Destructivism

Used to be ashamed of existence, of these words thrown out here and there for anyone to read, and wondered for a while if it was necessary, essential, worth anything. Of course, it depends on what one writes about, and how much suffering and understanding have been added to the matter. There are blogs out there, novels, entertainment, and perhaps philosophy, what deals with the existence, the universe, the primary questions for which there will never be any answer. This is how philosophy can be recognised, if there is no answer to the question. This is what is being discussed here.

I hope you understand that this book has no answer to offer, but might just help you identify the real questions one needs to ask. Be wary of any ready made answers you might get to these essential questions in life, wherever or from whoever these answers might come from. I believe that in the end only you, on a personal level, can answer for yourself any of the questions posed in this book.

If you were to write a similar book one day, trying to answer what this life is all about, I’m sure you would come up with totally different answers. I feel there might not be any ready made answers in this world for the main questions the human race might wish to ask. And yet, I feel it important to ask those questions and try to figure out the answers. I did it for myself here, you might want to consider doing it for yourself as well. It could help us all in the end.

Before I start, I need to remind myself about this most fundamental question: what I write here, what it is that I feel about these different topics, is it just what I think in the here and now, and tomorrow I could write something else? I cannot deny that if I were to live another 50 years, and decide to rewrite that same book with the same subtitles, I would definitely write a totally different book, just like it would have been if I had written it when I was 18.

This book is not intended to be philosophical in the first place, and I am not writing it so it will get published and get some recognition. It is purely a need for me to write it, the need to ask myself these questions and see if, for myself, I can reach some sort of answers which will help my existential crisis. I could be writing commercial stuff instead, but I cannot help it, I needed to write Destructivism.

Also, I want this book to be accessible, understandable, not boring and sending everyone to sleep by talking and talking about one specific subject for over 100 pages, after having read all the other authors and regurgitating here all that they have said, and then adding my little bit to it.

I wish now I had not read about determinism. I had something to say about it before-hand, now, I’ll be lucky if any inspiration comes to me. And what I will be writing now might no longer be my own ideas, no longer be simple or to the point, it needs to take everything else into consideration. Spontaneity is good, a thinking process in action, no more than a few pages on any subject without any long term research, or else, I might just waste 25 years writing a book I can write in a month.

And I am not certain if after a long research and 25 years, this book would be any better. It could be worse, because then I would be unreachable and you would need a degree in philosophy to understand me. As soon as I would start to mention the Compatibilists and the Libertarians in the context of Determinism, that would be it, you would be lost. I would need to write another book on top of my book just to explain all those concepts to you and what everyone else said on the topic. And now you know why it would take me 25 years and why philosophy bores you to death.

I hope you will enjoy this light philosophy, enough to get you thinking about some important questions that philosophy through the ages has been debating. Fortunately for you, I ignored the whole branch about logic and the veracity of arguments. Unfortunately for me, I will be such an easy target to anyone who will try to find some holes in my arguments, that perhaps I should keep this book to myself.

You will find many contradictions in this book, and I believe it is all right. Because human beings are full of contradictions, it is in our nature. Someone who never contradicts himself is a liar and most probably adjusted his ideas and truths to fit the whole of his logic, when in fact his logic might have been flawed from the start. So sometimes I will believe in God, and some other times, I will act like if I never met the guy, that in fact, I don’t believe he even existed. I met Santa Claus though, many times, and I believe in Santa Claus.

The whole first part of this book (Politics) has been published as articles on many progressive websites. At the time we were fighting to get George W. Bush out of the picture. I may eventually edit this book so it is more general, less related to actual events. They were mostly published on five websites: OpEdNews, Atlantic Free Press, The People’s Voice, Dandelion Salad and Scoop. The most complete and comprehensive list of my published articles taken out of this book can be found here:

http://www.opednews.com/author/author16270.html

I understand I am quite cynical and pessimistic, well, lucky you if your life is like a gentle opened flower, mine is not.

Destructivism

The Path to Self-Destruction

Politics

Democracy

If we have to work on an imperfect government structure, and can only change a few things here and there, here are at least a few solutions.

I have observed politics in three countries in my short life, United Canada, United Kingdom and United States, and I could now add the United States of Europe. Sometimes it was democratic, sometimes it was not. Most often it never was democracy, because there was always an almighty leader following his own vision which no one could agree with.

