If there is one book – The Politics of Obedience (book starts on page 41) about tyranny that I recommend – that takes a reflective view of at least 3000 years of western history of tyrants and free men – I recommend you to read this essay. The big question it raises in myself is how it feels to be a free man. There is also hope for the good man in this book. According to Boëtie – whenever good men aspire to regain their freedom – nothing can stop them.
Especially in the Covid-19 era (CCP virus era) – this book is real dynamite and points out the good direction to the future.
Étienne or Estienne de La Boétie (1 November 1530 – 18 August 1563) was a French judge, polymath, writer and “a founder of modern political philosophy in France”. The modern analysis of his essays seems to have put on the marxist spectacles which mean that they misinterpreted his writings in the most awful way, claiming that Boëtie was the father of anarchy. Nothing could be further from the truth if you ask me and the question is why this book has been so rare to find during all these centuries while Macchiavelli´s book has been so widely distributed. It´s easy to understand, the Italian´s book is focused on how to subject the people in the best way while Boëtie´s book is focused on how to regain freedom.
He was instead a prodigy with the most stunning insights. He did oppose tyranny for good reasons but what is most unusual is his ability to see through the greatest fall of man since remote antiquity. The fall from freedom into voluntary slavery. He claims that as times progressed man abandoned freedom in favour of serving tyrants and at the same time corrupting their moral standard. The free man refuses to obey the tyrant and he refuses to dominate his fellow man. In my opinion this is the golden mean
Some of the most shocking insights of this book are simple, hidden truths about people´s mental state that modern people may have suspected existed but never really could enlighten to because of our lack of understanding of the most remote human history when man was free.
To make a simple example of his wisdom – La Boétie was a man that suggested that protestants and catholics should unite and get over their differences after discussing them and reasoning openly about them. As I understand it he admitted that the protestants had made a valid point about the corruption of the catholic church but they should have put pressure inside the catholic church to improve it instead of leaving it – creating a split that could be exploited by the tyrants of different countries to make wars and other such profitable activities.
La Boétie was primarily preoccupied with the question of how people prefer to be looted and oppressed by a tyrant instead of being free men, living like free men with nobody to oppress them. Lao Zi, the Chinese sage of Daoism said 2 500 years ago that the best King is the King whose name the people hardly know of. His reasoning is along the same lines as La Boétie. Look at our modern world. We hear of our rulers day in and day out from morning to evening.
He also stated that evil people have cooperated in gigantic networks since ancient times to enslave people under themselves. The current globalist movement probably has hundreds of years of history and the means the tyrants used were always the same – corrupt people and build pyramids of power where one level only reports to the next higher level and don´t know the big picture and even think they are doing good things.
The end result of tyranny is always the same:
People become like beasts and the tyrant can only rule beasts in the end:
Are you indeed so proud
Because you command wild beasts?
_____________________________
Tyrants are only happy with their power after they have enslaved and brainwashed every single citizen of their country. However, at that stage a new phenomenon emerges. All people have become children of the tyrant who rears them into becoming unknowing beasts. The end result is that the country is unable to produce any good things such as beautiful music and architecture. You could say that the middle east is such a place where the locals don´t produce much of notice to the world but they are very suppressed by their governnments.
Now look at the western world and its youths today. How do these people look and how many of them support or even know of the virtues of working hard and suffering? How many of them believe that “work promotes health”? Almost none of them can do it and they believe that human life is all about enjoying and satisfying their instant cravings for games, drugs, sex, food, adventures, gadgets etc etc. They don´t know much about nature or see any need to fight for their freedom when the new surveillance society is put in place. Looking at the metropolitan ghettos in the west we see a culture of crime and drugs. Good families are almost extinct in some areas.
There is no need to conquer the west by force since many of its citizens have lost human nature and replaced it with the hidden tyrants´ vices. Whatever the tyrant does the people will copy.
The Question of what Freedom Really Is
Boëtie explains that we have all forgotten the issue of what freedom really is. This passage from ancient Greece reminds us of the paramount importance of understanding freedom.
“Consider well, O Spartans,” said he (Persian military), “and
realize by my example that the king knows how to honor those
who are worthy, and believe that if you were his men he would
do the same for you; if you belonged to him and he had known
you, there is not one among you who might not be the lord of
some Greek city.”
“By such words, Hydarnes, you give us no good counsel,”
replied the Lacedaemonians, “because you have experienced
merely the advantage of which you speak; you do not know the
privilege we enjoy. You have the honor of the king’s favor; but
you know nothing about liberty, what relish it has and how sweet
it is. For if you had any knowledge of it, you yourself would
advise us to defend it, not with lance and shield, but with our
very teeth and nails.”
