Dear Director Chambers-Smith:
Hi, yet again.
In my last letter, I recounted for you how Anarchism, and Anarchism alone, advocates for freedom, and how every other political ideology compromises freedom… and seeks power,,, and how that compromise of freedom is, really, slavery. So, only Anarchists advocate for freedom and only Anarchists truly oppose slavery.
I left off suggesting that anyone who accepts the validity of hierarchy provably suffers a mental illness. That’s the argument I would like to pick up in this letter. But, before I do, I hope you are beginning to see that Anarchists are not the “bomb throwing crazies” who want “mayhem, madness, chaos and bedlam” as you imagine us to be. Perhaps there are some who do– I cannot speak for them –but Anarchism is a deep, rich political philosophy; a reasonable, rational, thoughtful critique of the current social (dis)order and the powers that shape it.
For purposes of this letter, the key word in that is “rational,” as opposed to hierarchy’s irrationality.
The social sciences have attempted to quantify “irrationality” or “madness,” understanding such phenomena through the lens of mental illness. One of the terms to designate irrationality is “delusion.” Delusion is understood as a belief that is provably divergent from objective reality, a belief that causes one to act in ways that are not in the sufferer’s best interests. To give an example of a delusion, imagine I believed myself to be Napoleon, Emperor of France, and I behaved in daily life as if I were Napoleon. My false belief and my conduct based upon that belief would constitute a delusion.
It is my position that Hierarchs, everyone who does not identify as Anarchists, everyone who accepts the hierarchical ordering of society as valid and legitimate, suffers from a mental delusion. I can prove it, irrefutably.
My first premise is that we accept the universal truism that “all men[sic] are created equal.” Human equality is a foundational belief to which everyone participating in the modern world subscribes. The truth of that statement is self evident. We are each, by virtue of human birth, endowed with the same rights and obligations as every other human.
Hierarchs everywhere, Director, accept this to be true. As do I.
You and I are equals. You have authority to lock me in a cage and no duty to obey anything I say. I have no authority over you and possess a duty to obey you.
I think I like your equality better than mine. I would very much like to trade equalities with you.
This is something of an anecdote for what I like to term Hierarchy’s Prime Delusion. The Prime Delusion can be summed up this way: Everyone is equal; some equals possess a “right to rule” while other equals don’t; most equals possess a “duty to obey” that the ruling equals don’t.
Under hierarchy, some of us have a “right to rule,” however that right is obtained. Perhaps the “right to rule” is obtained by pulling a sword from a stone, or maybe killing a menacing giant by using a slingshot, or inheriting power from gods, or getting more votes than someone else attempting to gain the “right to rule.” However it comes to be, we have some people in hierarchy who possess this “right to rule” while others have a “duty to obey.”
By this belief system called hierarchy, there is not one specie of human but two species. One specie of human, however one may come to be part of it, has the right not only to rule self but to rule others. The other specie, however we get stuck in it, has the absence of the right to rule others and even the absence of the right to rule self; this specie, instead, has the wonderful consolation prize, the “duty to obey.”
The problem with this is… If you and I are equal, if we are born with the same inalienable rights, with autonomy and sovereignty and a will to choose and to act according to conscience– as we all accept to be true –then neither of us, at any time, can assume a “right to rule” the other, can presume a “duty to obey” imposed upon the other, can compel or force or subjugate the will of the other, command the other to serve an agenda or a program that the other does not willingly consent to serving. Born equal, we each have the right to obey our own conscience and to choose our own course. Our equality provides us the right, at any time, to say, “No.”
Neither of us may rationally assume membership in a separate specie where we have a “right to rule” the other and to impose a “duty to obey” onto the other. These are irrational falsehoods, myths, that are not just convenient for hierarchy but are a necessary foundation for the system of hierarchy to exist and to continue. Thus, the delusion of hierarchy is premised upon the irrational belief in the “right to rule” and “duty to obey” which provably cannot exist among equals. Poor, deluded Hierarchs then conform to a complex of behaviors based upon this irrational belief, a complex of behaviors that results in personal disempowerment.
Hierarchy is a delusion. It is no less a delusion because it is suffered by millions or even billions of people. In fact, its popularity does not diminish its irrationality, but instead increases its danger. A global, mass delusion is very dangerous.
And a quick point here– however we “feel” about the complex of hierarchy being a delusion, a delusion is a delusion. Reason does not seek our consent any more than gravity or thermodynamics. So, our “feelings” about hierarchy being a delusion are irrelevant to the rational conclusion that hierarchy is, objectively, a delusion.
Those who ascribe to this delusion are mentally ill.
And so, we now proceed to what I term Hierarchy’s Secondary Delusion. Hierarchy’s Secondary Delusion is implicitly premised upon the Prime Delusion, but also serves as a kind of justification for the Prime Delusion. The Secondary Delusion can be stated like this: “Because humans are selfish and greedy, stupid and corrupt, humans cannot be trusted to rule themselves and so humans need a system of hierarchy for life to be orderly, safe and stable.”