I say “his”, because it is less often a woman who would act so blindly against everyone else’s will. For that alone, I am willing to only vote for women in the future, but I have met many power hungry women in position of authority within my lifetime, and so, we can never be sure or safe. It is really a question of transparency about who we do elect to power. Who are they truly deep down, do we even get to really know, considering all the lies we are being fed all the time?

I have never read Karl Marx or anything about communism or socialism, for some reason when they came to my universities to recruit new fresh minds, I never got on the boat. After my observations, I took several courses in the philosophy of politics in University, and I guess I must have read then about socialism, somehow it didn’t stick, I can’t remember anything about it. I remember The Social Contract of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Hobbes and Locke and most especially The Prince of Machiavelli. Now that this is out of the way, that you know that I am no expert on the topic, like neither anyone in politics if I may add, let’s see what I think of it.

I know that the American political structure was inspired by Charles de Montesquieu who lived in France from 1689 to 1755, which also inspired the French political system. I also know that it has well past its sell by date, and that today his famous theory of the separation of powers no longer works. It is obvious to anyone that this separation of powers no longer exists, or at least can easily be circumvented.

From an early age I always thought politics didn’t work. For some reason, even though the process looked entirely democratic, we always ended up voting for parties instead of people, and hence, we always seemed to elect the wrong people. It has been my observation that it is quite rare that someone in power will actually do what people actually want. It always ends up in disaster, and sometimes we even re-elect the same horrible people, and no one can understand why.

I’m not going to talk here about pettiness, like should we separate Canada in two or not, or should we go to war with the rest of the world for no apparent good justification. Or what about those terrorists, should we not destroy a few countries and kill a few million people, for those 20 guys who attacked us on a Monday morning years ago? I will also avoid talking about rigged vote, fake elections, though I feel it is a growing concern and I stop short of saying that I believe democracy is truly dead at the time I’m writing these lines.

I simply want to talk about politics at its most basic function and structure, because this is what I feel does not work and ultimately fails us all. This is what can give the power to anyone to suddenly create a world war or destroy an entire economy for the wrong reasons.

When I was a teenager, I always thought that one day I would write a book about the philosophy of politics, and my classes at university re-enforced my need to do so. However, up until now I didn’t feel I had all the answers yet, in fact, I’m not sure if I have any at all. It is certainly not the easiest topic to address, especially when I feel that a radical change in the structure itself is required. I have however come to a few conclusions.

The idea of political parties needs to go. It is the most outdated and impractical concept there ever was in politics. More so because in this day and age, the line is so blurred between party lines, there is not much difference if you vote for one or the other.

The only difference is a few main big ideas like being against gays, against abortion, against women’s rights (should they remain at home and have babies as their sole social role), should we give more money to big corporations, should we give more money to the poor, and finally, the big argument that cannot fail to win you an election: should we lower the taxes (as if this was a question to ask anyone already paying 60% of their salary in taxes of all sorts).

Now, these few main big ideas, which truly have nothing to do with any political party, as for most of the time these will be completely at the back of their mind and they will most probably do nothing or very little about it, does not have to be the reasons why you vote for a political party. These can be debated anyway by all the elected representatives. If you paid more attention to the personal beliefs and ideas of your local representatives instead of the political party you will vote for, you would know if the person you’re about to elect will be a little tyrant and alienate you completely or not.

That little group of local politicians is really all you need to study in order to vote, nothing else. By electing a political party, you most likely vote for the representative of that party without knowing anything about who that person truly is and what that person can truly do for you. Most of the time these people are so powerless anyway, their elections are more like a formality for a party to get into power, and then the Prime Minister and his Cabinet, or the President and his few allies, take over the show.

So in essence, you will be ruled by a very small group of people. And your local representatives, you will know very little about, and they will be powerless anyway, without a voice of any kind. You see the main problem which needs to be addressed?

By getting rid of political parties and coming back to basics, we will also eliminate another growing concern in actual politics. Now parties are spending so much money on their elections, it goes into the millions if not billions. What does this tell you? That only rich candidates can now get into power. Where do they get the money? This invites bribery, corruption, conflict of interests, and now we’re destroying Iraq to take over their natural resources, because who paid for the American elections? Petroleum companies.

