today it moves at light speed.

The early nations were a confederation of largely autonomous tribes residing in fixed locations. Over time more power shifted to a ruling central authority administering a much larger territory and the tribal territories evolved into villages and towns.  As more and more people participated in the governance of the nation we see the beginnings of the sixth tier, the institutionalised nation commonly called the nation-state. The United Kingdom became the first modern nation-state in 1707 followed by the United States in 1783 and France in 1789. In the nation-state, we see a transference of the practical tribal features, such as common territory, mutual interdependency, and common culture, beliefs, language, virtues, and values to the national level and a more institutionalised sense of “us” than we see in the nation.

The basic tribes does still exist, but in the form of villages, small towns, neighbourhoods, and communities within the larger structure of the nation-state. As with the nation, the tribes are united by a shared belief in the unity of the people, their nation-state, and a shared purpose. This is commonly called patriotism among the insiders and nationalism to the outsiders. They still retain a local sense of tribe, but it has more to do with things like interpersonal relationships, sentimentality, and local pride than the urgency of survival and prosperity that we see in the basic tribal model.

The nation-state, like the nation itself, is the product of a shift in consciousness in which the individual’s concept of “us” is expanded to include strangers that we presume to be like us. Conceptual identity is a tricky thing. I may say that I am proud to be an American, but my idea of America may be different from another American’s. There is a presumption that we are part of the same tribe, but that presumption could be based on nonsense. This is why the nation-state needed to function like a giant tribe with clearly defined physical and cultural borders that defined us as being a distinct group.

Call it patriotism or nationalism, but either way the nation-state constantly reinforced tribal identity and tribal morality. In the film Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, a British soldier during the Zulu War observes, “Here is better than home, eh, sir? I mean, at home if you kill someone they arrest you, here they'll give you a gun and show you what to do, sir. I mean, I killed fifteen of those buggers. Now, at home they'd hang me, here they'll give me a fucking medal, sir." The scene is funny because we can no longer conceive the tribe-oriented code that says that it is morally right to kill them to advance the tribe, but immoral to kill us. We cannot conceive it because we have moved into the seventh tier of human organisation called multiculturalism.

High speed travel and communications, the complex, varied, and specialised division of labour, and changes in family law have drastically altered the context of human existence. Multiculturalism is an attempt to expand upon the presumption of commonality found within the nation-state to a global scale to include all humanity as one huge tribe of 7 billion people with different, and sometimes conflicting, cultures, beliefs, values, and virtues.

The post-modern individual still needs other humans, but they are nameless, faceless others. They are strangers scattered across the globe who make our clothes and stock our supermarkets. It is now possible for the first time in history for a person to live without family, friends, or tribe, independent of any community. There is no sense of mutual dependency to bind couples together till death do they part since they do not really need each other anymore, and kids don’t need their parents either. Emotional ties may still bind them, but these relationships are not needed for survival as in the old days. Without concrete mutual dependency the tribe becomes so abstract that it becomes subject to personal whims. The couple, family, gang, tribe, nation, or nation-state still exists because people will it to exist and not because it needs to exist. So we find ourselves trying to navigate a place where the tribe remain a psychological necessity, but not a physical imperative, and so it becomes an emotional luxury.

At the start I illustrated how many abstract values are rooted in concrete necessity. For example, in a conflict where you are protecting the territory from which your tribe derives the resources required for mutual survival, loyalty and honour become vital abstract tools necessary for concrete survival. The absence of loyalty from your fellows or a negative reputation could lead to disaster, but today the cure for disloyalty or a bad reputation is as simple as changing your circle of friends or moving to another part of town. When our morality is no longer rooted in practicality, it becomes little more a vestigial organ with which we feel only a sentimental attachment.

Where villages, small towns, neighbourhoods and communities once fulfilled the human instinctual need for a tribe we now see cultural consumption as the primary delineator of groups. These are usually recognised as subcultures, lifestyle groups, supporters of sports teams, political groups, or hobbyists. These post-modern tribes satisfy our superficial need for community without the sacrifice or permanence that makes it a real tribe.

