THE ORIGIN OF SOCIAL DYSFUNCTION:
The Pathology of Cultural Delusion

Governing, without recognizing or accepting the nature of that which is being governed, or governing for the wrong purpose, such as exploitation, can succeed only for a limited time, as false premises and resultant misdirection increasingly generates problems. There is a limit to the resources of any society and a limit to the load of misdirection and institutional ineffectiveness it can carry. Fundamental corrections cannot be made in the absence of understanding the nature of the problem.

Governments come in every stripe, the good, the bad and the ugly, although an argument can easily be made that, at this point in human history, there are no truly good governments. They range from the marginally benign and unobtrusive, such as one might find in some little principality, such as that of the early United States (before its governing bodies grew into the present colossus, increasingly syphoning off the energies and resources of the nation), to the most rabidly despotic, such as was seen under Pol Pot in Cambodia. Regardless of type, whether it be a democracy, communism, fascism, socialism, monarchy or oligarchy, present governments do not recognize factual existence, nor its principles and limitations.

At this time in human history, no government on Earth exhibits a valid basis for governing, that of being oriented toward factual reality and the enhancement of individual and social function. Such a government would be self limiting, accepting the factual nature of existence and the human animal and being keyed to principles and effectiveness, not to political determinations and authoritarian mandates. None presently govern toward optimizing human function and the correction of fundamental problems. No government on Earth is capable of making necessary corrections to premises and practices. At this time, all governments are basically authoritarian, using arbitrary determinations, propaganda and force, largely in opposition to the drives of nature and the individual.

The pathogenic commonality running through all governments is Authoritarianism. Although force, or even war, may be necessary at times, and even the most objective and respected of laws occasionally have to be enforced, Authoritarianism is forever devoid of a valid basis. There is no such authority, and no governing entity capable of such a position. The "God" model does not reflect factual reality. This is not how nature works.

Authoritarianism is incapable of making fundamental corrections and damages individuals and societies. It can never be effective as the primary means of social control nor as a source of leadership. Authoritarianism's arbitrary force and imposed control, as social policy, is invariably self-serving and is ultimately destructive to the society.

Authoritarianism is about imposing preconceived and arbitrary mandates upon others. Regardless of its beginnings, it quickly becomes oppressive. It's natural primary drive is to serve the needs of its own systems, not the needs and best interests of its host society. Authoritarianism is inherently parasitical and, ultimately, pathological.

Democracies, under authoritarianism, quickly become a sham, as the state suppresses individual function and increasingly manipulates the premises, thoughts and perceptions of the electorate, along the lines of its own agenda.

This is the universal fallacy of Authoritarianism. In reality, there is no effective authority other than nature, itself. Any governing system not wedded to natural systems and objective functions will grow to become a social pathogen. All present governments have a propensity to grow and to increasingly govern, eventually to micro manage, to the limits they are allowed.

This commonality among governing systems is one factor that must be understood, if one is to grasp the inherent functional limitations of governing. Any self-correcting governing system will have to be limited to the areas in which it is effective and directed toward the enhancement of individual autonomy and effectiveness. It will be required to recognize and work within the parameters of factual existence, recognizing and accepting the limitations to effective governing and the necessary autonomy of the human animal. Such government requires populations that are largely oriented to factual reality and highly autonomous.

This is why I have been placing so much emphasis on understanding the nature of existence. Without a general understanding of how existence works, fundamental principles and laws have no meaning and remain unrecognized. Without at least a general understanding of existence, one cannot recognize the fundamental pathogens that must be addressed if the species is to avert self-destruction.

The ugliness and dysfunction we now increasingly experience in all human societies results from social environments shaped by our controlling institutions, primarily, religion and government , both authoritarian, both based on conceptual fallacies.

Human activity is predominately a function of perception, what one has learned and failed to learn. When what is learned fails to reflect reality, human perception and resultant activity will be commensurately misdirected. Governing human behavior along the lines of untruth and delusional philosophies results in the exact human conditions in which we now find ourselves. Delusion invariably results in dysfunction.

Within the framework of present premises, government's first consideration will always be that of maximizing control and jurisdiction, to grow. A look at the growth history of the Federal Government of the United States is instructive.

From 1800 to 1996, the population of the United States multiplied about 48 times. From 1800 to 1996, in terms of expenditures, the Federal Government multiplied about 140,000 times. Although, this figure boggles the mind, this is only the Federal Government. All state, county and local governments have shown similar growth.

From 1950 to 1996, the population increased 1.64 times. During this same period, government expenditures increased from 43.1 billion to 2.036 trillion, an increase of 47.24 times, nearly 47 to 1. Nor does this count unbudgeted moneys and resources increasingly extracted by hidden taxation, police agencies, legal looting and inflation, all made possible by the misuse of government.

In this malignancy of unrestrained governmental growth, there is another unseen factor. Over the life of the United States, industrial and technological advances have multiplied productivity hundreds of times, relative to required man-hours of labor. Yet, relatively little of this increase in wealth has accrued to the people, except in terms of unearned income, the redistribution of monies through welfare programs, subsidies, etc.

