Our lives are in each other’s hands every moment of every day simply by the nature of the human experience. We are not just interdependent in many practical ways, we also live at the pleasure of nearly everyone else. The fact that murder is so rare among humans suggests that we want to be surrounded by happy, healthy people.
Despite the overwhelmingly cooperative nature of society, rare acts of violence do happen and we can be overly frightened by them. We can be convinced to be untrusting and afraid of a random person. Not everyone should be trusted and we all determine our own policies, but despite the evidence, our general tendency to distrust is higher than necessary, and we waste a great deal of energy on it. This makes us vulnerable to people who take advantage of our fears to serve the sponsors of government.
For governments to get us to accept their counterproductive monopolies in public safety and justice, they must convince us that only they can protect us from certain threats. Even for the critical matter of abortion, making it illegal often makes it more frequent and less safe. Using governments to reduce abortions makes it more difficult to develop peaceful means of doing so. This is just as true as with the problems of murder, theft, and rape. The threat of random interpersonal crime is a real one, but the answer to it is not to turn to an organization that promises to steal from us.
Turning to government for protection from thieves says, “My neighbor might steal from me, so I’ll trust a government to steal from everyone so if my neighbor steals from me, he might be locked in a cage for a while.” Turning to government for protection from murderers says, “My neighbor might kill me, so I’ll let the government steal from me so they can hire someone in a costume to come write a report about it afterwards.”
Life is risky. Risk leads to fear. Fear makes us vulnerable. Acceptance of the riskiness of life makes it possible to be brave enough to question those who would promote fear. When we try to deny the riskiness of life, either in our minds or through government policy, we only make it worse. Rather than living in fear or in resistance, simply by embracing the cooperative nature of life, we can protect ourselves from the very real threat of a society devoid of trust.
Chapter 4 Section I From FREEDOM! by Adam Kokesh
I am the author of FREEDOM!, a book endorsed (I mean banned) by the US Department of “Justice.” You can get a copy here. I’m running for Not-President in 2020 on the platform of the peaceful, orderly, and responsible dissolution of the United States federal government. You can find out more here. I am currently on my #TaxationIsTheft tour! You can find an event near you here. Whoever has the top comment on this post after 24 hours can claim a free signed copy of FREEDOM! by sending me a message with their address.