No one can now compete freely in the political arena. If I were to present myself tomorrow as an independent, I will most certainly lose. If I were the representative somehow of a political party, I could win, but all for the wrong reasons.

And even so, how would I go, myself, right now, to represent a political party in an election? I have no clue. I would probably not be accepted, they wouldn’t want me. They already have a clique of hungry and greedy little friends who have been in politics since forever, who will most likely be their representatives in my own county when they probably don’t even live in my county.

So first, eliminate political parties. Second, eliminate the right to publicise in any way thinkable political ideas and representatives. No one should ever be allowed to accept money from anyone or any corporation for a political campaign. No one should be able to win an election simply by injecting billions into a PR and publicity machine. It is too unfair.

As soon as you hear one guy on the radio or the TV talking about this or that, no matter what he talks about, you are probably very likely going to vote for him, because you will recognise his name on the election ballot, when the others will seem not to even exist. What’s a name after all? I won’t even talk about negative publicity in order to destroy one’s opponent, a common practice nowadays, where a divorce in the life of your opponent, is all you need to win an election.

So now that we have eliminated the political parties which elect the wrong type of people, and that we have finally eliminated the big brainwashing publicity machine that will most assuredly influence everyone to vote for this or that, all for the wrong reasons, whilst preventing anyone without the money to be heard, and so speaking destroying democracy, what do we do?

Simple. Who pays for the publicity campaign? The government, meaning, and we forget it all the time, the people pay for it. A few pages about each candidate distributed locally to everyone, so we can find out about these people we’re about to elect outside of party lines, and hopefully with the thought that they can think for themselves, that they can be heard and that they can make a difference. An hour here and there on local TV and radio, for each of them, space available in local newspapers, all paid by the people. Cheaply done, no more millions and billions spent on politics and publicity machines. It must remain at a local level, never national. As soon as a political election is national, it defies democracy, it elects the wrong people.

So now that the elections are over, and that people have won for the right reasons, without being a drain on the economy, without bribes and corruption, who’s going to be the leader? It has always been the leader of the political party who took ultimate power, and the leader of the opposition being the leader of the second most popular party. This needs new thinking.

Well, I feel we need to work towards a more democratic process where no one is so clearly an all powerful leader, capable to veto everything, or unilaterally make decisions with huge impacts upon the country and the world. Either the leaders are decided after the elections by the people you elected, or in parallel you also vote for anyone who presented himself or herself specifically as leader. The opposition should be everyone else in the assembly.

The idea is that no one should win a seat in an election based on that one man or woman alone who runs for President or Prime Minister, since all the representatives should be independent. So no one will win for the wrong reasons, and no leader will be capable of obliging half the government to vote on any new law or policy. Following the party line will be something of the past.

In the end, there should never be a strong leader in charge of any country or any other government or council, or else, it eliminates the voice of everyone else, and so, your voice. It cancels the idea of an election and of democracy. Only after, should it be decided who is the leader, or independently from anyone else. And that leadership should never be permanent for the whole mandate, it should change every so often.

This should not stop there. The ministers or whatever they are called in the US, should not be decided by the leader. They should also be voted by the whole of the assembly based on merits and who they feel should be in charge of certain departments. Or else it is too easy for the leader to get all his little friends there in power, and then it becomes dangerous, because the leader can do whatever he or she likes without fear of being stopped.

I suppose I have not thought about all this as much as would be required, really. But with my full time job I have no time to study politics and develop my own philosophy of it. It will have to wait until I retire, assuming I won’t die from cancer at an early age or die in the Third World War or a civil war.

However, my little suggestions might just give us a better representation of what people truly want. It will be more likely that the wrong people will not find themselves in power that easily. It could get rid of corruption, bring back democracy, and avoid costly elections. Overall, my few pages might just do the trick. If that doesn’t work, we’ll have to re-assess the situation then. In the meantime, it would certainly solve a few of the biggest problems I witnessed in politics today.

Let’s debate if we need political parties or not, and let’s find solutions, so we can have a better democracy, or even, so we can have a real democracy.

Anarchy

It is strange that I wrote this whole book before addressing the one subject people are most likely to accuse me of in time, the one of being an anarchist talking about anarchy. It did not cross my mind to write about anarchy, because I never thought I was an anarchist. I realise now that perhaps I am a bit of an anarchist in the closet.