The bulk of this wealth has gone into increasing the scope and domain of government. In essence, this bonanza has been used, not only for the physical growth of government, but to increase (buy) an electorate that would be biased toward further government programs, toward further governmental expansion. As the numbers grow, those feeding at the public through increasingly vote themselves more of the societies' productivity.

Clearly, excessive government is a deadly pathogen out of control, and the most immediate threat to the society of the United States, nor does this rapacious malignancy reflect the will of the people. Most government growth occurs in terms of increasing regulations, budgets and incremental increases in domination in the absence of public awareness or scrutiny. However, even if these numbers did reflect the will of the people, such growth would not be tenable.

During his campaign in of 1996, President Clinton cris-crossed this nation promising something new at every stop. Every increase in involvement, every program, every new law, regulation, every new oversight, means more bureaucracy, more spending and more problems. Regardless of rhetoric about downsizing government and cutting spending, the cost of government continues to increase. Regardless of what this president says, his actions continue toward maximizing governmental involvement and jurisdiction, government that increasingly takes over the lives of the people.

The financial load and the drain on productive systems is perhaps the smaller part of this pathology. For all the amenities gained through government, in the United States, as elsewhere, governments remain a fundamental source of humanity's growing problems, as they codify and enforce cultural pathologies and misdirection. Governing activity in the United States, over the past half century, has increasingly corrupted the individual citizen, reducing individual effectiveness and integrity. A society is shaped predominately by its laws.

The creeping pathology of government growth in the United States also represents the growth of government's own electorate. As government increases, all the factions benefitting from the public larder increase. This becomes a parasitical voting block that eagerly votes in favor of increasing government involvement and programs.

Here in the United States, as elsewhere, not only do governing systems and activities increasingly generate problems, but engage in criminal and otherwise destructive activities, beyond the power vested in them, functioning as an instrument for looting and the extortion of unearned income. Government in the United States increasingly operates for its own benefit and largely to the detriment of the society. Ignoring the Constitution, both the spirit and the letter, it exhibits gross parasitism, malfeasance and criminality.

All governments operate largely in ignorance. In premise structure, governments recognize neither the nature of existence nor that of humanity. Invariably authoritarian, government operates to impose control, rather than to educate toward the utilization of natural internal controls, which would leave the individual as having primary responsibility for self and the necessary autonomy to become a responsible, effective citizen. The decline in human quality in the United States moves in lock step with government growth and the stripping away of personal freedoms and personal responsibility.

Government has little motivation toward social effectiveness and the solution to problems, simply because problems function as a means to growth. Any problem incident is seized upon as am excuse for more legislation. As irrational law is compounded, problems escalate.

Increasingly, governmental activities are involved in addressing problems of its own making, while it dissipates resources, draining the productive elements of the society, and further suppressing individual and social effectiveness in the process. Under authoritarianism, the fundamental premises and approaches to governing do not change, do not move toward correction.

Authoritarian government can never be the source of effective leadership. It is fundamentally corrupt and molds its functionaries into the forms necessary to maintain its premise structures and systems. It will be no more effective than required. Truly effective leadership can come only from being highly oriented to reality. Governing, in terms of suppressing individual mentality, autonomy and function, is diametrically opposed to the survival of the society, and ultimately, the survival of humanity as an intelligent life form.

Authoritarian government's natural drive, and first priority, is toward the growth its own systems and domain. Representative government, based on public opinion, cannot solve this problem, so long as populations are maintained at debilitating levels of ignorance and dependency, levels that preclude effective resistance to excessive and ineffective government.

For a democracy to work in the long run, the electorate will have to be predominately oriented to reality, recognizing and accepting the true nature of existence, humanity and the real nature of problems. Without this fundamental knowledge and rationality, the people will exhibit gross ignorance and dependancy, presenting a chaos of opinion and providing no impetus for shaping and maintaining effective systems that would nurture knowledge and rationality within a society.

Rhetoric aside, in the United States, neither major political party wishes to reduce government. Propaganda issuing from politicians and the media divert attention from this reality.

Within this government, Most of the Democrats and the Old Guard Republicans do not want to relinquish any power that has been garnered by Washington. This has been clearly demonstrated during the interval between the summer of 1995 and the summer of 1999, as this book is being finalized. There will be great resistance to those forces that would move any amount of autonomy out of Washington, whether it be to state and local governments, or directly to the individual. Meanwhile frustration and anger within the society continues to build.

The reduction of the myriad problems that confront modern societies mandate that autonomy and responsibility be largely returned to the individual, with a commensurate downsizing of government. Such downsizing will probably always be unacceptable to the politician, the bureaucrat, unions, welfare recipients and to those under government's protective umbrella, being maintained by, or otherwise feed at the public trough.

The dysfunctions of governing clearly indicate the required solution, that of reversing the premises upon which government and human societies operate.

Any life form moves to occupy space, gain sustenance and the amenities of living in accordance with its own internal drives. Any entity resists being diverted from its natural path. This includes, not only the organism, but all subsystems and components, at any level, down to the individual primary particles and primary motion, itself. The natural bent of existence, at any level, is to do what it is, to follow the impetus of its own structure, to the limits the environment will allow. This is the motive force which drives and maintains the existence of, not only a living species, but every existing entity, be it animal, vegetable or mineral.