In the tribal context the individual had value among the people who had known him his whole life. If he wanted to be a craftsman, artist, performer, scholar, or warrior he could be and people valued him for his contribution. In the nation-state you could attain national notoriety but today we demand global notoriety, anything less is just local and therefore deemed not as good or simply amateur. We might argue that we are getting the best of the best by demanding global quality, but the trade-off is that a lower percentage of people can make a living doing what they enjoy and be valued for doing it.

Despite the fact that the current global context is not conducive to tribalism, humans are still hardwired to be tribal creatures and this leads to social divisions and exploitation. For example, looking at the stereotypical Right/Left political paradigm we see the Right operating on a sixth tier model of the independent nation-state sharing common culture, value and beliefs, fixed borders, stressing family and community, and recognise one rule for us and another for them (if one American dies it’s a tragedy but if a thousand Iraqis die it’s a statistic). Any threat to that worldview is seen as an attack on the nation-state and therefore the tribe.

The modus operandi for the Left is more seventh tier as they attempt to apply the pre-programmed tribal model universally. A tribe takes care of its own, therefore we must ensure that no one goes without social support, including people living thousands of miles away in Africa. Multiculturalism and diversity must be promoted regardless of the values and virtues that they promote since all cultures and beliefs are deemed of equal value. Since all humans are part of the same tribe, all human life is sacred and morality must be applied across the board regardless.

So here’s the problem. The right-wing view that I presented here runs counter to the current context in which we live and the only way to change that is through drastic action to save the indivisibility of the nation-state. However, the left-wing view runs counter to the UvT Mentality inherent in human nature, and therefore is also destined to fail without drastic action to force conformity. Both sides need a hammer to pound that round peg of ideology into the square hole of reality but are unable or unwilling to use it.

Another arena where the UvT Mentality is exploited is in the business world where companies attempt to mould their employees into a tribe rallying behind the corporate banner. What they fail to recognise is that the days of life-long employment with a single company are over. Most employees are mercenaries selling their skills to the highest bidder – and rightly so.

So who is your tribe? I have spent most of my life trying to answer that question as I searched the world looking to find “my kind”. I finally found my answer in a quote by the French philosopher Voltaire. “All people are equal, it is not birth, it is virtue alone that makes the difference.”

A virtue is a positive habit and is often linked to values, those things a person acts to gain or to keep. Each of us looks at the world and decides what is worth acting for and which actions are positive (good) and which are negative (bad) in getting them. Collectively, these choices constitute our lifestyle and therefore compose our identity. We are what we do.

Ultimately, what separates one person from another; what makes one man or group of men better or worse than another; what unites a tribe and divides one tribe from another are virtues and values. The virtues and values that a person subscribes to were once primarily the product of social conditioning within the family, tribe, nation, and nation-state. This is still true to a degree, but a primary feature of our multicultural state of post-modernity is the absence of a single dominant ethical system of universally accepted virtues and values. Truth is seen as subjective and therefore little more than opinion.

This condition leaves each of us trying to find a tribe that shares our ideas of what is virtuous and what to value. We possess an innate instinct to be a part of that tribe wherever it might be. Some people happily accept the standard that they were given in their social conditioning. Others want to change the world the fit their standards. Others still just want to find their community and shut the rest of the world out. There seems to be a growing number of people who secretly long for socio-economic collapse and a forced return to tribalism. All that I can answer to that is each person must discover their own standards and be true to their beliefs.  These days the members of your tribe or nation include anyone that you choose to include as your people within that mental construct called us.

The Libertarian Challenge

Author’s Note: I began writing this with the intention of posting it on the party website of the Scottish Libertarians, unfortunately as I explored these ideas it grew and grew.  On account of the length and possibly some controversial points I decided to post it here instead.  This may change should party members deem it appropriate for the  party site.

Nearly one year ago I agreed to the post of party leader for the Scottish Libertarians. At first it was easy. The job was all about laying the foundations. This is the party image, this is the party organisation, this is the party platform, and here is our webpage. Then things got difficult. We were all dressed-up, but where should we go?

I started thinking about what we as a party needed to do. Libertarians are great when it comes to criticising government economic and social policy. The mass media is rife with examples of things to complain about. We also have a talent for proposing theories of how things should function, or bringing-up historical examples of things that worked and where things went wrong. There is also plenty of information on economic policies from libertarians and their think tanks. Oh, and let’s not forget the internal and external arguments of how things should be. What’s missing is action.