Only Spartans could give such an answer, and surely both of
them spoke as they had been trained. It was impossible for the
Persian to regret liberty, not having known it, nor for the
Lacedaemonians to find subjection acceptable after having
enjoyed freedom.
So the question is how we modern people can regain our freedom in times of maximum oppression and deceit? I believe the only way is to cultivate our moral standard and virtues
The Main Points to Learn about Tyranny
– A whole country usually suffers plundering, cruelty and wantonness from a single little man. This tyrant is usually the most cowardly and effeminate man in his country, hardly with enough virility to bed with a normal woman.
– If people refuse to give this little man anything it´s enough to topple him from his power. Refuse to obey and refuse to dominate others is the correct way of action.
– People don´t overthrow the tyrant because they don´t care about being slaves. It´s not that they are afraid of a single, weak man but rather that they are happier to be slaves under a tyrant than being free men. This vice is so terrifying that there is no term vile enough to describe it.
– Free men give up their freedom under constraint and force at the beginning but later on they think this lifestyle of enslavement is normal, it´s a custom. Custom becomes the first reason for voluntary servitude.
– Every tyrant will train their people not only to become obedient and servile but also makes the people adore them.
– Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures were for ancient people the bait for slavery, the price of their liberty and instruments of tyranny.
– If you raise children to become useless slaves they will become like that and that habit is almost impossible to break since they don´t understand what freedom is anymore.
– The tyrant dupes the masses into believing that he is a wise, just and benevolent ruler.
– Every unjust policy is undertaken with some pretty speech concerning public welfare and common good.
– The tyrant has five or six direct accomplices who then have six hundred below them in provinces around the country and that profit under them. The six hundred then have six thousand that serve as instruments of avarice and cruelty across the whole country. In the end there will be as many people that, from selfishness, favour tyranny in the country that oppose it.
– Evil people cooperate and form networks – compare with today´s globalists who are in every government across the globe. Good people don´t know of each other. This is a crucial point. If good men ever were to control this planet they need to cooperate and look for each other..
– There should always be one King and never many Lords. As soon as there are many Lords there will form a conspiracy against the people to enslave people and to give the lords all the power and riches. On the other hand, if you give the King too much power he might become corrupted. So there is a delicate balance and the best King is the one who gives people the maximum freedom without sacrificing traditional culture.
– The worst and most despicable form of tyranny is effeminisation of men. Let´s quote his stunning wisdom on this point and please remember how our modern society looks:
“This method tyrants use of stultifying their subjects cannot be more clearly observed than in what Cyrus did with the Lydians after he had taken Sardis, their chief city, and had at his mercy the captured Croesus, their fabulously rich king. When news was brought to him that the people of Sardis had rebelled, it would have been easy for him to reduce them by force; but being unwilling either to sack such a fine city or to maintain an army there to police it, he thought of an unusual expedient for reducing it. He established in it brothels, taverns, and public games, and issued the proclamation that the inhabitants were to enjoy them. He found this type of garrison so effective that he never again had to draw the sword against the Lydians.
These wretched people enjoyed themselves inventing all kinds of games, so that the Latins have derived the word from them, and what we call pastimes they call ludi, as if they meant to say Lydi. Not all tyrants have manifested so clearly their intention to effeminise their victims; but in fact, what the aforementioned despot publicly proclaimed and put into effect, most of the others have pursued secretly as an end. It is indeed the nature of the populace, whose density is always greater in the cities, to be suspicious toward one who has their welfare at heart, and gullible toward one who fools them…..
Tyrants would distribute largess, a bushel of wheat, a gallon of wine, and a sesterce: and then everybody would shamelessly cry, “Long live the King!” The fools did not realise that they were merely recovering a portion of their own property, and that their ruler could not have given them what they were receiving without having first taken it from them. A man might one day be presented with a sesterce and gorge himself at the public feast, lauding Tiberius and Nero for handsome liberality, who on the morrow, would be forced to abandon his property to their avarice, his children to their lust, his very blood to the cruelty of these magnificent emperors, without offering any more resistance than a stone or a tree stump. The mob has always behaved in this way—eagerly open to bribes that cannot be honourably accepted, and dissolutely callous to degradation and insult that cannot be honourably endured. Nowadays I do not meet anyone who, on hearing mention of Nero, does not shudder at the very name of that hideous monster, that disgusting and vile pestilence. ”
_______________________
Because people don´t understand freedom at all today they favour tyranny. Many people don´t appreciate their modern lives so they think it´s not worthwhile to fight for it. This is the greatest danger.