The natural drive for autonomy is an outward expression of the structure of matter itself, and is consistent throughout the whole spectrum of existence. The drive for autonomy is common to every life form, be it human, passiflora, arachnid or amoeba. In the human animal, the free exercise of autonomy is vital, not just in terms of securing basic needs, but for gaining a sense of security, the fulfillment of diverse interests and gaining an acceptable level of comfort. Without the exercise of generous amounts of freedom and responsibility, the individual degenerates.

Any life form needs to exercise autonomy with respect to its own needs. This is especially so as intelligence increases. Intelligent life will naturally resist laws and rules, to some degree. This is why the law or the rule must exhibit a net and recognized validity, and be continuously open to reexamination and modification. Laws, rules and regulations, in the absence of continuing obvious reasons for their existence, are highly repugnant to intelligent life. Laws and rules that spring from arbitrary authority always lack validity and are onerous. A law must exist for physically valid reasons if it is to be effective and be acceptable.

What is taught depends upon the culture. Unfortunately, even the most advanced culture instills fundamental delusions that are devastating to the society's ability to make corrections.

Each bit of factual information a person internalizes increases understanding and enhances the ability to make intelligent choices, while reducing levels of frustration and stress. Even in the most authoritarian and dysfunctional culture, a wide variety of factual knowledge is gained, with or without the approval of government. However, our governing systems keep populations buffered at levels of delusion that strongly inhibit correction of cultural premises and systems.

Governments grow by usurping individual autonomy, relieving the individual of the ability and responsibility to act. As institutional controls increase, learning and reasoning diminishes. The individual becomes increasingly dependent upon authority. The amount of false or distorted information accepted, especially that received at an early age, proportionally blunts one's understanding and blocks the acceptance of reciprocal knowledge. The acceptance of low grade information increases as the individual becomes increasingly deluded and dependent. The world of the dependent individual shrinks, together with intellect and reasoning capabilities. Under authoritarian control, the individual is increasingly maintained as an unwanted child, mistreated and exploited by Big Brother.

A culture's members are carefully taught, acculturation instilling the hooks and handles for control by the institutions. Authoritarian systems instill mental pathology on a grand scale, formalizing and codifying destructive drives and directions. Lacking adequate knowledge, and forced to relinquish large amounts of autonomy, the individual quickly learns to accept and depend upon the ideas, philosophies and directions of authority, gaining a less than adequate sense of well being and becoming progressively frustrated, apathetic, dependent and ineffective.

As the coils of authoritarianism tighten, the exercise of real knowledge and facility diminishes. Perceptions, drives and skills required for independent action atrophy and are eventually lost, or are never acquired in the first place.

This is a self-reinforcing and cyclical process. As natural autonomy is suppressed, individuals lose drive and effectiveness proportionally. They come to actively seek the direction of 'authority', having been taught to mistrust their own minds. They become locked into degenerative syndromes. This pattern does have limitations, however, as the society loses its ability to function and increasing levels of oppression become intolerable.

For the Human species to thrive, its individual members must not only exercise large measures of autonomy, but the individual must not be shielded from the natural consequences of his or her decisions.

A child learns about falling and how to move with safety by doing, and will experience a lot of bumps and tumbles in the process of learning and growing. The healthy adult makes a lot of mistakes, too. Most learning is accomplished through making mistakes, learning what does not work. In the pattern of learning by successive approximation, there needs to be the mistake, as well as the success.

Such an approach to learning is natural and healthy. The individual, at any age, needs to be able to experience mistakes without associated debilitating stress. The individual needs to be able to say, "Well, that didn't work. Hmmm, maybe if I do this.", and proceed without punishment or self recrimination. Learning is maximized when large numbers of mistakes can be made without personal decompensation, the useless being discovered and routinely discarded in the process. Within a conceptual environment where so many of the fundamentals are delusional or blatantly false, the speed of learning is largely determined by the rate the dysfunctional can be recognized and discarded.

Learning is much more effective when the individual takes direct action, becoming deeply involved and reaching for information and skill. Without the autonomy to move, experiment and make independent decisions, as well as mistakes, and being responsible for the consequences, learning and growth is severely limited.

As a person becomes more dependent upon authority, with its delusional and dogmatic rules, learning becomes increasingly by rote, memorizing the rules and propaganda of the culture's doctrines.

Naturally, this is a poor substitute for understanding processes and principles, and being able to reason one's way through problems. "Rules of thumb", as is the case with laws, are inflexible, discourage insight and rarely fit the case at hand. "Rule by law" reflects the premises, inflexibility and agendas of Authoritarianism, and is always directed at symptoms.

Objectively rational government would be "Rule by Principles", species effectiveness becoming the objective and the test. Within a society, there is need for a person to be primarily responsible for the safety and well-being of one's self and those involved with one's self. Looking after one's own needs is essential for human effectiveness. Who else can? The state cannot adequately assume this role, either in terms of safety or maintenance. The provision of one's needs by a second party will always be at some degree of variance with the drives and welfare of the individual. More importantly, caretaker governing kills motivation and integrity. Income quickly becomes unearned income.