In this last United States presidential election, the libertarian Republican Ron Paul created quite a stir and gathered a passionate following, but failed to gain the nomination (partly due to GOP trickery). The Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson received just over a million votes, which was one of the best showings in party history, meanwhile President Obama won with just over 50 million and Romney lost by just under the same figure. So what did the American libertarians do? They followed the standard playbook for the modern elections. They campaigned, debated, and lost to both parties 100 million to one.

In the face of such disappointment, the question becomes “What are we as libertarians to do?” I see two challenges facing the movement. One involves changing public awareness and the other is about preparing ourselves to manage that change if and when it comes.

Challenge 1: Invisible Slavery and the Slave Mind

The primary message of libertarians is liberty. This means each individual may choose their actions free from outside force or coercion. To a libertarian, the opposite of freedom is slavery. What people fail to grasp is that slavery is insidious – something seemingly harmless but to grave affect.

During the entire history of slavery in America there were only half a dozen slave uprisings despite the large percentage of slaves and freed slaves. This is a shocking figure because it is difficult for us to comprehend with our modern mindset how accepted the institution of slavery was in society.

There are two reasons for this. For one, humans have an incredible capacity for self-subjugation. History shows black slaves in North America and white slaves in North Africa assuming the same docile and servile attitude and they perceived the goals of their master to be their own. In exchange, he provides all the necessities of life. This is the second reason. On the plantations, the slaves were accorded numerous privileges of free movement and entertainment, provided they showed-up for work sober and ready. It was also common for slaves to be allowed to keep excess crops which they sold for some spending money. Thrifty slaves even purchased their freedom and some even went on to own slaves themselves.

Of the handful of slave rebellions, the two most famous were those of Nat Turner and John Brown. Turner was by all accounts a model slave who claimed to have a great love for his master, but he had divine visions instructing him to rise-up when a sign was given. He read an eclipse as the sign and went on a murder spree with a few friends that eventually grew to about forty slaves. Most were killed by local militia, some turned on their comrades, and eventually Turner was put to death. To me the interesting thing about Turner is that this clearly deranged individual did what we today would consider to be the only sane act given the institution of slavery, but at the time it was deemed a part of his madness.

John Brown’s Raid on Harper’s Ferry is part of American legend. He had planned to attack the town of Harper’s Ferry with his band of white abolitionist and a few blacks, take control of the armoury, arm the slaves there to bolster his ranks, and strike a blow for freedom. The slaves did not rise-up to join him and he lost. Brown’s story ends at the gallows.

For those who saw slavery as an injustice, John Brown was a martyr who gave his life in a fight for freedom. For those who could not conceive anything wrong with slavery, as was the mainstream point of view for centuries, then John Brown was a domestic terrorist. Likewise, Nat Turner was a religious fanatic reminiscent of David Koresh in Waco or any number of Muslim extremist. Nat Turner and his band slaughtered men, women, and children because God told him to, but for many he is a hero for his rebellion against slavery because we see slavery as immoral.

The French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau observed that society is driven by the General Will of the people. This is not the will of the majority, but rather a sort of gestalt produced by the interactions of each individual’s will. It is similar, if not the same, as zeitgeist, the Spirit of the Age. The General Will may not be based on majority opinion, but the majority view has the power to create the accepted narrative of what people consider being “normal”. Anything outside the normal is viewed as backward, stupid, corrupt, weird, or even evil. When the General Will holds the narrative that slavery is the acceptable norm, then any call for liberty is fringe at best and evil at worst. In fact, those people socially conditioned to the norm cannot even conceive how something like slavery is wrong.

Another place to look is the American War of Independence. Americans make a big deal over their country and its history. Fact is that until the early part of the last century no one really cared. The American victory was the back page story in the first edition of the Glasgow Herald. The United Kingdom drew more revenue by far from Jamaica then from all of the Thirteen Colonies combined. Because of their limited value, Britain pretty much ignored British North America, and as a result the colonies established their own local governments that ran for centuries. Then the Seven Years War happened.

