We throw a lot of isms out there: Capitalism, Socialism, Communism, and Dumbassism. Ok, that last one is mine and it’s not mutually exclusive with any of the other isms, but it’s also not the point of this diatribe. I’m going to throw out a lot of subjectivism with very few facts, because this is a philosophical piece, not a scientific or financial piece.
Because most of us who read this are Americans, I’m going to cater to them a little. Sorry. But let’s go to the beginning, shall we? Why did come here? The romantic notion is religious freedom but really, this was all funded by people who wanted more money. They sent people willing to go to a New World (and whose motivation was religious freedom, among other issues) and bankrolled their trip. The return would be that the pilgrims would then send natural resources back to Europe. Regardless of the accuracy of this (history nuts may be able to show how wrong I am) all of this isn’t the point and only served to waste a few seconds of your time. The point is that we had people who landed here, stepped off the boat, looked around, and said, “WTF?” (Or whatever acronym they used back then). Their first order of business was to consume.
That’s right. You heard it here first. The people that landed in this New World were not religious rebels or money grabbing gluttons. They were consumers. They consumed the natural resources. That’s what we do. I don’t want to be too hard on us though, because EVERY living thing consumes. It’s life. However, we are really one of the only species that OVER-consumes.
Again, not something we haven’t discussed before. I’m just popping a couple thoughts in your head, getting your mental juices flowing.
Here’s really the point. Eventually, people started coming here to own land. In the Old World, the wealthy, the people who mattered, all owned land. It really separated the classes. The New World offered the prospect that anyone could own land. Anyone could matter. Anyone could be the haves instead of the have-nots. The cost? Really hard work. How was it rewarded? Land ownership.
Did Joe Pilgrim come over here with his family, claim a whole bunch of land, and just become the blocks wealthiest man? No. He came over with Jeff and Joshua and Jeremiah. One was a roof thatcher, the other worked in metal, the other was a farmer (really, everyone was). They all had specialties. They NEEDED each other to survive because humans are social creatures. Sometimes fat like Polar Bears, but nowhere near as solitary.
Let’s look at ownership again. The purpose was for the individual to own the land. How very important that is. We focus on gun rights and rights for speech and rights for this and rights for that. But it really was the right to own that made America attractive.
Let’s look at some isms really quick, since those are what we are going to be really talking about. These are very simplified, but, capitalism is where a person owns something and controls it. Socialism is where a person owns something but the government controls it. Communism is where the government owns everything and they control it.
Why is this important? Because it’s about ownership and control. It was then and it still is now.
I want to clarify a concept that some people misunderstand sometimes. That is the concept of a republic. There are Americans out there that feel that their Republic is the greatest form of government and point fingers at China and the former USSR as reasons why our Republic is the greatest. Except, China (or the Peoples Republic of China) and the former USSR (or the United Soviet Socialists Republic) were also republics. Mind you, their government’s method of maintaining power is different than ours (usually, they applied the guns-in-faces technique), but make no mistake, every government has a method of maintaining its power. EVERY government. If you can’t see what your government’s method is, you are in very, very big trouble.
Now that we have discussed those points, let’s go back a few hundred years again. When Joe Pilgrim needed a road to Jeff’s house so he could get horseshoes, did Joe build it himself? No. Did the government build it? No. Who built this road then? This concept, unfortunately, boggles many Americans because they are incapable of living in such a world where this exists, but Joe and Jeff built it together. And when their town got big enough Jeff and Joe pooled their money to hire Johnson who is a road builder who came from the Old World. Unfortunately, we have come so far from those times that people don’t even recognize what system that was. They did not have government (I’m not advocating for no government), they did not do all the work themselves, and they owned and controlled their own stuff. Is this a Republic? No! This was many, many years before we started forming such institutions? Well, it looks kind of like capitalism, doesn’t it? People owned AND controlled their own stuff. In fact, the governing bodies had VERY little ability to do ANYTHING with your property.
So what was this system where people owned and controlled their own property but society thrived at the same time? I don’t know. I shouldn’t have to look up that word because it should be at the forefront of all our knowledge. We should all know that word. But we don’t (barring those people who are historians).
Let me assign a word to this form of life: Communityism. It existed once in the United States. It is what made this country so incredibly great. It was that an individual was valued over society, but the individual recognized the need for personal responsibility in community growth, security, and success. It was not a “this” or “that”, but individuals, who had ALL the power, were symbiotically linked by a certain give-a-shit attitude to the community. But the individual was worth more than the whole. If a town of 20 people all decided to leave and start a new town, then the old town was gone and that was that. If 19 people left, or 1 person left, the town had to deal with it, because the individuals were more important than the town.
Skip forward some hundred years to, let’s say, today. The roles have been completely reversed. The “community” has now ordained by laws supported by guns and jails that the community is more important than the individual. Did you know the government can charge you if you make too much food? Seriously. That’s one of the only facts I’m putting out there. It was a case I studied in school about a farmer that was charged by the government because he produced more than he and his family could reasonably consume. Their justification was the balance of commerce. If we had old fashioned capitalism, where a person owned and controlled their property, then the community (government) would never have been able to do this to an individual. However, while this person owned his property, in the end he did not control it. The government is now able to enforce rules on how and what regarding your property. What system does that put us in? Exactly. We call it Capitalism, but it is no longer true Capitalism. It has become a hybrid, though, one could make the point if they did deep enough that it is now straight socialism because the government controls everything about your property and that as long as you use it within their guidelines, you will have no problems.