Personal freedom cannot be realized until the individual sees him or herself as having the responsibility, as well as the freedom, to act. Otherwise the individual will be faced with the prospect of being dependent upon, and pitted against, the system. Such a position tends to encourage parasitical and criminal behavior.

Regardless of the culture, the problems of a society grow from cultural delusions and ignorance, reflected and maintained by systems of control, mainly those of religion, government, education and the media. We struggle with problems that issue from cultural premises and practices.

The cumulative and inevitable downside of authoritarianism is excessive and misdirected governing, the usurping of individual autonomy, removing individual responsibility and the ability to act, suppressing and destroying human drives and effectiveness. Under the best circumstances, there is some damage done through governing. Governing should be carefully weighed against social effectiveness.

By reducing the individual's ability to directly address problems as they arise, government reduces the society's flexibility, blunting the ability to make corrections while subverting its citizens. It institutes dysfunctional systems, generating and maintaining the problems upon which it feeds.

The healthy mind is an automatic warning device for approaching danger, but not if the danger is not understood, not seen as danger, or there is an expectation that responsibility lies elsewhere. In the United States, the deluded citizen characteristically has little perception of the real nature of existence and, consequently, little understanding of the dysfunction defective premises and systems generate.

Nor does the highly deluded citizen have insight as to what is required for effectively addressing problems or the correcting of systems. Having accepted the magic universe ideas and the premises of authoritarianism, the typical citizen will generally approach problems as an authoritarian.

Not long ago I received a phone call from a man who was concerned with the erosion of our adherence to the Constitution, its continuing reinterpretation by the Supreme Court and that it is increasingly ignored at all levels of government. He was in the process of organizing a PAC, a political action committee, to press for a return of this country to rigid adherence to the Constitution and government as a republic rather than a democracy. He thought that all that was necessary was to organize enough pressure to make Washington adhere to the Constitution, return government to a strict interpretation of the Constitution, and all would be well.

He did not, could not, understand the real nature of the problem, that such a republic would have to be supported by the public. The fact that there was not enough public support to maintain this nation as a republic, even at its inception, eluded him completely. He did not understand the problem of an ignorant and irrational electorate.

This man wanted to solve a problem as an authoritarian, by force, powering a condition into being without having to consider why it was a problem in the first place. He wanted to affect a condition without having to make the changes in basic premises that would allow and support such a condition. He wanted the change without having to change, maintaining his precious delusions, his preconceived ideas, his philosophy, his authoritarianism.

We see the same fallacy in every social activist group, wanting to use the Law or the Gun force a condition or maintain a position.

Government and religion are not respected simply to the degree that they are perceived as not being respectable. Governmental stupidities are felt more keenly than those of religion because they have the force of law. As the defects become increasingly obvious, the public recognizes the inequities and anger builds. Sadly, because of the high levels of delusion within populations, recognizing something wrong does not provide insight as to the necessary course for correction. More often, a shift toward correction, any change, will generate further fear and anger. We have witnessed this process in the United States since the November election of 1994. The new Republican Congress immediately set to work, ushering in corrective changes at an unprecedented rate. Fear and resistance to the changes, fanned by media histrionics and opposing politicians, increased within the electorate, wishing for changes without having to change. This change in public opinion was affected largely by a media blitz, hyping the fears of impending disaster and conspicuously in support of the Democratic Party and more government.

In the US, citizens are incubated in a make-believe cocoon of safety and benign governing. Pathological levels of government involvement and the loss of individual freedom is are affected under the guise of "Public Safety" and "Promoting the General Welfare". The resulting pathologies are now exhibiting themselves as problems out of control. Breakdowns of social systems now loom on the horizon.

Eight of the most socially debilitating areas are: Crime, Welfare, Health Care, Environmental Protection, Labor unions, Consumer Advocacy and Taxation. Each area reflects, and results from, the pathologies of authoritarian governing. The following is a short note on each category:

Crime is largely a reflection of delusion, resulting ignorance, and personal decompensation resulting from the policy of punishment. Where there is brutalization, the product is a brute. Primarily, crime results from punishment and a failure to educate, a failure to teach factual reality and reasoning. Crime reflects a deficit of knowledge, maintained, insulated and insured by the high levels of cultural delusion and savagery. Delusion cannot be maintained without rejecting the reciprocal realities, ignorance is inevitable. Any system of criminal rehabilitation would have to teach the realities, dissolving delusion, in addition to instilling the necessary knowledge to allow the offender to be an effective member of the society. Effective rehabilitation programs would require addressing the belief systems of both the criminal and of government.

"Crime" is also established by defining an activity as criminal, codifying it as criminal, in the absence of a victim. Much of the crime in the United States is of this type. Victimless crime, instituted by codification, quickly becomes real crime with real victims.

Government is entirely responsible for illicit drugs being a major threat to the society. Prohibition maintains the price structure of illicit drugs at levels that insure production, smuggling and high pressure distribution, increasing the drive within the society to use drugs. Deregulated, the market would suddenly be flooded with drugs. The price would plummet, as would profitability and, therefore, the production of drugs.