This was the first truly global war fought between Great Britain and France. In North America, it was known as the French-Indian War. When it was over, Britain expected the colonies to pay their share of the cost of defending them and levied small taxes to this purpose. These were the taxes that led to events such as the Boston Tea Party. The fact is that due to changes in the East India Company, tea in Boston had never been cheaper, even with the tax (which had just dropped from one shilling to three pence per pound). The Tea Party was not a protest over the amount of tax. It was a protest over the right to tax. Also, it was not merely a protest. It was an act of destruction with £10,000 worth of property destroyed. Based on average earnings, that is about £15 million in today’s currency.

To truly understand history and learn its lessons, we must imagine a world where we have a personal investment in the story. So imagine a group of fringe protestors complaining about a tax on iPads. For you, the amount of the tax is so trivial that you do not care, and even if you did care, you know that there is nothing that you can do about it so just accept it. Then you read in the paper that a group of protestors broke into a warehouse and destroyed a recent shipment of iPads worth £15 million. How would you feel? Especially when you planned on buying one. So how does this news story strike you? Were the protestor’s actions a bit extreme?

The average New Englander in 1773 had a better standard of living than an Old Englander. By the same token, the average slave on a Southern plantation had a better living standard than a free Northern factory worker, but after the American Civil War the former slaves were even worse off economically. So if one judges a living standard as the sole measure of good, then there was no reason to rebel against either the government or the plantation system.

The challenge facing libertarians is that the General Will of the people accepts as the norm what we as libertarians consider slavery. Our protests are ignored because people have so deeply accepted their condition that they do not see themselves as slaves.

The demonization of the institution of slavery has clouded the issue in people’s minds. If you see slavery as a state of bondage, chains, and regularly whippings, then no, we are not slaves. However, when you recognise that slaves were given a great many liberties provided they showed-up for work, it does not look that different from our current situation where rights, the right to actions, are viewed as being allowed by the State rather than being inherent.

People do not want to rock the boat that they are standing in or willing to bite the hand that feeds them, at least until the boat starts sinking and the food runs out. Until that time, if it ever occurs, libertarians will continue denouncing a slavery invisible to all but themselves and thus remain on the fringe.

Challenge 2: The Will to Fight for Freedom

There are five primary tools in the box when it comes to resolving conflict. The first four are avoidance, accommodation, compromise, and collaboration. Avoidance and accommodation are self-evident. The difference between compromise and collaboration is that in a compromise both parties lose something, but in collaboration we are looking for the win/win resolution. The fifth tool is the hammer – force.

Thomas Jefferson said, "When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny."!" A version of this quote has become popular among libertarians as taken from the film V for Vendetta. "People shouldn't be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people."

So how do we instil fear in the government? How about we write a strongly worded letter to our representatives, perhaps make a Youtube video, and if we can get enough people together, then we can march around carrying signs for a few hours and shout at them. That should put the fear into them.

What many libertarians do not seem to understand is that liberty is about power. It is a cliché to say, “Power to the people”, but that’s what libertarianism is. We seek to remove power from the State and redistribute it among smaller and smaller groups all the way down to the individual. People with power, as well as those dependent on that power, do not want this redistribution. Looking at history, it is very very rare for any person or body to relinquish power voluntarily. It is taken by force, not negotiation or peaceful protest.

Take the average bureaucrat backed by the power of the State, its laws, and its law enforcers. Do you think he fears the petitioner begging the government to get off his back? Of course not.

I’m from Los Angeles. Back in the 1980’s there was a rash of shootings on the freeways there. The result is that people became more courteous drivers. Manners and common courtesy were born of fear as any insulting behaviour may result in a duel and your death. Even now we use the phrase, “teach him some manners” as a euphemism for getting into a fight.

Now suppose a local city government is pushing forward some kind of legislation that will result in someone losing their home. A man attends all the council meetings stating his case, but is continually ignored, even while he is speaking. After all, he has no power, so why care what he thinks. The resolution passes and the man is left destitute. So he arms himself to the teeth, goes into city hall, and massacres ten men and women before killing himself. The news portrays him as a loner and a psychopath denouncing his evil and mindless act of violence. What is lost in translation is that this was an act of rebellion.

When the number of people with nothing to lose due to a sense of powerlessness reaches critical mass, it erupts into revolution. Until that time, if it ever occurs, what you have are sporadic rebellions. These isolated incidences are easily dismissed as the work of deranged or evil individuals, like Nat Turner, John Brown, or arguably Timothy McVeigh. These rebels are so convinced of their rectitude that they assume others see the world as they see it and are only awaiting opportunity, but alas the people failed to rise. They are so conditioned to their invisible slavery that it is easier to dismiss these violent incidences as acts of evil, insanity, or terrorism.

