Elusive Peace: The Problem of the State

I was reading news on zerohedge.com website and this news came up,

Twitter Allows ‘Hang Mike Pence’ To Trend After Banning Trump For “Inciting Violence”

A day after Twitter banned President Trump “due to the risk of further incitement of violence,” the social media company let “Hang Mike Pence” trend on its platform.

The hypocrisy of left-wing Big Tech companies is astounding.

I don’t see any hypocrisy or anything unusual in the above incident. Rather, I find the focus of this whole debate to be wrongheaded. Whatever is going around the world since the known human history makes one thing very clear that people of differing and opposing ideologies, e.g., traditional conservative and newly evolving liberal ideologies, cannot stay and live together in peace. We humans have yet to evolve to do that. Our brains are too primitive to allow that type of a society. The divide everywhere is vast and looks to be unbreachable. That divide incites mutual hatred, constant conflicts and ensuing violence. One group of people accuse other of wrong doing and vice versa. In doing so both parties are guilty re one or the other matter. In such a situation it is better that they both go their own way and build separate societies so that they can live peacefully and enjoy their lives fully instead of constantly fighting with each other like what we have been seeing since time immemorial. Humanity will benefit immensely if this happens. Blaming and complaining about each other all the time is only going to create more hatred and violence. It is only going to waste humanity’s precious time on earth. The opportunity cost, the unseen, of not evolving to this level of peace and happiness is huge. Peace and Happiness are the ultimate goals that we must strive to achieve. Peace can be achieved when such diverse people stop blaming each other and separate. Peace can be achieved when people have freedom to choose their own fate inside the ethical boundaries.

If we try to find the cause of this conflict then we see that these differing ideologies are not at all part of the problem. No two people are going to have a same ideology. Nothing in nature is similar. Our problem rather is the political institution of the State which enables some ideological groups of people to use the (negative) force of the state, which was originally never intended, to impose their ideology on other groups of people. This forceful imposition of one’s ideology on others is what gives rise to these never ending conflicts. For example, in India when the left leaning Congress comes to power they impose their socialist secular ideologies on people who do not believe in those ideologies and when BJP is brought in power by right wing Hindu nationalist voters they impose their ideology on the socialist secular group. This endless cycle never allows both these groups to live in peace. The price of this is paid by all of us as progress is impeded due to this never ending conflicts. For any kind of progress peace is the prerequisite and the institution of the state doesn’t allow us to establish this peace. That institution is thus anti-peace and anti-progress by its very nature.

If the state is the root cause of this endless conflicts and impediment to lasting progress then the solution is the end of this state. In the absence of the force of the leviathan state, no group will be able to impose their ideology on others. People will then also be free to move from one place to another, subject to private property rules, if they face issues with the place where they are living. This choice of living in a place which suits one’s ideologies and lifestyle will end the conflict. If the liberals want to allow abortion or gay marriage or free love or free education or health insurance etc., then they can do so between themselves in their societies. No one should or will stop them from doing so. And if conservatives want to impart family values and religious strictness to their children then they can do so in such conservative schooling system that they will create in their societies. In India secular people can live in their secular countries and Hindu nationalists can create a Hindu Rashtra in their countries. No one will impose anything on the other individuals who are not like them. Doing so will be impossible because there won’t be any unitary force of the State present to utilize it to fulfill that goal.

If end of the state is the desired goal then the next logical question is how to achieve that goal? As scholars of the past have pointed out, we do not need to do anything positive to bring the state down. There is no need to fight the government, so to speak. The leviathan state has its natural limits of predation and it will one day fall under its own weight. When the parasite becomes bigger than its host, it dies. We are seeing in present time that the economic and financial conditions of most states around the world are beyond repair. These states will thus fall sooner or later and disintegrate into smaller pieces. This is why decentralization of power should be our goal. Political fragmentation is always good for common people as it gives us ample choice to experiment with different economic, social and political systems. It gives us freedom and peace which brings prosperity and progress. As the work of Prof. Leopold Kohr shows, smaller countries/nations are far better in terms of overall progress for human beings compared to big states like the Indian or Chinese or American nation states. As Prof. Kohr’s disciple E F Schumacher said, Small is Beautiful. As the government’s own family planning programs proclaim, small family is a happy family, in a similar way, small countries made of people who like each other are going to be happy countries.

And when the states are in the process of self destruction, good people of the world should devote their time in erecting better and moral alternatives of the statist system. If public schools are the problem of indoctrination then we should create alternatives of homeschooling and unschooling. If the state’s fiat paper currency is the problem then we should convert it into a sound money like gold or silver. If government wants to breed dependency via its welfare programs then we work to make people more responsible and independent. If government wants to break our families and communities then we must create strong family and friendship ties so we do not have to depend on the state in the time of distress. We must create alternatives in all the areas of life that the state has hijacked from us during its existence of several centuries. In short, instead of bickering and complaining about each other all the time, we must engage in the positive work of readying the alternatives so that whenever the time comes, transition can be smoother. We must wean away as many people as possible from the bosom of the state.

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