Having grossly distorted drives and reduced individual effectiveness, many addicts would die, having access to all the drugs they want and having developed no self control. Others would wake up and walk away from it.

Who does the current system reward? Certainly the criminal, the gangs, the cartels. However, government gains the most, as governing and policing agencies across this land grow fat and increasingly corrupt. The illicit drug trade is maintained and used by government and has functioned to move this country a long way toward the actualization of a totalitarian state.

With drugs freely available, the police not involved, the responsibility for using or not using would clearly fall upon the individual, and a lot of parents. The effects of drug use would be there for all to see. You wouldn't need propaganda or expensive educational programs. Many would die, but drugs would soon be severely reduced as a problem.

The basic problem of criminality within the society cannot be addressed so long as government is generating it and maintaining it. Nor can it be addressed so long as the objective is retribution, punishment. Correction requires the destruction of cultural delusion and remedial education.

The controlled environments of prisons provide the potential for such education, but they will not be used for this purpose. Such education would entail real knowledge and would mandate returning the prisoner to society as a functional citizen, with full rights of citizenship.

Crime is encouraged and generated more by government's approach to it than any other factor.

Our Welfare system is a subsidy system. It subsidizes dependency, poverty and defective citizenship. It encourages the breakdown of families, the increase of apathy and irresponsibility, the increase of crime and ever greater governmental involvement. This caretaker system is growing beyond the society's ability to carry it.

Our welfare system destroys people and feeds government. Government grows on welfare, building its own electorate and maintaining conditions that can be used to justify increased involvement.

There is a fundamental law of nature that is violated in the use of government to take resources from the producer to subsidize the non-producer. The recipient has no claim upon the producer. The use of government in this matter constitutes extortion, a criminal activity on the part of the government, and placing the recipient in the ignoble role of receiving unearned income. There is nothing wrong in receiving a gift, nor with giving a hand when someone needs it. However, this is activity that cannot be institutionalized . When it is forced, it becomes looting on one side and, in effect, bribery on the other. It can never be a valid activity of government. Giving can never validly be forced. It must be volitional and remain within the private sector. Government intrusion into the realm of natural controls and systems invariably compounds problems.

Government is predominately responsible for the high costs of Health Care. It has affected our present conditions by suppressing individual and market autonomy. Our government makes possible the monopoly of medicine, looting litigation, restriction of providers, relieves the individual of responsibility and suppresses direct access to health care and medications by individuals. All of this functions to drive up the cost of health care in every particular.

Health Care within a free market system would cost a small fraction of that under present systems. In the absence of maintaining monopolies, every provider of service or product would have to compete for its clientele.

Corrective measures would require breaking the medical monopoly and making medicines available to the public without a doctor's prescription. The Food and Drug Administration would have the power to test and to police false advertising, but would have no prohibitive powers with respect to public access to drugs, medicine or other health products. A free market would insure advancement in technology similar to that seen in the computer industry. Medical knowledge would be easily accessible to anyone. Where individuals could help themselves, they would do so. Where they could not, they would have the responsibility to seek professional help, but all decisions and results would be their own responsibility.

As an example of price differential of a representative drug, take a case of a chronic, congenital disease that requires two caps/day of the drug Theophylline, 300mg. At $25.00/100, this drug costs $0.25/cap, but the doctor's permission to obtain this medicine (refills are not usually given) costs $75.00. Now the cost is $1.00/capsule, increasing from $182.50/yr to $730.00/year. However, were it not for the involvement of the Food and Drug Administration, a conservative estimate of the cost would be less than $0.05/cap or $36.50/year.

Long term care would be rare under a realistic system. The public would be allowed to recognize that dying is just as natural and inevitable as living. One would not expect to end one's days being kept alive in mindless torment, in a nursing home. One's death as with most other things in life, is an individual affair. One should be able to choose the time and nature of one's own death, without recriminations or governmental interference.

Were it not for the massive amounts of popular delusion maintained by our institutions, most of the present nightmare would simply dissolve. As with every other problem area, the autonomous activity and responsibility of the individual has been removed from the equation. Effective systems have not been allowed to develop. Any problem area that becomes structured by government, with resultant maximization of involvement and exploitation of productive systems and individuals, becomes a larger problem.

The Environmental Protection Agency was given sweeping powers from its inception, , again, to impose control and to punish. It has misused and abused those powers. The EPA exhibits typical authoritarianism. It is just another police agency, moving to maximize its own power and involvement. It moves to impose its own arbitrary, oppressive rules and institute its own systems and procedures, mindless of the rationality of those rules, the effectiveness of its procedures and regulations or damage it does to the producers within the society.

Its mandates cause the private sector to spend devastating amounts of money on wasteful and inappropriate cleanup procedures. Its systems and procedures insure the destruction of billions of dollars worth of resources annually. It avoids letting nature and time solve problems, even in areas where no further environmental damage is occurring. In short, the EPA, with its present premises and systems, is incompetent to perform the role for which it was instituted. In its present form, its overall usefulness is questionable, at best. It exhibits the inevitable results of an authoritarian approach.

