The violence in this world is an effect of those who are violent (emotionally or physically) to children.  The best way to stop violence in this world is to recognize the roots and first stop being violent, especially towards children, and speak out against those who are violent against children.

When I first asked this question it made perfect sense in my mind, but I can see the need for clarification. To understand my question you must first accept that “the government” is an invalid concept (which I do). In other words the government is just a descriptor for a group of people with opposite moral rules, which makes no logical sense thus making it more of a (contradiction filled) descriptor than a concept. Second you must accept that we are already living in an anarchic society due to the government being an invalid concept.

So to expand upon my question, why in our current anarchic society* have we decided that some people can use violence to solve problems while others can’t? Why is that the dominant competitor in the marketplace of ideas?

I think a short answer to this question is that this is where our society is at psychologically. But why did anarchy result in this at this point? That is something I am having trouble understanding. How did society become so violent and divided in their minds in the first place? Is this a result of the early tribal need to subjugate oneself to a stronger opponent in order to survive? Not quite sure, but something that has set my mind a whirring. Feel free to comment with your thoughts.

*When I refer to society I simply mean people in general.

Recently I discovered Cosmos by Carl Sagan on Hulu.  It reawakened my fascination with the universe and science.  I highly recommend this series because Carl Sagan gives a passionate account of the birth of the universe and our evolution, but most importantly he speaks about how important science and rationality are and how dangerous mysticism and religion are and have been to the progress of our species.

I have found this series great to fall asleep to because I think it helps bring me back to my childhood when my passion for rationality and science were so new, fresh, exciting and yet to be stomped down by public education, my family and the general populace. It really helps to relax me and make me feel genuine happiness at being a unique life-form in this universe.

Carl Sagan says in this series, “I believe our future depends, powerfully, on how well we understand this Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky.”

Compared to what? The cosmos. What is killing each other when we are so small, yet so significant? So unique. It helps me to appreciate my life and life in general more. Please watch this series and let me know what you felt while watching it.

I know that thinkers like Sagan look towards solutions to climate change, such as reforestation, cutting toxic emissions, helping third world countries become self sustainable and seeking alternative means of power.  All of these solutions are interesting, and probably the correct direction to look if humans are truly killing themselves off, but I wonder by what means Sagan believed that these solutions be achieved.

I know what most of his contemporaries have decided.  They have decided that violence is the means.  Since Sagan and other scientists like him have provided us with the possibility that humans could destroy themselves through climate change, men in power have twisted these ideas into weapons of fear against the masses to further enslave them.  Don’t believe me?  When people talk about global warming now-a-days where does the conversation next lead?  Politics.  Can you have an intelligent conversation with most people about the possibility of climate change without discussing the Kyoto protocol, Al Gore or what Obama should do to stop pollution?

When most liberals find out that I am against government solutions to problems, they become angry with me.  I suspect it is because I make them look like a conservative when they stand next to me.  What I mean by that is that I expose the gun in their hand.  When they talk about the climate, health care or a slough of other human-interest subjects they think that they have peace on their side.  If you call yourself liberal, green or any other term that suggests that you are a fan of life… and at the same time support government solutions to problems, you have just as much blood on your hands as the conservatives.

You want a real solution?  First recognize that violence is never a solution.  All else will flow naturally from there.

What was so unique about Michael Moore’s documentaries (I use that term only because that is what they are classified as) was how much of Michael Moore’s perspective and personality was injected into the film.  His documentaries were anything but the classic informational borefests of the past.  They hit you emotionally in many different ways.  I remember laughing, feeling fury and feeling sympathy (sometimes to the point of tears) when watching all of his documentaries.  In Bowling for Columbine I felt sympathy for the children who has been victims of gun violence.  In Roger and Me it was the workers at GM whose lives and town had been torn apart.  In Fahrenheit 9/11 it was the Iraqis and propagandized American teens.  In Sicko it was the poor.  In every one it was a group of people that I had not previously even considered in my day to day. What I would not admit to others at the time was the sympathy I felt, especially for those who were effected by whatever subject he was focusing on.

Most of the time Michael Moore’s political ideology was the opposite of mine, and yet I felt myself going back time and time again to learn more about him and his messages.  Often I wrote him off as a propagandist, other times as a whacked out socialist and rarely thought about what his intentions were for creating these documentaries and why I connected to them despite my opposition to viewpoint that he supported.

After watching this video (spoilers), I realized what it was that connected emotionally with me.  It was that he was against violence.  That is also why he had so much vocal opposition, because he was pointing out guns where people were not used to seeing them.  It made them (myself included) nervous everytime Michael would shine the light on yet another source of violence in our country.

