WHAT ONE CAN DO

Before A Man Can Become Free, He Must Choose Freedom

“The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”
~Stephen Biko, anti-apartheid activist tortured to death by State police (Derrick Jensen, Endgame, 2006).

I (Jeff Knaebel) write out of my longing for relatedness and meaning, and that I may contribute something to prevent the suicidal self-destruction upon which our human species is embarked.

States have murdered more than 230 million human beings in the past 100 years, many their own citizens. States have a monopoly on “legal” violence within their territories, and they use it to rape, murder, confiscate and destroy.

There are two means of livlihood for human beings. One, the “economic means,” is to work and produce. The other, the “political means,” is to plunder and steal. The State is the “organization of the political means.” This system of organizing a society of six billion human beings doesn’t work. Its institutionalized structural violence is destroying humanity and the earth.

The biggest - and most destructive - modern States are sham “democracies,” controlled by Corporations and Central Banks, themselves creatures of the State. This “Corporatacy” (John Perkins, 2004) directs - and profits from - the endless war racket. Its agents are protected from retribution by so-called “law,” which establishes corporate Limited Liability and State Sovereign Immunity.

No matter who you vote for, the elite members of the Establishment’s Corporatocracy get elected. Corporate money power everywhere rules. We have lost control of our lives, our liberties, our labor, and our destiny. We have allowed ouselves to degenerate into cannibals, consuming the lives of others. Coerced and manipulated by the Corporatocracy, we are killing ourselves in a mad scramble for diminishing resources, instead of learning to share. The life of our human species has itself now become the “tragedy of the commons.”

Mindlessly we kill, moving to the war drum’s dirge of death. The dead eat the living. We leave behind rivers of blood and poison as our effluent. As the inheritance of our grandchildren, we leave these.

“Civilization does not mean electric lights. It does not mean producing atomic bombs, either. Civilization means not killing people.”
~ Nichidatsu Fujii, Buddhist Nihonzan Miyoji Temple, quoted by J.D. Forbes, PhD (Professor Emeritus, University of California), 1992.

Our so-called “democracy” has not produced a civilization. A system that places the power of planetary incineration into the hands of a few psychopathically aggressive tyrants is clearly insane. It is impossible to reform an institution whose very foundation is organized criminal violence, lies and deceit. Institutions of corporation and State are being used as tools by the minds of the powerful to maintain the emoluments of power at any cost, including unspeakable atrocity.

No species which thus destroys its ecological support system can survive long term. To survive, a species must enhance both itself and its environment.

We must evolve to a higher level of consciousness. Change begins in the mind.

If I lose my mind in love of life, how will they employ it to kill?

How does one come to peace with his hiring of murder?

How does one negotiate with liars?

If I refuse to pay taxes, then I am not an accomplice to the murdering State. I have become free to respect the lives of others, and to love.

I was born free by Nature. Why should I accept the yoke of an involuntarily assigned “citizenship,” which sweats me at law in order to finance its murder? The Constitution of a State has no inherent authority unless as a contract between man and man, and obviously can be binding only upon those then living who acknowledged it. (Spooner,1882)

The fact that no man can delegate or give away his own natural right of liberty, nor any other person’s natural right of liberty, proves that he can delegate no legislative power whatsoever - over himself or anyone else - to any man or body of men. Each man owns only himself - he owns no other. Nor can any other, or group of others calling themselves a “constituted authority,” own him.

The principle of self-ownership shows that Constitutions and Legislatures are - on the basis of common sense, ordinary justice, and morality - invalid at inception. We delude ourselves to think we are governed in any manner except by force.

In a culture where true madness masquerades as sanity, my public denunciations in a foreign nation of the US wars in Iraq and elsewhere will be labled as “treason” by the State.

On 17 July 2007, President Bush enacted an Executive Order titled “Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq.” This Act makes criminal the use of “disloyal or abusive” language about the U.S. government.

By coerced and fearful silence, against whom shall I commit treason? The brotherhood of man? My own rational mind and conscience? The universal commandment against murder?

Or, shall I commit treason against the State by speaking out against the depraved madness of organized mass murder as a State industry?

Why should I have more faith in war criminals - like George Bush and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld - than in my own conscience, to make life and death decisions? Why should my life, and yours, and uncountable others, be subject to the decisions of money power, of who to kill and who to let live? Who is criminally insane - these psychotic nuclear-weapon-brandishing tyrants, or us?

If I voluntarily violate my personal integrity and abdicate my conscience to these criminals, and keep on financing their mass murder and torture by paying my taxes, what does that say about me? And if I participate in a sham election - by secret ballot, so there can be no contract, no acknowledgement of responsibility - to choose one of the next two carefully groomed war criminals-to-be, put up and financed by the Corporate Establishment, what kind of fool am I?

On the scale of the Corporate State, murder is no crime. It is just another business deal. Life itself has become a consumable, bought and sold in the marketplace. The market for murder is there, and we are selling ourselves into it.