But that’s neither here nor there. It’s a system that has been corrupted by bad people. There are bad people everywhere. There are bad cops, bad politicians, bad priests, and bad citizens. From the beginning, the good has ALWAYS outweighed the bad. If you line 10 people up, 9 will do the right thing. Really, people are generally good. But here’s what happened… and it’s all of our fault…
The good lost Communityism. Good will always prevail when 9 people do good and 1 person does bad. But what happened was that the good people stopped doing good. They didn’t do bad, they just stopped doing good. It became 1 person doing good, 1 person doing bad, and 8 bystanders. Really, watch any horrific video these days; you’ll see this proportion in almost ANY video. We have become a nation of bystanders.
It didn’t happen all at once either. It happened when Joe Pilgrim was walking to Jeff’s house and saw Josephine and her 3 kids on the side of the road asking for bread. Joe, who never liked Josephine’s late husband, Jacob, rationalized that she was responsible for her situation and that he couldn’t be bothered with helping. THAT’S when it started. And that sentiment of “someone else’s problem” grew. And grew.
Joe and Jeff built the road together. The town grew. The road became no longer a convenience, but a necessity. And while everyone helped with the road, everyone enjoyed the road. However, eventually Jacob didn’t want to help with the road anymore, he just wanted to use it. So once a month when everyone volunteered to fix the potholes, Jacob didn’t leave his house. Joe saw this and became unhappy that he was working to maintain a road that someone else wanted to use without helping to maintain it. Joe didn’t mind last year when Jacob couldn’t help with the road because he had broken his leg, because Joe felt a responsibility to help the community and those who were infirm. However, now Joe saw that Jacob was healed and simply did not want to help. So, Joe stopped fixing the road too.
BANG!
Did you see that? It’s like watching different chemicals mix and once they get the right proportion a phenomenal reaction occurs.
Was it Jacobs fault for being lazy and feeling entitled? (Please note, no one knows how Jacob died. He was found buried under a fish heap). What is Joe’s fault for losing his sense of responsibility?
Yes. It was both their faults because they lost their sense of Communityism. The only way to maintain individuality is to recognize and act on the fact that we are responsible for our community.
What? You don’t see how that got us to where we are today? Let me draw the line a little clearer. That town had grown so much that the road became vital to its ability to function. Because Jacob became lazy and Joe stopped helping out of spite, they forced a situation which HAD to be solved. Without the road upkeep, people couldn’t get to the hospital, people couldn’t buy food, and people couldn’t harvest trees. They forced the community to create a governing body to make sure they were able to keep the roads functioning properly. And the community gave the governing body power to enforce its purpose. When this started, Joe and Jeff built a road with their money, their effort, and their Community Responsibility. But because of the fall of Communityism, the governing body takes Joe’s money and Jeff’s money and builds the road, against Joe’s and Jeff’s will. If Joe and Jeff don’t participate in the governing body’s purpose, they will be fined or thrown in jail.
If that isn’t clear enough to see how we got to where we are today, then… keep studying.
The government has now become a mammoth entity whose sole raison d’être (reason for being) is to ensure its OWN survival. At any cost. If you research national disaster contingency plans, it is for the continuity of government (which they refer to as the continuity of the USA). People feed this entity and are integral to its survival. But the people’s survival is secondary to government survival. It will try to save as many people as it can in order to ensure its own survival. But make no mistake, there is a cut-off. In a disaster they will not be able to save everyone, only enough for their survival.
The community is now more valuable than the individual.
We can fix this though. I don’t mean, “Fight the system,” or, “rage against the machine,” or anarchy. We’ve let this system get to this point and destroying government would create such a vacuum as to destroy everything we have worked over the last several hundred years to build.
What’s the solution then, you ask?
Communityism. Let me give you an example. On May 22, 2011, an EF5 (why don’t we call it an F5 anymore? One less syllable to say) tornado destroyed a vast section of Joplin, Missouri. What you may have heard briefly on the news is that Joplin and the surrounding cities started pulling up our own pants before the government ever even hit the roads to come help us. In fact, there were many articles and news pieces written about how INDIVIDUALS and COMMUNITIES came together to respond and overcome this disaster. Even the government recognized a unique quality in our ability to pull ourselves out of the destruction that was left.
That is the ULTIMATE example of Communityism. When FEMA rolled around, they provided free housing. And people are not going to say no to free things. Two years later, we still have a handful of people taking advantage of FEMA’s help by refusing to vacate the trailers. And when I say handful, I really mean there are about 20 or less trailers left (I’ve never counted).
What would have happened if Joplin et al did NOT embrace Communityism? Katrina. That’s what. They would have waited until the government was forced to do something. And when the government rolled to town, they did not provide 5 star hotels as seemed expected, but martial law with barely survivable accommodations.
The federal government did NOT treat New Orleans and Joplin any differently. The government did its thing as they always do, because we force them into action by our inaction. Joplin and New Orleans were VASTLY different in recovery because of one, singular, shared, all-empowering concept: Communityism.
What does this mean today? It means if you don’t help feed someone lunch who cannot afford lunch, then the government will step in and feed them lunch on your dime plus administrative costs and national defense costs. If you do not clean the road outside your house then the government will step in and clean your road on your dime plus administrative costs and national defense costs. If you do not take some time to help at a shelter, help with homeless animals, help teach an adult who never got the chance to read, or walk the streets at night to keep them safe, or clean up after a disaster, or help the mentally ill, or teach someone a new skill, or any other need that a community has that is necessary for its survival and prosperity, then YOU are forcing the government to step in, and they will be willing to do ALL of this happily on your dime plus administrative costs and national defense costs.
The only way to shrink and remove power from the government entity is to not need them. The only way to not need them is to need each other, to be there for each other, and to be responsible for each other.
On a vaguely similar note, please stay tuned for another article on personal responsibility entitled, “Freemasons and the Zombie Non-Apocalypse.”
