A Declaration of Independence

This is the result of trying to author a book, but it was never finished.

I. The Enemy of Man

It has spread like a plague, coming to control our lives, our liberty, our freedom. It has found its way into our dreams, our values, and our ability to make decisions. This plague has entered man’s mind worldwide and is now controlling it – in private life, in philosophy, in politics. We are taught from an early age that we are nothing without everybody else, and that everybody is just fine without us. We are nothing without society, which we have to struggle all our lives to be a respectable part of, but society will prosper with or without us. We are nothing, worthless, nonexistent without the Whole, made out of everybody’s partaking. Our lives are not for us, but for the Whole – everybody else – to cherish, take control of, manage, and make use of. It is said to be egotistical and deeply immoral to live for one’s own sake, to fulfill one’s dreams, to try to make a change, to cherish and be proud of one’s ability, to achieve one’s goals because I want to.
      This philosophy that has taken control of our minds has hurt man’s ability to be the proud, able, productive, rational being he was born to be. The very foundation of man has withered through the embracing of this destructive philosophy and one of its most dangerous and important cornerstones: altruism. Man has been crippled by being forced to give up himself – for everybody else. This altruism, self-sacrifice for everybody else – for no good, is a basic ingredient of this philosophy that has crippled us, that has put us in front of the evils we have created through it, that has made us believe in the illusion of a never-ending struggle between “classes.” This destructive philosophy is the deadliest plague that has existed on Earth, because it kills us through ourselves by our own will. Its definite goal is the destruction of mankind, but its shape is the shape of a big-hearted creature with a warm and caring soul. As we embrace what we believe is the end of evil and violence and the victory of love, peace, and understanding, it brings us to the frontlines in the war causing man’s final defeat, and makes us face our own destruction. This philosophy is called collectivism.
      A great victory of collectivism was man turning from egoism to altruism. The egotistical view of life is the only way of living, i.e. living for one’s own sake by maximizing one’s achievements; by proudly declaring one’s ability; by embracing one’s own values and philosophies; by living ones life as one sees fit; by taking care of whoever and whatever one values; by making one’s own choices and facing the consequences; to be rewarded in proportion to one’s skill and effort. Egoism is simply living my life for me; it does not imply living on other people’s expense. (Socialism’s first victory in political philosophy was adding “on somebody else’s expense” to the definition of egoism, destroying the true meaning of the word for centuries.)
      Egoism is the true face of man, the brightest color in the great mixture of his being. Man’s ability to make rational choices, to convey and master feelings and emotions, to analyze and come to conclusions, to not be bound to simple natural instincts is what identifies man. Man’s consciousness of his being and of his environment is the fundament of egoism; the conscious, rational decision-making to succeed and survive; to live and prosper. Altruism is its opposite.
      Collectivism sprung like a frozen flower out of altruism, combining the cold concept of self-sacrifice with the theory of a world in conflict, and world of stereotypes. The philosophy of collectivism identifies abstractions of individuals in natural and eternal conflict. Society is not only built upon the conflict between these collectives – whites and blacks; strong and weak; men and women; rich and poor; religious and atheist; white-collar workers and blue-collar workers; Christians and Muslims – but also on the controlling of these conflicts.
      The collectives are abstractions, non-touchable, non-identifiable and invisible to man. But their existence and the conflict between the collectives is a self-evident fact, which cannot be proven in reality. The identification of collectives is natural to a collectivist, who needs this simplification to grasp the marvels of our world, and the marvels of man. On one hand the collectivist creates these dead, emotionless, dreamless, brainless (and often sexless) stereotypes to understand the complexity of our world, and on the other he or she destroys it, together with what is the true wonder of it: individuality.
      Every individual’s unique ability, his or her thoughts and dreams are sacrificed for the illusion of a non-existing abstraction. Collectivism represents a simplification of the universe into big stereotypes or abstractions, where no individuals exist except for as easily exchangeable building blocks of the collective. Every individual is, at best, only a part of the collective.
      But collectivism serves a purpose to the collectivist. By identifying oneself as part of something greater with a common cause – a common good – many individual collectivists find meaning in their lives, and may find strength to carry on. Their quest for simplification is supposed to help them to quickly – without effort – identify who is a friend and who is an enemy, drawing a line between good and evil. The world is easier to understand in black and white – where there are no greys. Instead, they sacrifice themselves and kill their individuality for a fictitious feeling of belonging; a sense of being part of something that means something, a way of identifying “their own kind.” But these abstractions only exist in the mind of the collectivist – they cannot exist in real life.
      If the collectivist’s identification of the world and its interactions was true, there would be no individuals – only collectives. If a collective is a stereotypical population with a common interest, any part of a collective, i.e. any individual within the collective, would have no qualities differing from any other part of the collective. Thus, individuals would need to be clones of each other, or non-individuals. Since this obviously is not true – everybody is not alike; there are individual differences in skill and interest – the only conclusion is collectivism is based on false premises.
      There is, however, another way of seeing it, explains the collectivist. The collectives may not be real in this absolute sense, but they do exist. People share interests, and “collectivizing” helps us distinguish different needs and settle existing conflicts.
      This defense for collectivism is also based on false premises. Two or more individuals may share interest, but this does not mean they share both a set of values, interests, and enemies. The subjective stereotyping of individuals into big chunks is still a fallacy, since no quality can make every individual in the collective share the same interests. Also, there is no common enemy collective identified by all individuals in the collective. There is no such thing as a common set of values and interests within a collective – every individual has its own set of values and its own interests, even though they may correlate with other individuals’.
