A Case for Going Wild

Between governments, corporations and organized religion, people who just want to be free have got their hands full.

Governments, whether they be federal monsters three thousand miles away or local neighborhood associations, have got the art of controlling every aspect of everybody's life (and profiting from it) pretty well wrapped up. There is a fee, license or fine for engaging in every activity that humans must engage in if they want to live. At birth, you are given a birth certificate, not much different from a factory worker filling out a time card and… well… clocking in. There you are, your existence is documented. If you are not a documented human being, there will be some legal trouble for your parents, and you will most likely be sent into foster care. Next you are given a Social Security number, and everything you do, and all the income you make is tracked that way. If you want to open a bank account, have a telephone, rent an apartment, buy a house or have a job, it is required that you give the appropriate people your personal tracking number so that every aspect of your continued existence may be scrutinized by anyone who is skilled to a minimal degree in paper tracing. If you try to stay out of that system, every aspect of your life will be illegal. You are required by every government bureaucracy to have an address for your physical residence. If you try to live free in the wilderness, you are squatting, and if you are caught, there is a stiff prison sentence for terrible people like you. If you try to work without giving out your Social Security number, your employer will be breaking the law by hiring you. If you are self-employed and receiving income under the table, you are a “tax resistor,” and a villain according to the IRS. You must either work and provide the federal government and the state with a percentage of the product of your labor, or you must apply for assistance and live off of taxpayers. Next, if you want to reproduce after your kind, you are required by law to buy a marriage license and then document your offspring. In the end, after you die, someone will be required to fill out a death certificate, a little official document that tells the government that you have clocked out, left the building and gone home. Government regulates and taxes every aspect of your life. Food is regulated, monitored and taxed. Water is regulated, monitored and taxed. Going to the bathroom, including the toilet you use, and a properly regulated sewage system is regulated, monitored and taxed. Your reproductive behavior is regulated, monitored and taxed. Sleeping, including where you sleep and the mattress you sleep on, is regulated, monitored and taxed. Death, including where and how you are buried, is regulated, monitored and taxed. No part of being a living human being escapes the eye and the grip and the control of government.

Then there are the corporate beasts that seek to monopolize and profit from every human need and desire. Large corporations like Monsanto have come to the point of completely controlling almost the entire food supply of the USA and other countries. Not only are they making it more and more difficult to eat anything that doesn’t provide profit for them, but they’ve also introduced toxins into the food supply, such as genetically modified corn and soy which cause cancer and birth defects, and bovine growth hormone in cattle which causes cancer and other diseases. Monsanto and other large corporations clearly intend on reducing every alternative to their toxic food products to just another opportunity for them to profit. Those who wish to take advantage of soy products to protect themselves and their families from the diseases caused by rBGH in meat and dairy products, will find themselves eating genetically modified soy bean products that cause the same diseases. If they try to avoid genetically modified food products and restrict themselves to “organic” foods, they will face much higher prices and excessive restrictions from the FDA, which, like every government bureaucracy, must also profit from the basic needs of everyday people. If we try to eat fish products, we are ingesting mercury. If we try to stop buying water which is (by government mandate) infused with toxic fluoride, we may take water out of creeks and rivers that contain high levels of arsenic, mercury and other poisons from mining operations and factories. It seems that, no matter what we do, if we want to eat or drink anything, we are being poisoned because of government regulation and corporate greed. Most cases of cancer, ADHD, autism, or just about anything shy of an auto accident that will kill you someday, may be traced to a government mandate or a greedy corporation that can’t just be satisfied with being filthy rich.

Under difficult circumstances, people will often turn to God. Of course, the God business is largely controlled by people seeking to profit from the basic human knowledge that there must be something out there called God. It’s a practically inescapable intuition that we’ve had since birth that, if such a profoundly complex and well-designed universe exists, there naturally must be a Designer. With all of the world’s scientific prowess, we still are unable to design from raw atoms something as simple as a grass plant that reproduces after itself. If, despite all of our fantastic human ingenuity, we are unable to design from scratch something so simple, we are flummoxed by the ingenious complexity of the universe. We see around us inexplicable “coincidences” that we can only describe as miracles, due to their great improbability. We pray for people with incurable diseases that doctors don’t understand, and those people are sometimes healed. No explanation except God. With a thirst for comprehending God, uniting with God, knowing God, or even harnessing His power, people turn to churches, synagogues, mosques and witches covens. Wherever they turn, however, they are faced with fraudulent quacks seeking to cash in. Instead of bringing people to God, these religions, organized or disorganized, turn people away from God by turning them instead into mindless religious zombies. Jesus said about the religious leaders of his day and culture, “Woe to you experts in religious law, for you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered [the kingdom of the heavens], and you have hindered those who had sought to enter” (Luke 11:52). Jesus was clearly not a fan of religion. That opinion has probably improved none, as he looks down from heaven today and sees that people have invented a great slew of brand new religions centered around him, which seek to profit from and control humanity in his name.

There are the three great evils which enslave, murder and manipulate the people of this world. We are treated like cattle, born for the purpose of giving milk or being slaughtered for the profit and pleasure of the Ranchers. We are like chickens living on a factory farm, our sole purpose until death, the provision of eggs and meat for the profit and pleasure of the Farmers.