This is an ostensible truism for all deluded Hierarchs. It serves as a justification for the Prime Delusion in that it makes hierarchy a “need,” and since hierarchy is a “need,” that somehow makes it less irrational to believe in it. However, I would point out that if human survival was dependent upon unicorns, faerie dust and magical beans, and if our only salvation hinged upon the reality of unicorns, faerie dust and magical beans, it would still be irrational to believe in unicorns, faerie dust and magical beans. Thus, it is still irrational to believe in the validity of hierarchy, whether we frame it as a “need” or not.
All of that notwithstanding, let’s take a closer look at the Secondary Delusion, somewhat restated: “Because humans are selfish and greedy, stupid and corrupt, humans cannot be trusted to rule themselves and so need an inordinate amount of social, political and financial power concentrated into the hands of a select few selfish, greedy, stupid, corrupt humans, who will, by force and threat of force, wield that inordinate power over the many, and this will result in life being more orderly, safe, and stable than if everyone were left to their own devices to cooperate as they see fit.”
What is an ostensible truism to Hierarchs is a self evident untruism. It is irrational and internally consistent to believe that humans are selfish, greedy, stupid and corrupt, and then to believe that order and safety and stability could be served by concentrating power into the hands of a select few selfish, greedy, stupid, corrupt humans. Rationally, we would expect the concentration of power to result in more disorder, more danger, and more instability, as we have witnessed from hierarchy as it continues.
Which brings us to Hierarchy’s Tertiary Delusion. The Tertiary Delusion is premised upon the Prime Delusion and the Secondary Delusion. It accepts that the “right to rule” and “duty to obey” can exist among equals, and accepts that the concentration of power into the hands of a select few can somehow result in a better outcome, but takes it all one step further, stated this way: “All of human history, from primitive societies to the present, has been a steady march of progress and improvement, so that, at each stage, in each era, we humans organized in hierarchy have experienced an increasing sense of joy, meaning, purpose, and reward than we experienced previously, proving that the hierarchical structuring of society has been a great success and the best is yet to come.”
This belief in progress and improvement is a principle tenet, a foundational belief for all Hierarchs. It is also provably, irrefutably irrational.
Exhibit one: The last 10,000 years of human history. Case closed.
By all quantitative metrics, by all accounts of sociologists, archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, climatologists and all the other -ologists, things are not getting better and better; things are getting worse and worse. Provably so.
Modern society under hierarchy has reached the ultimate pinnacle of suicide, mass murder, terrorism, war, population displacement, species die off, social deviance such as crime, economic instability, disease, famine, genocide, madness, and toxification of the environment. By all of these metrics, human society has never been less orderly, less stable, less safe. And it is getting worse. Every day.
If we want joy, meaning, purpose, and reward, we would be better off going back in time to when our hairy, stinky ancestors fornicated in the mud and killed woolly mammoth to cook over an open fire at the mouth of a cave than to live under hierarchy today. So, this Tertiary Delusion is the irrational belief that we experience progress and improvement when, objectively, all available evidence indicates we experience catastrophic systems failure on a global scale, where systems collapse due to the failure and unsustainability of the hierarchical model is almost imminent.
Taken together, this trifecta of delusions that you Hierarchs experience is incredibly dangerous. It is a global mental illness and it is more than a mere lifestyle choice, as if being a Hierarch and adhering to delusions or instead being an Anarchist and renouncing those delusions is like choosing a preference, Pepsi or Coke, McDonalds or Burger King, everything relative. It is not. As I will argue later, hierarchy is a dangerous Kool Aid cult, a mass delusion, and its trifecta of irrationalities is, itself, a looming extinction level event.
What I’m saying is, if deluded Hierarchs don’t change their lowdown ways, they’re going to wipe out the human race. And when all of you sputter out, you’ll be taking me with you.
And I don’t want to go.
I want to live… and save your children… and your grandchildren… and generations yet unborn. So, this series of letters is really serious business if we’re going to get people like you to abandon archaic and irrational organizational models from the Bronze Age and change our trajectory, our impending doom.
I hope we can do that.
In my next letter I hope to pick up the discussion with how Anarchism, and only Anarchism, can bring us to fully living out the principles of autonomy, voluntary association and cooperation, and mutual aid… while hierarchy dooms us to alienation, compliance and obedience under threat of force. Then, perhaps when I finish this, you’ll hate me less and order your flying monkeys to undo all of these state terrors motivated by Hierarch bigotry, and you’ll recognize my human dignity.
And maybe even quit your job.
The truth is dangerous.
Stay dangerous.
Freedom,
Sean.
***
ODRC Director Annette Chambers-Smith
ODRC
4545 Fisher Road, Ste. D
Columbus, Ohio 43228
annette.chambers-smith@odrc.state.oh.us
Mongoose Distro 