Revolutions are messy affairs sparked more by rage than ideology; nonetheless a narrative eventually emerges in the inferno. Rage precedes ideology. People choose to fight and later the intellectuals put a label on it. Think of revolutions as lower-class rage wrapped-up in middle-class values funded by upper-class ambition.

Here’s a modern example from the London riots of August 2011 taken from The Metro newspaper:

The 17-year-olds were drinking stolen rosé wine at 9.30am yesterday as they laughed about the previous night’s disturbances in south London and made vague complaints about ‘rich people’.

One told the BBC: ‘Everyone was just on a riot, going mad, chucking things, chucking bottles – it was good, though.’

Her friend added: ‘Breaking into shops – it was madness, it was good fun.’

One of the girls bragged about ‘getting a couple of free things’, before insisting: ‘It’s the government’s fault. I don’t know. Conservatives, whoever it is. It’s the rich people who’ve got businesses and that’s why all this happened.’

They said further crimes would ‘hopefully’ follow.

These girls hardly seem the heralds of revolution, but consider that the Boston Massacre of 1770 was instigated by a group of drunken men emerging from the pub who thought it would be quite fun to throw shit (literally) at the soldiers on guard duty. In the nervous pandemonium the soldiers opened fire killing the men. They were later exonerated in court, but the incident was still used to fuel the revolution.

In the case of these two girls, they are not exactly politically astute, but they are parroting a message – a socialist one. Indeed, these fun-fuelled attacks on small business owners in a poor community were transformed in some media circles as the people rising against capitalist oppression. Rage, or in this case opportunistic, destructive fun, precedes ideology.

Libertarians have the ideology, its precedents, and their arguments, but this is all just polite, middle-class, socio-political economic theory. Nice people do not instil fear, but is important to remember that fear and respect are linguistically linked.

Here is how the pattern usually plays out. The revolutionaries of the polite middle-class intellectuals incite the poor to anger and they act on their rage violently. In the midst of the chaos the revolutionaries condemn such violent behaviour in the media, but then add that such problems should be expected given the current state of affairs. This way they keep their hands clean while still achieving their purpose.

Libertarians seem to lack this understanding of revolution. They seem to think that by simply making their intellectual case that the day will be won through peaceful and rational discourse and the ballot box. History shows this rarely if ever wins the day.

I am by no means advocating or encouraging violence or bloody revolution in pointing-out this historical pattern. I am illustrating that libertarians lay-out all their tools for conflict resolution on the table, but leave the hammer in box. We speak of fighting for freedom, but we mean only metaphoric fighting because literally fighting would be too risky and messy. People with power do not fear metaphoric threats.

American libertarians are always speaking of their right to bear arms as a defence against the government. The fact is that owning a gun will not protect you against the local cops let alone the might of the US government. To put the American War of Independence into a modern context, local militias would need to be armed with F-22 Raptors and tomahawk missiles to pose a threat. In a modern revolution, the hammer becomes a dangerous tool to wield because the opposition has more and bigger hammers, but that does not mean it should be left entirely in the box.

Summary

I see two challenges facing the global liberty movement. One is invisible slavery and the other is the willingness to fight that slavery. The only people who respond to the message of liberty are those people who recognise the existence of slavery, the absence of freedom. Speaking out against invisible monsters is crazy, but it’s even crazier to fight them. That only makes you look like an evil psychopath.

For the Classicists, I would say that we are living on the Island of the Lotus Eaters, but for the more modern audience, let’s just call it The Matrix. People go about their lives working, loving, and entertaining themselves completely unaware that they are nothing more than a battery powering a system. They have enough without realising that they could have more, the more that is being taken from them.

Now suppose you convince people of their slavery, what then? White people are often condemned for the institution of slavery in America, but truth be told the fault does not lie entirely there. First, there were very few slave uprisings on account of the slave mentality, which is partly inherent in human nature but was also encouraged by the white masters. Secondly, of the few uprisings many slaves took arms to defend their masters from other slaves. This is due in part to the afore mentioned slave mentality, but also slaves do not like other slaves acting above their station. All slaves are equally slaves. Some slaves may be granted special privileges for services rendered or special punishments for misdeeds, but no slave likes to see another slave demanding more than they themselves are willing to accept.