The most devastating ecological problem has been that of maintaining populations in delusion; control by belief-ignorance, insuring misdirection and parasitical behavior.

Labor Unions served a needed function during the early years of this century. However, the need for them is quickly vanishing, as industry and commerce discover that the most effective use of the employee is the granting of autonomy for individuals to use heir minds as well as their muscles, providing workers with the freedom to solve problems and gain a sense of accomplishment, growth, and belonging. This has helped some of the more rational American industries compete in a global market environment. The individual is increasingly becoming a viable, richly autonomous part of the company. In such companies, the work becomes more meaningful and the company more effective.

Unionism is largely maintained by government. The existence of unions is protected by law. Their stronghold is largely within government agencies, such as education, the Post Office, police agencies, etc. In government funded areas, the dysfunction is largely ignored.

The function they once served is no longer needed and is detrimental to production. Ultimately, labor unions insure an adversarial position between workers and management. They are parasitical, operating mindless of the needs and functionality of the productive system, gaining their arbitrary ends through the threat or actuality of strike. They tend to be mindless of the costs a company, an industry or the society can bear. They have the capacity to severely damage or destroy companies and destroy entire industries. Eastern Airlines died at the hands of unionism. Others, such as Greyhound Bus and Caterpillar survived but were heavily damaged. They virtually destroyed the small plane industry.

The Unions tend to become the toys of their parasitical leadership, breeding criminality and a loss of worker integrity. The worker, the company and the society become the ultimate losers.

Consumer Advocacy has been devastatingly destructive to the productive elements of the society. The mandated air bags in automobiles are known to have caused the death of over three hundred people so far, injuring many more. Government rarely, if ever, admits a mistake.

Consumer Advocacy destroyed the asbestos industry without cause. Asbestos is a very stable mineral. Finely divided and examined under a microscope, it appears as tiny sticks. When inhaled, these little sticks tend to get stuck in the tissue of the lungs, becoming an irritant and, over an extended period of time, twenty or thirty years for workers within the industry, tend to act as a carcinogen in the lungs.

The problem could have been immediately corrected simply by requiring the industry to clean up its plants, installing air filters and issuing appropriate masks. Instead, the public was misled as to the nature of the problem. The lie is still perpetuated today, as well as the related legal looting of industry and individuals. The industry was destroyed and buildings are still being torn apart to extract asbestos, at the expense of the taxpayers, a needless witch hunt. Lawyers are still leaching moneys out of our systems and individuals with asbestos lawsuits.

Personally, I've tucked away some nice pieces of asbestos board and I still get a little tickle of pleasure every time I use the stuff. As a heat insulator, it can't be beat. I've been in intermittent contact with asbestos throughout my life, cutting it, sawing it, the dust flying. Perhaps one day it will kill me. Certainly, something will.

The problem was used as a ploy for legal looting, just as the harmful effects of cigarettes. Anyone who smokes knows cigarettes are harmful, yet responsibility for their personal behavior is projected onto the industry, The public has always been aware that cigarette smoking was both injurious and addictive, nothing new there. Litigation in this area, again, is used as a means of looting. This is unconstitutional, of course, in terms of law being used against the society. Government increasingly ignores the Constitution, laws, rules and regulations, becoming openly contemptuous of the fundamental principle and necessity of individual liberty.

In litigation, the concept of "negligence" or "contributing negligence", allows for the wholesale looting in every conceivable direction. Billions of dollars annually are legally extorted from manufacturers, businesses, service providers and individuals on the basis of any contrived rationale. The laws that permit this are legal, but they are not valid.

Most of this nefarious tort litigation is settled without going to trial, where the defendant would loose, even if winning the suit. Such extortion destroys more than productivity, it destroys respect for government by law, as well it should. With such law, the individual learns to shift responsibility to others.

The use of government as a means of legal looting destroys businesses and suppresses innovation. It virtually destroyed the small airplane industry in the United States, Cessna being the only significant manufacturer to survive that era. It severely depressed the Experimental Aircraft industry through product liability suits.

One of the most socially destructive moves ever made by government was to abandon the principle of 'caveat emptor', "Let the buyer beware." Virtually every problem generated by government involves stripping autonomy and responsibility from the individual.

Legal looting has reduced innovation and suppressed development in all areas of manufacturing. The whole problem could be dissolved simply by returning autonomy and responsibility, to the individual.

The IRS is the sustaining tool of excessive, tax-and-spend government, and has become universally despised throughout the non-governing society. It operates as a looter of productivity and is clearly existing to the detriment of the society. It is truly beyond redemption. It should be scrapped, disallowed from tainting any system that succeeds it. Either a true flat tax or, preferably, a consumption tax would greatly reduce the oppression of excessive taxation, and the ability of government to govern excessively. Here, again, is a problem we can never effectively address so long as the population is controlled through belief-ignorance and the manipulation of perception. Solutions do not come from politics or authoritarianism, but from recognizing and addressing the real nature of those problems.

The well-being and behavior of children illustrate the effects of usurped autonomy on personal effectiveness. As government increasingly involves itself in the lives of families, mandating and proscribing, a wedge has been driven between adult and child, causing a rift that will take generations to heal.