People have accused me of being an anarchist because of the title of my website, The Crowned Anarchist, which ultimately was just the title of a book by Antonin Artaud, the celebrated French author who died in 1948. His book was about a Roman Emperor originally from Syria named Heliogabalus, also called the Crowned Anarchist, because of his subsequent reign in Rome.

Being an anarchist, in my case, is like being gay. You know deep down at heart that you are, that there is nothing you can do against your nature, and that if that nature gets to be known, you will be ostracised by everyone else, rejected, ridiculed and you are going to suffer the rest of your life.

I am nevertheless suffering anyway, from a lack of freedom, a lack of control in the decisions being made that concern me directly, from these hierarchies everywhere present to which I need to bow down to and be submissive.

To the point that I feel I am nothing less than a slave, going through this life making the minimum of decisions, and then will go on without any kind of freedom or control, and do exactly what all sorts of authorities will tell me to do, at every single minute of my existence.

Be it the authority of parents, loved ones, teachers, managers and directors, spiritual leaders, social workers, judges, probation officers, police, political leaders through a myriad of laws and regulations. Add to it CCTVs and cameras everywhere, and constant probing and recording of phone calls, emails and the websites we visit, to insure that we no longer have an impure thought that goes against their will. Anything can and will be used against us at some point in time, while everything we do is being recorded, and the time of reckoning seems to be getting closer every day.

At some point you do feel the need to explode and tell them all to stop, that enough is enough! That we feel the need to re-assert ourselves, to exist, to make a few decisions of our own, to do what we want to do with this life and that a little breathing space would not go amiss in our life. Do we even have the time to think anymore? Are we free collectively to decide what we want to do, are we able to stop our leaders in their grand scheme of conquering the planet at the expense of humankind, our very existence? The obvious answer is no.

Anarchists seem to believe that we can have a real democracy, that it seems that our actual government structures and corporate structures are all against the very idea of democracy and giving the citizens the chance to rule themselves and make their own decisions. If citizens truly had the power to govern themselves, the world would be a different place today.

This is what anarchists are fighting for, whether they are extremists or intellectuals who would never dream of picking up a cocktail Molotov or even walk outside in any demonstration. And this is perhaps why I never thought I was an anarchist, because neither of these definitions of anarchy befitted me. I am not extremist, I am a pacifist. I am not an intellectual who will go on to write clever articles about what this kind of anarchist system might look like. I would first certainly give it another name, because either way you take it, the word anarchist and anarchy are too heavy for anyone in their right mind. For them it would mean chaos and the end of the world as we know it, they would be afraid of the word itself, so I could never really write an anarchist book. On the other hand, I cannot deny that at heart I share many of their beliefs and, in my own way, I have been fighting for the same beliefs and freedoms in all of my books.

The fact that you are witnessing your leaders suddenly openly declaring a Third World War and lightning the seed of civil war as the only mean to stop it, is very significant. It shows that with the actual structure of our governments, these hierarchies, supposedly democratic, the leaders are still capable of working towards their own interests, destroy an economy and go on to achieve genocides.

The democracy we have right now does not work. A man is still able to control the elections, make all the decisions, change all the laws superseding even the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Human Rights Charter, make torture legal, ignoring the United Nations, and go on to wreck havoc in the world and bring about a global war. So, everything has failed once again, and I wonder if we are not ready for a more radical change in our structures and the ways we govern and organise ourselves.

Where have we gone wrong? What else could we do to change this? Do anarchists, the intellectual ones, have the answer? They have provided many alternatives to the kinds of established government structures and even commercial company structures we have, where there is no more obvious leader anywhere capable of taking over the world and leash out his evil plan.

There could be groups or collectives being formed on a short, medium or long term basis discussing democratically all the decisions to be made, and collectively deciding on who will do what depending on the needs and skills. And if there is to be a leader, it will be a natural one who can be constantly questioned and replaced as soon as it seems that he or she is no longer acting in the interests of the whole group or collective, as anyone else and everyone else could take over just like that.

In an anarchist organisation, for example, there would not be a board of directors or an executive board. No leader, just a bunch of people on the same level voluntary meeting, discussing and making decisions as a whole for the organisation or the collective. When someone would ask who’s in charge, the answer would be everyone, free from any authority and coercive social relations, no corporate structure with an elite at the top making all the wrong decisions.

