Fear of 'Others'

Don’t you think,

late at night,

alone in our room,

when we have removed all the clothes and other accessories meant to cover ourselves with identity,

when there is no one to watch our performance and measure themselves to it,

Don’t you think, when we are all alone, we all very well know that all humans should be equal

In their chances to enjoy life?

When we are all alone and not a part of our crowd, aren’t we all afraid?

And what are we afraid of? Lions? Tigers? Snakes? Earthquakes?

Depends on where we live.

Other humans? Most probably.

And more power we have over other humans more we must be afraid to be alone.  More power we exercise though does put us in a position where someone might desire to hurt us for some righteous actions of ours. We truly might get in danger for being impartial in our implementation of justice. But the fortress of protection we, when we reach such position, build around ourselves, provides us with impunity (or at least immunity from the immediate consequences) both for our correct and our unjust conductions.

Don’t you think that power is wrong to be given to anyone over anyone? In most inclusive meaning possible? 

There is not one case where power over someone is a necessity. Parents must have power over their small children in order to save them from injuries while kids don’t know. Others, under name of society, must have power over individual who chooses to destruct someone’s integrity or any personal or public property.  (Yet the definition of property should not conjoin more then what the individual can practically use for himself or herself. It will be difficult to construct of how, but the private property must somehow be limited and piling money restricted to the level of, at least, what is expedient for the life of human being). 

But giving power to one adult human over another grown and fully conscious being, allowing a decision power over life and death of that other to anyone, is not only beyond what natural law should make us believe at the present state of our intellectual development, but more importantly the permission and a frame for unjust conduct to be and remain possible to perform legally.

Don’t you have sense that it is equally important that others receive justice as for ourselves to be in it’s favor?

Or, at least, don’t you have a sense that, even if we don’t share the same destiny our grandchildren with high probability will?

When we think of fixing the system and improving the righteousness of the distribution of resources, we somehow always start from the upper middle. As much as we pretend to behave otherwise and as long as we are spitting on each others shoes talking of helping poor and oppressed, the fact is that the right of the second, who is next after first, to be more equal to first, is considered first.

Openly pronounced or not, the salary of the high executive of some company is more likely to rise, and more likely to rise more often, then the salary of his subordinates. Yes. The market decides our value. But who is market? And to whose interests and benefits we are of a particular value?

Aren’t we earning our daily bread by serving those who are robbing majority of the world’s population of their resources for life?

Private property, as the primary notion of respect and ultimate object of legal protection, is a dictator above any individual. Those who constructed the legal system to protect it above all human rights, were for sure not ones deprived of such possession at the time.

But when all of us are consenting to such law, we are presenting it as just and it produces thinking that poverty can be voluntary. Due to the comfort of the libertarian philosophy we are ready to deny historical reasons of both someone’s poverty or riches. But even if there weren’t any, domination of private property will never allow majority to come out of poverty even if they want to. Rule of private property in every human law is a key point of preserving the way resources are distributed in a current order. It will allow the disparity of distribution up to the point where it can protect own self. It will keep as many people in a complete or in relative poverty as it can militarily or by the sources of the system of corruption (which we all – willingly although not always agreeably – support by our participation in it), keep incapable for rebellion.

Now let’s double-check this claim.

Do we feel that we have a power to subdue those oppressing us? Do we believe that the rebellion against the system that is oppressing us should dare to expect some success as a result, or is it more likely that we shall lose our social options, our freedom of choices and, very possibly, our life?

Don’t you think that system is so twisted that we cannot change it by the decree? Doesn’t it seam as equally unlikely that a violent rebellion would have any chance? Doesn’t it appear as if this system is a paranoid schizophrenic who can be made less harmful by some remedies, but never cured in his functional fault?

Are we not afraid that humans that will live after us will have more horrible challenges to face?

That when we deceive ourselves that we are doing best in our power to prevent it.  

Do we think that we can talk about equality and human rights while not questioning capitalist legal system and the notion of private property as inviolable right?

Do we pretend to believe that we can leave the notion of social hierarchy unexamined as such? Can we in any real case distinct it from the ladder of corruption? If corruption means taking undeserved value, which person higher in hierarchy can claim themselves less corrupted then the lower positioned one?

Doesn’t it look like the purpose of social hierarchy; originated to meet the need for consensus, protection of the group and every individual, hence it was choosing the strongest and wisest for leaders whose advice and orders others will follow; is now (and by now I mean since the beginning of what we call human society and is opposite from what we see as primary community), as the structure has grown, turned out to serve the opposite – quarrel and uncertainty?

Do we have any more realistic reason to defend current conception of social hierarchy then the definition of what it should be standing for with it’s assigned authority? Or do we have any reason to believe that it is standing for it in reality?

Is the only synonymous for the state without hierarchy – anarchy? Is that what we are afraid of when we chose to participate in preserving hierarchy? Or is it just us talking who see for own selves opportunities to climb the ladder?
But isn't the current state the anarchy of some?

It is one thing to count lives from the safety of the UN palace in Geneva. You are simply not capable of perceiving own life as the one in danger to become a number in your count. Isn’t it most important for you for that particular fact (us to count – not be counted) to remain as such? It is much more important then to stop counting lives. Or isn’t it?  

