“A state, is called the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly lieth it also; and this lie creepeth from its mouth: “I, the state, am the people.” It is a lie! Creators were they who created peoples, and hung a faith and a love over them: thus they served life. Destroyers, are they who lay snares for many, and call it the state: they hang a sword and a hundred cravings over them. Where there is still a people, there the state is not understood, but hated as the evil eye, and as sin against laws and customs.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Lines on a map. Cold arbitration. Indifferent to one’s individual desires, government and their borders are the tired tradition that limit one’s liberty. Your control is aided by the exaltation of the government and the border.
You may not cross these, and must obey my authority within them; how do government and borders intersect in the creation of hierarchy, of the subjugation of the individual?
Government is predicated on violence as a means to submission. I may not, not because I will it, but because the government lie in wait should I. As cruel and detached as it is, government seeks to impose its will unto mine with this coercive threat of violence. Akin to Law, the border is another tool of the State’s government in this grand scheme of controlling the individual. Wherein the border lie, the State’s power exists within.
The defense of this fictitious idea of a border, the struggle to expand upon the territory lay claim within, has shed countless blood. A matter of distance can determine something’s legality, from plants to surgeries. It’s all so arbitrary and pointless. One will gladly take up arms against another, with all the fervor born of nationalistic patriotism, over a difference of the way their rulers plotted out the land during their game of power, to kill another over a concept one has not been taught to think without. Land, frankly, can not be owned and to believe so is to hand over freely your whole world, or, as happens tirelessly, lays the groundwork for pointless war and needless death.
The government is of no benefit to the individual. Government is not needed for order to exist. Government does naught but for itself and would gleefully convince you of its necessity. Individualism can hardly exist where one must do as they are told. How can something that isn’t me claim to represent me? Because I was born within its clutches to justify my control? There is no justification, merely lies. Individuals could certainly respect one another, whereas the government never does. Government cares only for its own reasons, its own cause. It is infinitely more a hindrance before it could ever be considered a boon. To what purpose must there exist an authority, an entity to regulate human conduct?
Borders become an abstraction of the powerful’s desires, as malleable as they are arbitrary. What is to stop one nation, one government, from arguing their border lay past another to garner more land? Is this tale not as old as the border itself? The border is an extension of the will of authority. You Shall Not Pass! You will exist in these confines, and as such will exist. The border is the dominion of human movement. Government, thus, the control of human actions. Could one exist without the other? One appears essential to the other, else where would a government’s tyranny extend to?
The border marks the supposed end to a government’s terror before one is once again laid claim by a separate government. It seems as if the border is a consequence of the absurd notion that land can be owned. Where one’s ownership ends, and another’s begins, the border is born. One hardly owns a border, rather its contents. You are confined between borders, can cross over borders, but truthfully exist on one side or the other.
Governments regulate the crossing between borders. On a larger scale, this equates to immigration and the movement between nations. The State remains arbiter, as always. Within the State’s territory exist borders on property, allowing government to violently attack any who dare oppose them. You may not live here, simply because another lay ownership to it. You may not pass over these lines.
Government is comprised of humans, each government its own structure with its own regulations. Are there similarities? All government commands authority over its governed, grants power unto itself. So, in essence, government is the authority of some humans over the majority of individuals. That one can use language to coddle the mind of those enslaved, to rob them, knowing of everything they forfeit in name of their servitude, does not make governments a necessity. Language is as much a tool of deception as it can aid a Will to Truth. Government would rather demand an acceptance of its doctrines as Fact and demand respect of them than invite individuals to have their own thought or will. The will of government is just. The individuals must submit.
Why were you not simply born beyond the border? Rather, why must you lay claim to our earth? To my person? There should be no borders, no government. The abolition of both is a necessary precursor to the abolition of the State. With borders, with government, one may control the will of another. When both exist, must not the State? Will any entity utilizing government and borders to limit individual liberty ever be more than merely a State? One can clearly say they are one thing while being another. I see a territorial claim, by consequence a border, and a governing body as principle aspects, defining aspects if you will, of a State. All statehood is tyranny. We will know no peace until we are rid of all states, all governments, all borders.
My individual freedom from rule need no purpose, no justification to it. All who would convince that I rid myself of my birthright do nothing more. Nothing is to stop the violence of the tyrannical other than my own. The state need not hesitate to use violence, so of what use is a hindrance of my own actions? Would it not negate the State’s? There is no reason to simply obey the State and its commands. Its violence forms the crux of its power, and little power of oneself is claimed by succumbing to martyrdom. More so, the earth is indifferent to the morals of the nonviolent. Power rules our existence, the government a way for this power to be wielded. I certainly see my own freedom, my own individuality, as a “good”. What leads to it is no more than the manner in which it is actualized. Is your objection to violence born from the reality of an alternative, or that one’s ruler sees your liberation as bad? I see no alternative and am face-to-face with reality.
Violence has no innate value or purpose to it. We are made the targets of government mandated violence by manner of merely opposing its will. I will not work for a pittance to merely subsist off table scraps. I will steal. I refuse to respect your property rights and will squat the shelter demanded of my humanity. I will not be made into a neo-serf by any sort of State. I choose to fight. I will rob, I will burn, I shan’t be possessed. Why must I be controlled through my own unwillingness to have violence do unto violence? A good person that is controlled is just that – controlled. Know not only thyself, but what is done unto thee. I am my own, so long as I allow it to be.
No more governments and an end to borders.
“The destroyer of morality, the good and just call me: my story is immoral.” -Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
-Comrade Candle