      Collectivism is also wrong – and destructive – in identifying a “common good” for the collective. If the common good is shared among all individuals in the abstraction, there would be no need for a collective. If the common good is the good of the majority, the minorities within the collective are sacrificed for the majority. Thus the collective is superfluous if the common good is only the good of a majority of the collective “members.”
      What collectivism boils down to is not the initial construction of collectives, but the made-up conflict between them: between “us” (my collective) and “them” (the other collective). The collectivist needs to construct the illusion of an “us” to feel he or she belongs in this world, that there is a greater meaning to life than life itself and what one makes of it. To confirm the existence of the “us” there needs to be an opposed equivalent – a common enemy.
      The sacrifice of the individual is part of the purpose with collectivism, since every able man is destroyed for a collective where nobody inhabits qualities not shared among everybody. The ablest men are forced to a lower level, and the lazy and corrupted may be raised without effort, to suit the collectivist’s dream of a totally equal society where no man is able to make a change by himself. Man’s ability has to be sacrificed to make everybody dependent on the collective’s centralized goals, to not be strong enough to try to fulfill one’s own dreams by one’s own means. Every individual – able or not; skilled or not – has to be forced to a common level within the collective. Even if only in theory, this slaughter of the individual’s ability, dreams, thoughts, brains, values, and life is a drastic measure to make the world comply with the collectivist’s view.
      Also, the collectivist theory is based on the socialist premise that everything is limited to a predefined mass/amount. The socialist identifies the world as a never-ending struggle for limited resources: wealth cannot be produced but can only be redistributed, i.e. taken from someone to serve someone else. The conflict in a collectivist’s mind is based on the same premise – if someone needs something, someone else has to give it up. This conflict, together with the identification of shared interests in collectives, is what collectivism is all about.
      The philosophy of collectivism is widely spread, and has a great impact on how to look upon man and society. In the hands of a Leader the simplicity of collectivism is a beloved ally. A Leader may easily gain the support of whole collectives if measures are taken to achieve its common good. Since there are no individual wishes and desires, the landscape of the population – the Leader’s basis of leadership – is simplified greatly and thereby more easily controlled. The game of controlling the collectives, i.e. maintaining and nourishing the conflict between them with one hand, and making the illusion of fighting it with the other – is the rational, power maximizing, and risk minimizing way of maintaining power. The name for this game of control is politics.
      Politics is the means for handling the conflicts in collectivism. This system of collectivism has as its sole purpose the management of the collectives and their opposed interests. By playing the collectives against each other, by hurting the weaker, and rewarding the stronger – i.e. stronger financially, in votes etc. – power is maintained. Distributing privileges to those in favor of the Leader’s politics, and withdrawing privileges from those opposed, is what politics is all about. Maintaining power is the number one goal for the Leader, since without power leadership is reduced to nothing. When power is guaranteed, its friends rewarded and enemies penalized, the Leader may have time and energy to make the changes he or she feels are needed.
      This view of politics is not what is presented in democracies around the world. It is taken for granted that there is a “common good” for everybody or most of us, and that this “common good” can only be achieved by a centralized government of every individual. The existence of the “common good” implies collectivism, since society’s quest for this greater value can only be threatened by individuals not giving up their individuality and thereby struggling for their own benefit (which equals: the detriment of the collective). The individual is never mentioned in positive terms alone but in large numbers with equal interests and needs.
      This game of politics is quite tiresome to the Leader, and the ones backing him or her up. This continuous struggle for privileges is like a cancer to society, constantly eating what is left of what can be summed up as liberty, freedom, ability, and achievement – individuality. Keeping the struggle at its peak perpetually to guarantee power is impossible if not attempted with great effort. The amount of energy necessary to make sure there is a constant conflict, even though the parties may change, is of great magnitude. The Leader has to stretch beyond the limits of politics to be able to continuously supervise society, making sure there is a struggle at every moment, and that there is not too much time between the conflicts – such void would jeopardize the institution of power.
      If there is no conflict between collectives, the Leader will have to invent it. This may be done by directing the focus of society to something which is declared as unjust or discriminatory, and that can be corrected by the Leader. For this reason, the Leader may initiate a witch-hunt for private enterprise (by using e.g. anti-trust laws), reveal “facts” of an ethnic or any other kind of minority indicating an imbalance in society, or “inform” society of an external threat (or even starting a war!). This game of politics is more thoroughly discussed in Chapter II: The State.
      This way of describing “power management” is not correlated to the general idea of politics. Is this picture really accurate? Well, politics is a game based solely on the philosophy of collectivism, which is easily recognizable when listening to speeches made in public appearances by different political leaders around the world – presidents, prime ministers, union leaders, and others. Make a quick comparison of how often the sovereignty, dreams, rights, and abilities of individuals are mentioned, and how often the “needs” of collectives are mentioned. It is obvious that politics emphasizes and embraces collectivism. Politics cannot survive, if ruling means controlling or managing every individual based on the individual’s own conditions and ability. Individuals may only be ruled if individuality is lost and the “people” is divided into big chunks, where everyone is alike – sub populations of deaf-dumb-blind drones.