It is another thing to count lives of own family and neighbors, not ever hearing formal concerns of your government or seeing anyone come to rescue.

Aren’t we all, in a first place, happy to not be them? Isn’t our first interest and demand from the global justice not to become them? Aren’t we all, by maintaining our ‘citizenships’, defending our birth right not to share their destiny?

And if it is a case that we believe in interference of some supernatural omnipotent entity in sharing lots at birth, where such entity also decides of the merits to be accredited to the particular newborn, we have good enough excuse to be content with the comfort of such belief while exploiting our privileges. Our beliefs support compassion, but do not oblige us to action besides one named as charity and which is directed towards mitigating misery, yet not towards creating option for them to become equal to us in their chances for self-realization - which would involve, by any available means, changing legal structure that allows their oppression. Or, and which is a same thing, our oppression as long as we are not on the power end.

Didn’t we learn already that counting lives ends once the interested party has achieved preservation of own interests? Do we really think that other in power will be merciful to us until their last breath? Can we afford to deceive ourselves that we in particular are more valuable as a number to those who are deciding of who to count off? Or do we actually think that, due to the potential that we ourselves carry for contributing to the society being larger then of the one who didn’t have our chances, we have more right not to end up as cut-off? Person can agree to what they are used to. We are used to be privileged. We can not accept less then that, or can we? As the lots can change in a blink of the eye with the press on one button.

Human identity, or - who we are in a course of our actions, is directly proportional to the quantity and quality of information received by the moment of observation. And that, again, depends on who had the right or monopoly to inform us in a first place and what were their intentions.

Value of the information, both quantitative and qualitative constructs the frame for our lives. While receiving valuable information is not a guarantee for one’s realization, not receiving it will most certainly deprive us of desirable options; where by desirable options we can think of those that would be preferred by persons who have a true possibility to choose.

Now, what is, in the final end, our cause and our interest in global?

Do we, as humanity, have a common interest of so ever? Or does the stand on that question classify us into different species of humans? Do we, ourselves, need to make that classification openly and be counted by this division? Shall we then give each group of humans authority over own selves?

Didn’t the time come already to make some kind of all inclusive consensus? Some more human to more humans (or, be it an utopia, to all humans) social agreement? Isn’t it a time already to stop leaving someone out in our arrangements? Even if we consider own selves unreachable to anyone as a possible slave, even if we see ourselves well enough positioned in an existing system, don’t we think that, taking what we believe is a fair share and reward for our service to the community or to, what we opt to call society at large, and leaving issues of ‘less fortunate ones’ to ‘more fortunate ones’ - namely to those who are tailoring our own frame of destiny as well – has to be exchanged with some more responsible attitude? (How is, in honesty, our conscience when we look at ourselves in the mirror in the evening after finishing our day?)

Isn’t it what should be done? 

Expedient for the apologist of the ‘step-by-step-within-a-system’ strategy; one that claims to have interest in bringing to some future generations of oppressed communities better life in a long run, and where no one is able to tell which particular generation the recipient of our good actions is estimated to be; is to run over what straight to the question of how, knot themselves in to it and then dispose what, labeling it as impossibility.

But how about if it’s a necessity? If we decide to observe it as such at least?

No one knows how until what is determined as a direction and non-dismissible goal. Using our experience to predict whether is possible to get there is only one course that our reasoning must take. The other course must be the question of whether is good for us to get there as a civilization? If meaning of life is no more and no less then providing other humans, of present and of the future, the opportunity for the same experience as a self-conscious mixture of matter, then how are we serving our purpose? By taking a share that our position in a society allow us to legally take for ourselves, regardless of what it means for the interests of others, and enjoying it by the justice of God? Or can we better serve our purpose by better calculating our takes in respect for every living human?

If the purpose of intended change is establishing a new line of hierarchy within the same set of rules, which is to be presumed as if the better (informed) and more moral, or at least less immoral individuals will replace the ones that got corrupted, it is reasonable to fear that, on a current level of humanity’s saturation with darkest bitterness, such a movement will not suck in much energy.

We have to change human perception of what should be our legal and moral rights. We have to oppose to this system of justice without trying to hide our intention to demystify it, discredit it, de-root it from the human mindset and replace it with more impartial and efficient one – if with any.  Social change needs leaders who are well informed about necessities and equally in a sense of own purpose.

And the purpose must not be setting ourselves on the top of the food chain instead of a current dickhead, but a decomposition of the system of hierarchy and rendering the notion of authority to only just criteria – one’s moral standards, as we must slowly start building new organizational constructions, alliances based on interests and preferences of individual contributors and formulas for exchange products and benefits that came to exist by joined efforts of such organizations.   

Now, is there enough of us to join efforts on this matter? Is there enough of us who are willing to set such goal for ourselves of changing the tissue of social justification system? How can we know if there are enough of us willing to engage for a change? If there is enough of us standing openly for that purpose? How do we know that we will not ‘only get killed’ and ‘waste our only life for the sake of utopia’?

And while the question is how can we know, it somehow seams that it is not enough yet.