1906. It can be said, “Those whom I feed, obey me.”. It can also be said, “Those whom I feed, do not contradict me.”.
1907. Belief and obedience are the two things demanded by a Type 2 religion. (Type 2 says that man is a material being created by God. His mission is to believe and to obey, which will be rewarded after death by eternal life in heaven.)
1908. Belief and obedience are the two things often demanded by any great power.
1909. Both in religion and in politics, power often comes largely from controlling the beliefs of the followers or of the population.
1910. Power is when you can get the population to believe whatever you want them to believe.
1911. Even greater power is when the population believes what you want them to believe with conviction, passion, devotion, and adoration. They are zealots who respond with instant, spontaneous, and extreme hostility to any slightest suggestion of disagreement.
1912. Sometimes the followers of a Type 2 religion or of a great power give pretended belief rather than actual belief.
1913. Kings have often had the power of life and death over their subjects. Sometimes this power has been so great that the king’s whim alone, without even a pretense of trial or justice or logic, has been enough to send any of his subjects, or even a group of them, to their death, or to their death by torture. Examples of this extreme are ancient Persian kings and Zulu kings of the 19th century.
1914. There are degrees of respect, of obsequiousness, of groveling.
1915. In feudal Japan, a wrong word, a slight breach of etiquette, or insufficiently obsequious respect, could easily cause a man to lose his head, on the spot, with no trial, with no compensation, and with no sense by anyone that this instant penalty was improper or out of the ordinary.
1916. Those who live in the presence of one or more others who have the power of life and death over them tend strongly to express agreement with the powerful person or group or class, even if they do not really agree. They tend to withhold expression of any disagreement. They tend to express praise of the powerful person or group, even if they do not really admire the person or group.
1917. The practice of agreeing dishonestly with someone who has the power of life and death over you, or with such a group, is not necessarily a bad thing. Nor is dishonestly praising such a person or group. Why should you get yourself killed for no good reason? Where is the benefit? Where is the good result?
1918. In the presence of the power of life and death, not only is there a tendency to agree and to praise dishonestly, there is also a tendency to agree and to praise honestly, even if the truth is otherwise, and even if the individual would see that the truth is otherwise in a different situation. It is a higher level of awareness and honor and skill to correctly perceive and to keep in mind the real truth, while still being able to say what is necessary to survive and to be successful. But it may well be easier and safer to allow oneself to actually believe what it is necessary that you appear to believe. And it may involve little or no liability in practice.
1919. When the king is surrounded by extreme flattery, with unending agreement and praise, he tends to believe in his own wonderfulness. At the very least he gets used to it. Then any variation from unending agreement and praise sounds like a discord and looks like an enemy.
1920. Sometimes there is something which is true, but which cannot be stated. It may be that you know it is true, but you cannot say it. It may be that you do not know it, but you have friends who do know it, but they cannot help you by stating it plainly.
1921. It really is true that if the king – or any high officer – allows anyone and everyone to speak freely and critically, in public and in his presence, then he will tend to lose respect and authority.
1922. If the king really and honestly desires to know the complete and exact truth and to be wise, he will still demand respect for the sake of his own authority.
1923. The king, if he is any good, probably has things he is trying to do. So he has no time to waste on minor details and petty criticism.
1924. Sometimes there is a great leader who has both good qualities and bad qualities. In such a case it is possible to give a great deal of sincere agreement and admiration for the good qualities, in spite of the bad qualities which also exist.
1925. Shaka, the great Zulu king, was one of the most evil and bloodthirsty tyrants who ever lived. At the same time he was a brilliant military organizer and general. He was fabulously victorious. Everyone loves a winner.
1926. Napoleon led France to destruction. But he was a great general and organizer. Many Frenchmen loved him.
1927. Priests and religious leaders sometimes have a life and death power similar to that of kings. This sometimes applies when the religion thoroughly dominates the society, and when that religion is embodied in a single powerful organization.
1928. The anointed ones, the holy ones, the high priests of that great religious organization, are entrusted by their God or gods or savior with the preservation and the purity of their doctrines and laws and practices. Usually they take these duties very seriously and with great sincerity. Sometimes a few, or even many, are complete hypocrites, believe none of their own doctrines, and use the religion and its organization to achieve personal power.
