A threat-based civilisation is not civil
The weak barbarism of coercion vs. the steadfast civility of voluntaryism
Rome conquered the Hellenic free cities by force. Yet the Hellenic cities conquered Rome with ideas. The Hellenics submitted reluctantly to Rome. Yet Rome voluntarily adopted Hellenic ideals. Which conquest was more meaningful and more timeless?
Indeed, the threat of violence from the imperium dominates the physical… but the ideals of freedom move the spirit - the only thing that can be indominable.
As long as violence is the only way to organise society, there can be no civility.
Morally speaking, violence can only be used as self-defence against direct threats. But when violence is used to coerce people to do what they don’t want to do, then whatever they do loses meaning. No one has a moral right to impose any arbitrary thing on anyone.
Take drugs, for example. No one and no majority have the right to arbitrarily decide what plants to make illegal. Take education. No one has any right to arbitrarily decide what curricula, by whom, and for how long they are to be force-taught. No one has the right to arbitrarily decide how much of your voluntarily earned pay you owe them to spend how they decide, and how much you supposedly owe to the supposedly “poor and needy.”
Coercion is most uncivilised. What you gain from it is unearned and undeserved. You feel like a fraud as your impostor syndrome sets in:
What you have by force depends on people’s circumstantial weakness as compared to you… until circumstances change. What you have relies on the external opportunity of a strength disparity, not your worth. If it were your worth, then people would voluntarily be giving you what you earned from them, and no threat would be needed.
And for the deliberate straw men out there, defensive or reciprocal violence is not coercion. You can’t coerce someone not to kill you. It is insane to think that.
Conquest is not strength. Conquest is weakness. Conquest is flipping the boardgame because you can’t win fair and square. Conquest is the weak-willed exploiting circumstantial external advantages to subdue by force, not to win via grace on an even playing field.
The rapist is weak and pathetic because he never earns the carnal pleasure he takes. The lover, on the other hand, receives the pleasure and the intimacy of making love, because it is voluntary - it is earned, and therefore, deserved. And therefore, truly satisfying.
Conquest is the same as rape: forcefully taking resources and exploiting people because you are too dumb, or lazy, or useless to win them over in mutual exchange of value.
Yet we still run our societies with nothing but the threat of violence of the state… and we have the gall to call this a civilisation?
What good is Empire when its people are conquered by force and not won over by their own will?
Thank you for reading. I appreciate your time.
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The Roman Empire was socialist - Addendum
Of all the self-important megalomaniacs found in the academic shamanic class, I loathe historians the most. They are the guardians of historical narratives, not the arbiters of facts. They are responsible for humanity’s failure to learn from its historical mistakes, and they thus through deceit protect the ruling classes.
The Roman Empire was Socialist
Appeal to definition fallacies concern themselves with form rather than function. Yes I am well aware that the word “socialism” appeared well after the Roman Empire was reduced to nothing but dust, partisanship and desperately idealistic homo-erotic fantasies. I don’t care. I care about function; and since the term “
That’s why I had to leave teaching. The Department Of Education will tell you everything to do down to the most minute detail. They know people hate it. I pray to God the Department Of Education gets abolished. Yes a lot of women will lose jobs but good!!! That would be better for society anyway!
They are putting more more women on the government payroll every day.
That’s one of the ways they get the women to be Democrats. Make sure their salary it’s pretty good, a lot of state benefits that everybody has to pay for and they will always vote Democrat to keep their job
I love this post and especially your defense of your position in the comments.
I would say that the American colonies were a proxy for a “stateless” association of individuals. I am positive that you or someone else could argue against this thesis, but at worst, pre-constitution, the colonies taken together were a confederacy of weak states will little real power to coerce their respective populations.
I think you could use this period in American history to further your case for a stateless association of individuals.
PS—At your suggestion (recommendations in one of your posts) I have researched and read Larken Rose. I found his ideas much more compelling than Hans-Hermann Hoppe (although I find little on which to disagree with him). Thank you.