II. The State

In chapter one the basis of ruling is discussed – collectivism. As it is important in politics (“power management”) to embrace the continuous struggle between the collectives it is equally important to make everybody believe they gain from a Leader’s leadership and the result of collective conflicts. If any collective of meaningful size and influence feels they do not get anything from society, i.e. have special privileges compared to the others, they may demand to be released from the Leader’s control. This would be devastating for the power and the Leader, since any collective leaving the arena of controlled conflicts would prove that there is no need for such centralized leadership. And worse – it may verify that a society could be based not on power, but solely on individuality and individual rights.
      Collectivism has created a framework for collectivist conflicts, within which conflicts are to be held, where violence and coercion can be centralized, monopolized, and just. This framework’s main purpose is to uphold the arena where conflicts between collectives are initiated and settled. The framework’s only building block is pure force, managed by the Leader. Whatever offensive violence – or: coercion – is used by the Leader is justified because it is carried out within this framework. All collectives reside and grow within this framework of brute force, which increases its powers and grows on the eternal conflict between them. The power of this framework is the power of the Leader, and it feeds only on the destruction of individualism.
      This framework is history’s most successful scheme, since it has made us believe we cannot exist without it, when – in fact – we cannot survive with it. Its sole purpose is a machinery of rule, where weak individuals are sacrificed for strong ones, strong individuals are sacrificed for a collective, and small collectives sacrificed for large ones. The outcome is destruction of whoever does not live in symbiosis with the framework and its philosophy: self-sacrifice for the destruction of man.
      The moral of this framework is the moral of destruction and total defeat: ability is sacrificed for laziness; achievement and success is sacrificed for failure; prosperity is sacrificed for poverty. This framework of coercion, encapsulating the conflicts of collectives, is known as the State.
      The State has created an illusion of what it is about: preserving freedom, guaranteeing rights, creating economic growth, taking care of the poor and weak. As the serpent in Paradise, it preaches man’s destruction but uses words of man’s greatness. It claims to be protecting ability and boosting achievement, when, in reality, it is crippling us.




Subscribe to the PerBylund.com Update! Subscribers receive a short e-mail message every time one of Per Bylund’s columns is published, with a synopsis and link.

Subscribe here: www.PerBylund.com/notifier/?p=subscribe