Children in the United States, in addition to being increasingly out of control and shaped into criminals, as well as being placed at risk by government generated criminality, are failing to be educated in our public schools. They are increasingly vulnerable to accidents, increasingly involved in ineffective and dangerous behavior and exhibit a marked absence of reality orientation. The contrast between now and a few decades ago is startling, reflecting a shift from personal responsibility to projected and arbitrarily assigned responsibility.

This appears to cut across all areas of behavior and results in increased accidents from drowning, firearms, drugs, poison, burns, fireworks, sexual abductions, etc. e.g., Before World War II, firecrackers were not only a common part of every 4th of July celebration, but a common plaything. Any child could walk into a dime store , throughout the year, and purchase firecrackers of any size, any time, "hammerheads", three inch end-fused, blockbusters (equivalent to about a quarter stick of dynamite), Roman candles, etc. Throughout my childhood I had no personal knowledge of anyone getting seriously hurt with them. It was only after fireworks and firearms came increasingly under the control of government, becoming increasingly prohibited and their use proscribed, did the percentage incidents of injury begin to climb.

When firecrackers were widely used, children quickly came to understand the danger and learned to handle them with skill. Anyone doing something dangerous, such as tossing a lighted lady finger at someone, was immediately censured. Parents taught their children the dangers of the environment because they had to, it was their responsibility. This is not to say that children did not make mistakes and that there were not occasional injuries, but children had more freedom to live and interact with the real world, and had more incentive to learn. As a result, they were more reality oriented and far less vulnerable to dangers than they are today.

When firearms were common items in virtually every household, children were constantly exposed to them. Shotguns or rifles standing in the corner of a room was common to most homes.

Handguns lay in a dresser drawer or hung on the wall. Children were taught to use firearms. Their curiosity was satisfied and they very early came to recognize the dangers and responsibilities. Children carrying guns to school or dying by accidental or deliberate gunshot would have been unthinkable. Such problems did not exist as a social problem. Now we have children as young as ten years deliberately killing someone in order to be initiated into a gang. People become what they learn, and fail to learn.

In the process of governing, particularly where there is unbridled governmental growth and jurisdiction, anything can be legislated. However, the fact that a law exists does not mean the law is valid, is enforceable or serves a useful purpose. Validity involves questions of purpose and effectiveness. It involves nature's principles and laws. It involves reality.

If a law is ineffective, if it does not fulfill its expressed purpose or has destructive side effects, it loses its reason for being and, thus, its validity. When a law is used for other than its intended purpose, such as by the police for the purpose of entrapment or for the compounding of charges, it becomes invalid and the police become functionally criminal in the process. If a law works to the detriment of the individual, it is also counter to the best interests of the society. It is invalid. Creating or generating dysfunction can never be a valid function of law or government.

In real life, however, governments are not constrained by the question of validity, truth or social functionality. They govern to the degree that they can insinuate themselves and legislate.

Increasingly, present governments damage the mentality and the functionality of the individual, not just by the belief-ignorance syndromes they support and instill, but by encouraging and forcing activities in problem-generating directions. This is the fundamental reality behind the adage that 'The government that governs least, governs best.' As governments try to micro manage the lives of individuals, both individuals and systems degenerate, both losing effectiveness.

Those of wealth and positions of power are able to obtain some measure of dispensation from the inevitable oppression of excessive government, otherwise government would not be so excessive.

The little guy at the bottom, the one who is without power, is the one who feels the boot of oppression most keenly, but neither the rich nor the poor escape the pathologies of excessive government, as the mindlessness increasingly destroys the effectiveness of the society.

As government progressively intrudes into the decision making processes of the individual, damage to individual mentality is progressive and social pathology follows. Problems are compounded.

We see the effects of government and culture-damaged individuals all about us. We see it in flashing police clubs as a man is beaten senseless, or in the search and seizure raids for money or property, as the police become increasingly criminal and the public is increasingly seen as simply a resource to be exploited.

We have seen it in riots, as we watched ordinary citizens gleefully carrying loot from invaded stores that would later be put to the torch.

It is exhibited by the high school student who can't read and whose peer group imperative is to totally disrupt the classroom and the learning process.

We see it in the smash-and-grab thug as he fills a car with flying glass, in his attempt to reach a woman's purse.

We see it in the increased criminalization of populations and in the resulting growth of black markets and organized crime.

We see it in the addict who must daily steal hundreds of dollars worth of goods in order to maintain his habit.

It is in the insurmountable mountain of ineffective law and the daily toll of human energies and resources taken in the courtrooms of this land.

It is seen in business failures where our productive elements, restricted in movement and operating at starvation levels of profit, stagger under the tyranny of labor unions, excessive regulation, red tape and taxes.

Most of all, it is seen in the confusion, increased dependency, apathy, frustration and mounting anger of the people. The combination of cultural delusion and government enforced irrationality is the gravest threat to humanity today. Virtually any problem, examined in depth, will be seen to have, at its roots, the work of the deadly duo, religion and government.

The effects of delusional learning includes wide ranges of dysfunctional behavior from apathy to the avoidance of information, increased dependency, generalized ineffectiveness, violence and criminality, as well as the deviate behaviors of the various forms of functional mental illness.