I do not intend here to tell you what anarchist ideas are all about, I admit that I am quite ignorant of such things and I have read little on the subject. I have read enough though to know that there are good ideas in there, and that it answers a lot of why I have been living an existential crisis from the day I was born. Under such a structure, I might have been happier, I just don’t know.

I am not sure how realistically all of this could be implemented in real life. There are many people incapable of functioning without clear leadership telling them exactly what to do. They are quite happy to go on living without ever making one decision. And this is fine, naturally, even in some anarchist system or structure, they will be able to find that, if necessary. There will still be natural temporary leaders.

But although it may seem unrealistic that such a structure could become the norm, a lot of these elements could be incorporated in the actual systems and structures in order to become smoother and more acceptable to all, and certainly prevent other leaders from taking over the place and serving their own interests above all the rest of us. Solutions will need to be found one way or another, and at this point I am willing to look for inspiration anywhere in order for us to gain more freedom and live happier lives.

So I feel what anarchists is certainly worth reading, considering and seeing what could possibly be incorporated, in default to be able to change the whole system overnight.

Until at least our leaders destroy it all and that, after another bloody war and a civil war, we are left with everything else to rebuilt, aware of the mistakes of the past structures and systems. All anarchists would be dead by then, and probably once again, all free thinkers, all outspoken people against the governments, all gay people and all immigrants. There are five good reasons for me to be eradicated. I will not survive, that is obvious, and to be honest, I don’t really care that much. So I might as well not be afraid to speak my mind and be ready to suffer the consequences.

It is likely that even under an anarchist structure or system, wars, corruption, and less desirable features plaguing our governments rights now, would happen no matter what, as it does not appear that any government structure can prevent them. Which is why that no matter which government structure we have, we need to provide for a lot of ways for a quick change of leadership, and that as soon as there is a bit of smoke, it is the time to act before it is too late.

One can only dream that one day we will live under a real democracy, and that we will finally govern ourselves for real, and that no dictator ever could take over the world so easily while we are all too busy to pay attention until it is right there under our nose and that we are all powerless to stop it.

Capitalism

Is pure capitalism a religion we have taken too far? Pure capitalism and pure greed to the extreme is now our only religion.

I feel it is difficult to speak of capitalism as a whole, without falling in numerous traps and being accused of not knowing what I am talking about. So first thing I did was to go on Wikipedia, then I stopped myself. Don’t get me wrong, I will read it and say what I think of it, but first capitalism must be, before anything else, what the people inside really feel it is. Not the perfect book definition that we all wish it to be, because in practice we know capitalism has evolved into something else, that many consider a real monster and threat to humanity.

This point becomes clearer when we read Karl Marx and his ideas of a perfect socialism, which in real life has been the breeding ground of corruption and governments’ hidden agendas, who drove us all to utter failure. I read a bit of Karl Marx a long time ago, I like to say I didn’t, and yes, I was charmed by it. In reality, what I have observed of what we have done in his name, has alarmed me so much, the only solution I could see was to discredit the man, because no one ever again should use Karl Marx as any kind of authority to justify the worst atrocities and injustices this humanity has seen. I may talk more about this one day, right now I wish to define my own definition of capitalism.

What is capitalism in your own mind? What is it in my mind? Well, it is our new religion, it is all that we believe in. We claim it is our way to freedom, the liberation of the masses, our chance to succeed beyond measure at becoming filthy rich and powerful, no matter our background, our education, our social class. Capitalism can be reduced to the American Dream.

In my total ignorance of what exactly is capitalism, I have to say, yes, capitalism is wonderful! I want that chance to freedom, I want to become filthy rich and powerful, I want to do what I want to do in this life, nothing else. At this point I realise that I need to dig further. What else do we believe it is?

Well, it is a system, an economic system upon which our existence, our corporations, our governments base everything they think and do. What it seems to be about is capital, making money, as much as one can, to the detrimental of just about everything else in life. If the one at the top prospers, we all prosper. A rich company will create jobs and should in theory pay its employees well. The private sector is where capitalism is applied, though even government agencies think in capitalist terms, and if there is a way to make a profit in anything, we should certainly go for it and make tons of money that could be re-invested somewhere else.