All of the foregoing are manifestations of moral degeneration that has a deeper root cause.

Origin of our problem is fear. Its cause in turn is the paradoxical, ambiguous, unsolvable inevitability of the human condition. Fear is based upon our misidentification of the Self with the body. It seems obvious that the path of fear leads deeper into darkness. Institutions such as State arise in response to fear.

A solution exists. All beings love life and fear death, just as I do. Therefore, it is good that respect for life guide my actions, that I should take not life, but that I should nurture and enhance life, if only for my own self-interest. If the precept is not to kill, and the means employed is always nonviolent, the end must be peace. We let go of fear in order to love.

There is no well-marked intellectual road map to a solution that will work for six billion individuals. The way out of our dilemma must be sought one by one, yet working together, in respect. Out of this regenerative organic growth, an evolution of consciousness may erupt to save us. We must work for it. Most of the work is an inside job, within each one’s conscience.

I can offer only my own experience and my stated intentions as - hopefully - a small contribution toward a human community of love and reason. So far, I have learned four fundamentals.

One -it is crucial to do the inner work first, in order to gain clarity and strength. One must de-condition the mind in order to free it.

Two - alignment of thought, word, and deed is essential. To think one thing, say another, and do a third is to lie, to dis-integrate. Strong adherence to truth (Satyagraha) requires active engagement in nonviolent resistence against the State. Absent active engagement, one is doing only talk without walk, and this corrodes self respect.

Three - in order to avoid burn-out and psychological implosion, one must engage in proactive constructive projects of social upliftment. This keeps you in touch with love and nurturance. Resistance alone leads to battle fatigue, a kind of bitter weariness that fosters cynicism.

Fourth - give up all hope. Let go of all hope that anyone except you will do anything. I am grateful to Derrick Jensen (Orion Magazine) for bringing this inchoate realization to conscious awareness. Absence of hope is the courage to act against all odds as a matter of preserving your personal integrity.

To work against the State, just ignore it. Nonviolent methods include tax refusal, boycott of State “services,” withdrawing from participation in functions of the State. Become independent and self-reliant. Avoid identification documents, work for barter or cash, shun credit cards and banks. Convert depreciating fiat currency into physical gold in personal possession: quit letting the State embezzle your svings with its printing press inflation. Form local service organizations, community support groups, and local direct unregulated exchange markets. And, importantly, educate others. Spread the word. Return self government control to local level, beginning at home.

Ignore the State. Don’t fight it - that only feeds its expansion. Don’t petition or plead, just quit paying for it, quit cooperating with it. Starve it of energy and cash. Simply leave it. Build your own ark, join others in forming islands of light in a sea of darkness.

Each must work out his own destiny if he is to reclaim his conscience and personal integrity. One must never give in to power. Live by your own lights and your own wits, and face the consequences. You will enjoy the happiness of the free and the brave.

I have chosen tax refusal and exile in a foreign land, together with radical renunciation of rules and laws - a renunciation that is escalating with time and disgust at what we have become. I have set myself against blind obedience to traditional authority and patriarchal domination, as well as bureaucratic legalistic usurpation of individual rights. I renounce the State and declare my right to ignore it. I renounce any “authority” that demands violation of my conscience.

My next personal intersection with Power is the expiry of passport, which I will not renew, foreign domicile notwithstanding. Since freedom of movement - a basic human right - is required to maintain a livlihood, these documents amount to legislation that a human being has “permission-to-live” only at the discretion of some faceless bureaucrat. This is slavery. The State has usurped my right to life itself.

I don’t know what the Nice Government Men will do. My working hypothesis is that if they detain me, imprison me, harm me, or kill me - all of which are possible, and even likely, pursuant to current U.S. law and policy - they will have advanced my cause.

The face-off amounts to this test. Does a physically more powerful individual have the right to put a collar on me, track me, restrict my movements except by his permission, and extract from me the product of my labor? Does a group of thugs have this right? Does a group of “lawmakers,” placed in power over me against my will, have this right?

With my own unarmed, unaided body I will say “No.” No other man or group of men owns my conscience. These legislators - many are outright criminals individually - were elected by secret ballot, so there is no man-to-man contract of representation. In this anonyminity, is insulation from responsibility. Once installed, they hold me in thrall only by the raw power that comes out the barrel of a gun, of which they are the trigger-pullers.

We don’t know who, or what, created this Universe - what intelligence connected Spirit to breath and flesh. But we do know that its physical manifestation on our behalf is this precious blue-green planet that allows us to play in the Fields of the Lord.

We might be wise to consider some attempt at gratitude and respect for this Great Benevolence that supports us, rather than tearing it apart and smashing it to the last atom in a vain and arrogant attempt to gain control over life and the Mystery.

To what end, our mad destruction? How shall we live, if not by love? If by hatred and destruction, what then? We must let go of fear in order to love. It has been done. It can be done. Let us do it.

May you live long, live free. Aho Mitakuye Oyasin,

Jeff Knaebel, Pune, 6 August 2007

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