1929. Sometimes, to a greater or lesser degree, the high priests are also entrusted with the great mission of expanding the wealth and power of the religious organization and of bringing the great masses of unenlightened unsaved souls into the true religion and its great organization. The mission of the religious leaders is to bring salvation and enlightenment to all the world and to everyone in it.
1930. The expansion of a religion is good or bad depending on whether and to what degree that religion really is good or bad. This is similar to the expansion of a political organization or empire. The expansion of an empire is good or bad depending on whether and to what degree that empire really is good or bad.
1931. When a man is financially independent because he owns substantial personal wealth, he is likely to be much more outspoken and to speak much more bluntly. His need for approval from others with wealth and power is much less.
1932. Subjects about which it can be dangerous to express an opinion are called “controversial”.
1933. It is sometimes said that in polite society, one should never discuss politics or religion. That’s because politics and religion are “controversial”. The kings and priests might demand your head. Those with wealth and power might see you as an enemy and want you destroyed.
1934. An “authoritarian personality” can be defined as someone who sees people in terms of where they are in the “pecking order”. Someone higher in the pecking order has the right to “peck” someone lower. He can tell him what to think and what to do, because he is supposed to be smarter and better. Someone lower in the pecking order does not have the right to peck someone higher.
1935. “Authoritarian epistemology” can be defined as believing what you are told by higher authorities in the group and not believing ideas which are considered unacceptable and incorrect by the group, without an independent examination and consideration of the ideas.
1936. Some people have a naturally authoritarian epistemology. They tend to be group members more easily and more enthusiastically. Other people tend to be very independent of the opinions of others when evaluating ideas. They tend to be intellectuals and loners and do not join groups so easily.
1937. Gung-ho or totalitarian groups, religious or political, tend to think all the same way. Everyone tends to think along the same lines which are considered acceptable and correct.
1938. An intellectual is someone who thinks many more thoughts than ordinary people do. Thus his thoughts often deviate from what is considered acceptable and correct. Also, because he is thinking a lot, he may be less active and less productive than ordinary people. So an intellectual often has difficulty with a gung-ho or totalitarian group.
1939. Sometimes a gung-ho worker is extremely busy and believes that he is being very productive doing valuable work. So he allows little or no time to question or doubt the truth of the doctrines and statements or the goodness of the strategies and decisions of his chosen authorities and groups.
1940. At the other end of the scale is the intellectual or philosopher who takes the time to think a lot and who questions and doubts many of the doctrines, statements, strategies, and decisions which he hears about. It is probable that he does not get as much work done as the gung-ho worker.
1941. It is very easy for the gung-ho worker and the intellectual to come into conflict. This is especially true if the intellectual does not know that often he should keep his mouth shut. The gung-ho worker will see the intellectual as non-productive and critical. The intellectual will see the gung-ho worker as dogmatic and as unwilling to correct errors and injustices.
1942. In a gung-ho or totalitarian group, there may be ideas which are true, but which cannot be stated, because those ideas are not considered acceptable or correct.
1943. Even in a gung-ho group which has an ideal of freedom, there can be zealots who are not capable of a wide range of thought and who are intolerant of any ideas outside the narrow range of what they consider acceptable and correct.
1944. There is some contradiction inherent in aggressively pushing on a program for freedom. People are pushed to conform to the program. One obvious example of this is being in the American army in World War II fighting Hitler.
1945. Sometimes you see a person who speaks freely whatever comes into his mind. This may seem like an admirable quality. But such a person very probably has a very small number of controversial thoughts. So he does not get into trouble by saying whatever he thinks. He has not been trained to keep his mouth shut on controversial subjects.
1946. In a gung-ho or totalitarian group, on controversial subjects, a high level of intelligence and a high level of honesty and sincerity cannot be combined with a high level of outspokenness.
1947. “Hypocrisy” is when you do not act according to the principles which you loudly advocate.
1948. Hypocrisy when loudly advocating good principles is not entirely a bad thing. At least good principles are being loudly advocated.