As far as I can tell, few people are bothered by any of the details I have described. Of course, I am an extremist, having these views. An extremist and an idiot. However, if you are one of the few who do feel some modicum of alarm, there is a solution. I am trying to make the case for going wild. Feral, if you will, to some degree.

All creatures on this planet were given everything they need to live naturally, in creation, by the Designer. We weren’t only given the means to “survive” in the wilderness, but to live well, in complete freedom from any of those corrupt systems that control us now. Just like food, water, and everything necessary in life was given to deer, birds and squirrels, it was also all given to human beings. If you walk out into the woods and all you can see is bugs, snakes, dirt and other distasteful things, you have been brainwashed by the system of the world. Every plant and tree in nature is food, medicine, or some useful tool or item that would make you very comfortable and happy if you only knew how to use it. Nothing that grows or lives in nature is a useless thing, but everything was given to us to help us live well and comfortable. If you can manage to break free from the belief the world has instilled in you that you must live the way you are expected to live, in a house or apartment with an address and a road that leads to your door, working for money and buying food instead of gathering or growing it, purchasing clothing instead of fabricating it from what is found in nature, most of these things that we find so disturbing in the world will no longer have relevance to you.

People who live free, outside of the System will encounter a new set of problems. Specifically, no aspect of living free is technically legal and free of fines, confiscation of offspring and prison sentences. If a cow or a chicken gets loose, it will be caught by the farmer and brought back to its proper place. When a dog gets free and happily runs around the neighborhood, there are dog catchers and “the pound” for such unruly, out-of-control creatures. As humans, we will be treated no better. Nevertheless, freedom is still a valid option, and probably a better option for producing human happiness than living in the massive cage we are told we must live in. Just watch out for the zookeepers when you‘re out and about, that’s all I’m saying.

Gunpoint Philanthropy

THE ANGELIC ETHICS OF GUNPOINT PHILANTHROPY

There are children starving in the streets, families without homes and poverty stricken women who "need" abortions but can't afford them. So much misery and suffering in the world, and meanwhile, there are millions of greedy people who must not care at all, since they are hateful towards taxation, and sometimes even (gasp) cheat on their taxes. Unwilling to pay their fair share! Greedy bastards!

Or... maybe not. You're walking down the street with your friend Bob, and a beggar jumps out from the bushes and pleads with you for some spare change, explaining, "Why lie? I need beer!" You are so stricken with compassion for this man, so overwhelmed with his honesty and the gravity of his situation, that you... demand that Bob reach into his wallet and pull out his last ten dollar bill and give it to the beggar for beer.

Bob says, "Hell no! I don't drink at all, and this man is living on the streets because he's an alcoholic. I'm down to only ten dollars and I've got bills to pay that are about to go late. You've got a hundred dollars in your own wallet, and ten thousand dollars in your bank account. Why don't you give the guy some of your own money and leave me out of this."

Well, now you're indignant. Offended, in fact. "You are so selfish!" you say. "You never give any more than ten percent of your income to anybody! You are the most greedy, self-centered person I have ever known!You live in a studio apartment, and you drive a car that's no more than ten years old, and look at this poor guy, living on the streets! Who are you to judge him because he's an alcoholic? That could have been you!"

Bob is pissed off at this point. He begins to walk away, so you grab him by the arm, swing him around and threaten him. "If you don't give this man that ten dollars I saw in your wallet, I'm gonna beat the hell out of you!"

Bob knows you will, because he's seen you do the same thing to other people before. So, to avoid personal injury, he pulls the remaining money out of his wallet and gives it to the beggar.

Now, aren't you generous. You just gave that poor, downtrodden alcoholic ten dollars, and you should be feeling pretty good about yourself. Right?

This is the nature of taxation and redistribution. In a political scenario, you are a politician (making a salary of close to $200,000 per year, not counting the corporate gratuities you receive under the table) demanding that other people give up their hard-earned money to fund various social programs and “for the greater good” schemes that you personally believe in, but they may not. The taxpayers are Bob. Bob generously gives up ten percent of his money by donating to the various causes that he believes in, without any government coercion. However, according to you that’s not enough. He must also fund wars and secret military projects and welfare and food stamps, and other things he is completely unaware of, some of which he would be appalled at if he did know about them.

What is so generous about rich, pompous, self-inflated elected officials forcing other people to “give generously” to causes they would probably have given to voluntarily, if they had actually believed in those causes? Generosity cannot be forced on people. You be generous with your money in whatever way you like, and I’ll be generous with my money in the ways I believe are right. But the moment you begin threatening people with the looming promise of force, should they not comply, you have overstepped the boundary of philanthropy, and you have become a robber and a thief. And it is no different when voters, through a majority vote, pass a referendum that requires their neighbors to fund some public project whether they want to or not. The voter who votes for a tax increase is a thief, no different from any street thug. Those voters are using the gun and the badge of government to force other people to give up the money that rightfully belongs to them. They are the ones who have worked so hard for that money. To feed their families. To fund their own retirement plans. To build better lives for themselves and their loved ones.

Your neighbor’s money is not yours, and it is not the federal government’s money, and it is not the state’s money. When you work for income, and you get paid for your work, that money you received is the product of your own labor. It was your labor, and it is your money. No one has the right to demand that money from you at gunpoint, no matter what the “good cause” may be. If they want you to donate to charity, they can provide you with that opportunity, and you may, if you wish, volunteer to donate whatever amount of your blood, sweat and tears that you so choose.