When I was child, my parents never had with me the big talk about capitalism and what it meant. They never told me what was expected of me in such a system. Haven’t they? They certainly pushed my sister and I to the limits. We had to have a great education, we had to succeed at any cost and attend the best universities, we had to become rich and have a great status in this society, the best job one can hope for. Medical, law and engineering were the only obvious choices available to us. However, in retrospect, they were misguided. No one becomes rich being a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer. Poor shadows of what capitalism truly means.

Capitalism means starting your own business and building it until it becomes a huge corporation employing thousands of people worldwide in some sort of wonderful perfect globalised world. Lawyers in Canada can eventually do that, they can start their own law firm. Engineers can do the same, creating their own engineering consulting firm. Doctors in Canada cannot really go private, in the United States however they can, as it is all mostly private. This led to horrifying results, where doctors became nothing less than advertising agencies for the almighty pharmaceutical companies, pushing half baked drugs that they all know don’t work, and in many cases, make the patients worse.

Perhaps capitalism should never have been applied in certain areas of our society. There is no need to become extreme, like in the United States, or we will eventually reach a point where everything will come crumbling down to dust, as we are witnessing right now in the stock exchange market and financial sector. Too much greed will be our downfall, just as it has always been throughout the ages.

At its most basic definition, I think it is fair to say that what comes to mind to anyone when we talk about capitalism, is this law of the offer and the demand. Let’s forget here about advertising and marketing, forcing us to wish for things we would never have thought we needed in the first place. We live in a society of consumerism, highly materialistic in nature, where your only goal in life is to acquire as many possessions and assets as you can, as it is how you will be judged and respected in society. How much wealth you have will define how great a man or a woman you truly are, your worthiness to exist. This is what the meaning of life has been reduced to under capitalism, a game of Monopoly, and I dare you to deny it. It is such a shame, as I do love to play Monopoly on my Nintendo DS. I am a product of my generation, well, almost.

It’s okay, I am still not criticising capitalism that badly, who knows, maybe it is the way to go. After all, what other system has brought us anything better? None. Might seem a bit superficial, plastic, meaningless, and so on, and on, and on. If one wishes to be the devil’s advocate in this case, my God, that one could go on forever about how misplaced this whole philosophy of life can be, and how more important stuff are actually… well, much more important. Like, I don’t know, emancipation, happiness, finding a meaning to our existence and figuring what is this place, the universe we live in. Finding some peace about who we are and what we are supposed to do here, if anything.

Freedom and happiness are still key to everything, we should never forget that. I believe they tried to convince us that it was embedded in the whole capitalism system. You are free to become a civil servant doing admin for the rest of your life, or create your own business and become as rich as your imagination and cleverness or shrewdness will lead you to.

Then, I suppose, capitalism only becomes a real problem to you if you are just a civil servant with no thirst to becoming rich and controlling the planet. Otherwise, wow, what a great life you can have, a real challenge that will answer all your prayers, assuming you have totally espoused the capitalist way of thinking. You might find later on in life that this was after all a bit meaningless, but who cares. Whilst you were in the thick of it, it seemed right, it was fulfilling, it was exciting, you can be proud of yourself and your achievements, you certainly cannot be faulted for it, you will be envied.

In order to get a better idea about how great capitalism is, we need to turn to our models and heroes of capitalism. I reckon, that should be anyone who has made over a billion dollars and who took the time later on in life to write his or her autobiography, or at least who have given us enough to understand how they truly felt about it. Then, we also need to assess if they have not simply continued to play the game and are not just telling us how great and successful they have been. I mean, a real turn around to assess exactly and honestly how they feel about it all.

I can think of two great examples, perhaps the greatest ever, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. It does not matter who they are and how they made it. If you do not know who they are, forget it. All you need to know is that they made billions of dollars and build up the most successful corporations this world has ever seen. And later on in life, they both seemed to have suffered from some sort of existential crisis, and realised that perhaps life and our values were not all that they should have been.

So now they have decided to turn the table around and help the world with their fortune, by squandering their money away to every loser on the planet who has never heard of capitalism or cannot even dream to ever find out. The people who most probably suffered greatly at the hand of capitalism, since no system ever could sustain itself