1949. In an argument, it is helpful to be right, to have the truth on your side. But it is only a small advantage.
1950. A group which opposes an evil group is not necessarily a good group. Often the second group is just another evil group competing with the first evil group. It may be a worse evil group.
1951. Religion and politics are the centers of power in society.
1952. When wealth is a center of power in society, it works through politics and religion.
1953. When you live in the presence of a great and powerful organization, especially a political or religious organization, you have three options. You can support it. You can coexist with it, taking a neutral position. Or you can fight it.
1954. The Great Conspiracy is a great and powerful organization. But its members are actually few. And it desires to remain unknown. So it generally ignores ordinary people.
1955. It is seldom that revolutions are successful. The existing organizations work hard to survive and to preserve themselves and to destroy their enemies.
1956. Martin Luther was the first great successful revolutionary against the religious monopoly of the Roman Catholic Church. He was successful because the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church was very great. The German population which was his audience and which supported him had a great deal of stored up protest against the abuses and the hypocrisy of the Roman Catholic Church. Luther and his supporters were able to use Christian scriptures and Christian doctrines against the Roman Catholic Church. This was not a revolution against Christianity. The Germans also did not like the fact that the Roman Catholic Church was dominated by Italians.
1957. The American Revolution was a response to the abuses of English rule over the American colonies. Most of the American Declaration of Independence is a long list of these abuses. Also, the center of English power was on the other side of a wide ocean. Also, the quality of the citizens of the American colonies was very high. They were not primitive or illiterate. They had the same culture, education, religion, and legal system as the English. They had the English tradition of rights and Liberty going back to the Magna Carta, to Alfred the Great, and to King Arthur. They or their fathers or their grandfathers had crossed the wide ocean to seek a new life in the New World out from under the thumb of European oppression. They were trained and experienced in self-reliance and independence, and they were proud of this.
1958. The Russian Communist revolution was instigated and supported by the Great Conspiracy. The Chinese Communist revolution was supported by America.
1959. There have been many modern Communist revolutions, but they are not real revolutions. They are instigated and supported by Russia or China. The Western powers under the leadership of the Great Conspiracy try hard to lose when they resist Communist revolutions. Small nations are subverted and undermined both by Communists and by the Great Conspiracy.
1960. Modern Communist revolutions are just skirmishes in the great battle between Communism and Western civilization under the hidden leadership of the Great Conspiracy. The Great Conspiracy is trying to build up Communist power so as to achieve a really big war, and thereby to destroy Liberty forever.
1961. The abundance of apparent revolutions in recent history gives the false idea that revolutions are easy. The truth is that the great powers of the world do everything possible to encourage and support revolutions. They desire chaos and tyranny.
1962. The U.S. Constitution was consciously designed with “separation of powers” into three branches of government, Legislative, Executive, and Judicial. This was intended to prevent anyone from achieving total power.
1963. At this time, the Great Conspiracy is so far advanced that in important matters, the “separation of powers” is largely nullified. Agents of the Conspiracy dominate all three branches of government. The Conspiracy is able to give its important servants immunity, so that they are literally above the law.
1964. Thomas Jefferson said, “I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”.
1965. Voltaire said, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”.
1966. These great sayings express the intellectual ideal of freedom of speech.
1967. The vast majority of people are not intellectual.
1968. To have enthusiasm and zeal for a very good cause is a very good thing.
1969. History is made by tough dedicated groups, the members of which believe strongly in their leaders and goals and ideals and principles. Two examples of this are Christians and Communists.
1970. The zeal and energy and dedication and heroism which an individual gives to a group and its goals and its ideals and its principles are good or bad, or very good or very bad, depending on whether those goals and ideals and principles are good or bad, and to what degree.
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This article is Chapter 63 in LIBERTY FOR ALL MEN EVERYWHERE – The Theory And Practice Of Freedom by Dale Samson. This book is available at http://www.libfame.com.
© Copyright 2010 Dale Richard Samson. Partial quotations of this chapter are permitted with attribution. Cite source as Dale Samson's LIBERTY FOR ALL MEN EVERYWHERE at http://www.libfame.com.