This demonstrates that convincing people that they are slaves is only part of the battle. Beyond that some people perceive themselves to be benefitting from their slavery and are more than willing to defend it even with the knowledge of their status. Others have a risk aversion. They do not want to lose what they have got. I know a few libertarians who took jobs in the public sector and any anti-government activism could threaten that. This is no ill judgement on them, but simply a fact of life.

Then there is the issue of violence. Intellectually, I can see the necessity. In the heat of passion, I may call for it. However, like most libertarians I am not violent by nature or willing to take what I consider foolish risks that may jeopardise my own little comfort niche. So what is to be done?

I consider myself to be a Nineteenth Century kind of guy, in other words we need to fight. However, the vast majority of my fellow libertarians are more Twentieth Century, this means holding protest rallies, handing-out literature, getting into the mainstream media, and electing libertarians into public office. Then there is the growing Twenty-first Century approach. This involves internet postings, blogs, and chat room debates. Finally, there is the Apocalypse non-approach. This group foresees the inevitable collapse of the current system under its own weight, similar to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and figures that nothing can be done except to brace yourself for the inevitable crash and let libertarianism rise from the ashes.

As I ponder my leadership role I find myself torn because I agree with all of these approaches while at the same time cannot advocate any of them because their efficacy eludes me. Do we fight? Sure, but fight who and to what benefit? Protests don’t work and the mainstream media will tell their story not ours. Any politicians we elect will be grossly outnumbered and may even go native. The internet is wonderful, but like the protests it is full of sound and fury signifying nothing. The duck and cover scenario makes sense, but at the same time seems too nihilistic and escapist.

Whenever I get stuck like this there are two places I go. One is back to basics and the other is collaboration. The first looks at human nature and the other looks for the win/win relationship between all these conflicting ideas.

Humans are small group animals and civilization begins with a gang that becomes a tribe united by common purpose. So the solution is for libertarians to form their gangs. Ignore the big set pieces. You cannot change the world or your country and you probably cannot even challenge your city council effectively. What you can do is form immediate relationships. By immediate I mean people at hand, so do not count your Facebook friends thousands of miles away. Once you found your gang, then start doing things together. Go to the pub, see a movie, or find some physical activity. The important thing is building the relationships. What everyone will naturally bring to the table is their beliefs and their friends. The beliefs provide the common purpose and the friends bring recruits.

As for purpose, the goal of every libertarian should be freedom. Not freedom from oppression since most slaves are not literally oppressed with whips, chains, and imprisonment and thus do not see themselves as oppressed. Just freedom from slavery. The first step in this is simply to nudge people to anger. In sales this is called, “pushing the bruise”. It is better for people to be angry than afraid. If you see an opportunity to speak out against the current system in your daily life, then do it.

Another part of this local tribal approach is children. The dominant ideology today got there not by protests or revolution but by taking over the education system. I tend to avoid children, but if you like the little rugrats, then go be a role model for them as a libertarian.

Finally, I do not advocate violence, but do not be afraid to get your hands a little dirty. Feel free to vandalise propaganda either from the government or from rival ideologies or special interest groups. There is no need for their lies to go unchallenged. If perchance some rebel commits some horrible act, then denounce it, but do not be afraid to insinuate that the guy may have had a point there. You do not have to use the hammer, but do not be afraid to put in on the table alongside the other tools for conflict resolution.

I am not implying that libertarians should reject the traditional approaches to political activism. Right now that’s all we’ve got. Simply that the primary focus should be community. If all the libertarians scattered throughout the world started just looking after their own little monkeysphere, then chances are that the change we are looking for will eventually take care of itself as local groups grow, expand, and potentially join other groups.

It could be said that the greatest challenge facing libertarians is a lack of several forms of power; we lack the money, the influence, the numbers, and the guns, all of which the opposition has in abundance. I think the challenge has more to do with the General Will. Either way, we should do what groups in our position have done in the past. Be the gang of rebels and outsiders nipping at the heels of an unjust system in hopes that our example will inspire the people to rise.