What frustrates me to this day is that although he is showing where violence lies, he is still  not getting to the root.  He still supports the biggest gun of all; the government.  His solution to violence is more violence, although I think he is unaware of that consciously. Imagine the uproar he would cause if he were to say the solution to a problem was no more violence, no more government. Very few have the bravery to do that.

Fortunately I have my friends to remind me that there is a minority of humans who still try their hardest to not only speak their values but live them.  A group of people who looks forward to the future and strives to live it in their own lives as an example of what the future can look like.  A group of people who do not stand for violence in any form.  It’s very rare to find, and very scattered about this earth, but fortunately it exists to help me maintain hope that humanity is worth saving.

When I feel low about most of humanity, I remind myself why I am doing this.  This video is part two of why I continue to strive for the best in this world.

Here is a link to all of the sources used in this video.

After the initial shock wore off people began to discuss why we were attacked. It took a few years for it to sink in, but I started to realize that support of this mafia that we call the government is why we were attacked. The attack was the result of the initiation of force. It was the result of a contradiction that most people hold: that the initiation of force is wrong unless it is the government that initiates it. Now that I see that contradiction clearly, I will not support anything that uses a gun to achieve its ends.

When people find out that I am against Obama’s plan for nationalized healthcare, they look at me as if I am some sort of monster that doesn’t care about the sick and poor. The truth is the opposite. I care deeply about people, especially those who have been less fortunate than I have been. That is why I support a stateless society. That is the biggest reason why I have come to the conclusion that anarchy is the best way for people to live, including the sick and the poor. The results I have seen at the hands of the government are the opposite of compassion. The results are MASS death. The results are more poor, more sick, more disadvantaged.

I will not support the use of force, no matter what end it supposedly achieves. When you support force for ANYTHING, including “helping” the less fortunate, you are standing in blood. If you do not support the use of force in your own life, but support the government in any way, you are standing in blood.

Nothing I have come across says this better than this video. Please watch it. It changed my entire perspective and I hope it changes yours.

Transcribed from the video “Standing in Blood” by Stefan Molyneux

I know that people get confused by my approach to the question of a stateless society. “Why would you work so hard, why would you quit your career, why would you expose yourself like this, for the sake of something like a stateless society, a voluntaryist society?”

“Is it because you hate the welfare state?”

“Is it because you would like the roads to be privatized so you can bypass traffic jams?”

“Is it because you would like children to get better education?”

All of those are not unimportant; I would like the currency to be more stable. I would like economic growth to be the rising tide that lifts all boats and helps people out of poverty. I would like the people currently incarcerated in prisons to be free of their torture and rape.

Of course.

But I must tell you, it has a lot to do with these poor…fucking…Iraqis. 1.2 million murdered as a result of this war. America has ten times the population. Imagine 12 million Americans being murdered and one million Americans fleeing America every month.

Just imagine. Just imagine. Just imagine: your entire society, your entire life, detonated, decimated. Your children dying, helpless, starving, wracked with disease and malnutrition in your arms.

Imagine fearing every airplane, every possible disease you have in your body as a sign of cancer of leukemia in your children – death of some horrible, slow, wasting kind.

Imagine watching your country — and the best in your country, those who you desperately need to help you survive (the engineers, the doctors) fleeing the country to live in tents with no future and barely enough food. Imagine being stuck in the limbo, in the null zone between countries for years — for decades.

Imagine what your life would be like if you were them: helpless, bullied, tortured and murdered by Saddam Hussein, installed and maintained by the United States for a decade with the US-Anglo blockade. Half a million children died in hospitals in their parents’ arms for lack of food, lack of medicine, lack of inoculations.

5 million American children would have to die as an equivalent. Remember how angry you were when 3,000 Americans died on 9/11. 5 million children, 12 million Americans, 1 million Americans fleeing the country every year because the country is being turned into a desert. As they said of Rome, “They made it a desert and called it peace.” They have made Iraq a desert, and it is not even peaceful.”

And this is the cost of our patriotism. This is the cost of believing in these sick fantasies of states and governments and the virtue of violence in any form! For the roads, for the poor, for the sick, for the old — that is the bait on the hook that breeds war!

You can’t get state control of education without this type of genocide. You can’t get collective services like roads and sewers and garbage collection without this slaughter!

Because violence breeds violence. If we say we can point guns at people to help the poor (in the form of “income redistribution”); if we say we can point guns at people to help the old, then the guns will be pointed at you to fund the slaughter.

When you salute the flag, you stand in blood.

When you praise the military, you stand in blood.

When you praise a politician, when you join a political party, you stand in blood. You wade in blood.

When you say the government should do this, the government should do that, you stand in rising blood, and it is almost covering our mouths by now.

If you’re interested in these ideas, go to Freedomain Radio, the world’s most popular philosophy podcast.