Governing, in the United States has reached and passed the point of diminishing return, where further increases only reduce the effectiveness of the society. Governing is not a productive activity. Anything a government has must be extracted from the productive elements of the society. Government now constitutes the greatest single threat to this society.

Technological societies have capabilities and possibilities impossible to small, and especially, primitive and monolithic social systems. They have the ability to support major achievements and collectively produce the goods that supply the world population.

The greatest achievements, from writing to engineering feats, the arts and great music, etc, are largely the product of metropolitan populations. High levels of achievement must be supported by urban societies with effective levels of knowledge and freedom.

The camcorder you use on your vacation and your multimedia computer would not exist were it not for multi-national organizations, a network of a wide variety of electronics industries supported by technological societies, with monetary systems that function internationally.

Not only are large organizations of coordinated human activity necessary to produce the amenities we enjoy as members of a technological society, ultimately, they are necessary for the survival and continued progress of intelligent life.

Positive developments are the products of business and industry, not government. Jobs are created by the productive systems of the private sector, not government, not labor unions, not religions. Human accomplishment has its beginnings in the internal drives of individuals. They are the products of people reaching and striving for something better.

Government is necessary, of course, but not authoritarian governing, and not at anywhere near its present size and domain. Feats such as our interstate highway systems, the railroads or the space program would not have come into being without the power of Eminent Domain and the tax dollars of millions of people. Nor could we have effective national defense without government. However, under cultural delusions, governments quickly reach a point of diminishing return, where further growth and expansion of authority only compounds problems. For government to be effective, it must be tied to the principles of reality and requirements of effectiveness.

Systems, for any purpose, are effective only to the degree they are allowed to follow natural functions and energies, as opposed to human law, which, so far, is based on arbitrary political determinations, seriously divergent from reality and natural systems.

The fundamental fallacy of democracy is that its success is dependent upon the will of the people. The reciprocal reality is that its success is dependent upon the population's factual knowledge and orientation to factual reality.

Its defects reflect determinations having been based on popular opinion and political pressures, rather than factual knowledge and an understanding of principles and the parameters of possibility, as set by nature. A democracy, as is the case with any other system, can be effective only to the degree that its citizens recognize and accept the real nature of problems. The greatest social pathogen of all is the instillation of codes of myth, fantasy and delusion, forever divergent from effectiveness and the solution to problems.

Obviously, humanity requires governing structures which will be conducive to organizing and protecting human productivity. These are areas wherein we are making some progress toward benign and effective systems of control, but only in the private sector, not government.

The greater number of our systems of social control still follow primitive models wherein optimizing human function is not the objective, nor even allowed within their structures. Most of our systems of human control are parasitical, directed primarily toward exploitation and the support and growth of existing dysfunctional systems. However, there is increasing public awareness of these stupidities.

Any unrestrained government will move quickly in the direction of becoming a totalitarian state, weakening the social structure commensurate with the mentality of the governed. It will eventually precipitate its own destruction, being overwhelmed by the problems it generates, inviting overthrow by its own or by invasion from outside.

This does not mean, however, that its overthrow and destruction will be mercifully quick or that something better will replace it. As we have witnessed in our own lifetimes, as well as the dysfunction portrayed in the bulk of human history, despotic and oppressive regimes can go on for generations, with all the attendant oppression, terror and suffering they meet out.

Nor does the overthrow of one system mean there will be the wisdom to craft a better one. If you have not dispelled the beliefs in favor of knowledge, you are still locked into old stupidities and will configure systems accordingly.

On the other hand, a population accepting of factual knowledge and responding favorably to the indices of objective evidence, would encourage the individual to be productive and to make effective decisions. There is a growing tendency, so far limited to commercial systems, to move in this direction.

A cultural environment accepting of reality would encourage the individual to think and to grow, to be reality-oriented, rational and effective, since one's determinations and subsequent activity usually result in immediate consequences.

When the responsibility for decision is removed, usurped by government, the ability to be effective atrophies from disuse, as would an unused limb. The individual learns to sit

and wait, instead of learning to think and to move. The individual waits to be told what to think and what to do.

As governments grow in their sphere of domain, the mentality and effectiveness of populations invariably decline. In the United States, we have gone from a society noted for its independence, its know-how and its ability to get the job done, to an overpopulated society with growing sectors of ineffective citizens. It is diseased, with growing pockets of superstition, ignorance and dependency. Most of this degeneration has taken place in less than two generations.

As these changes occur, we watch a growing primitive savagery within the society and feel the chill of our own fading humanity. A large proportion of the population moves, with gathering momentum, in the direction of insanity, as the rest of us watch in helpless anger and frustration.

The contrasts between the areas of effectiveness and dysfunction are clearly etched. Every area of dysfunction represents belief-ignorance, an avoidance of reality and a refusal to acknowledge and address the real nature of humanity and the problems at hand. Nowhere is this blindness more in evidence than in our approaches to governing.

Although one may often muse along the lines of what it would be like to have rational government, it is no less a fantasy than the fantasies held by our mystic brethren of the cloth.

Rational government cannot be instituted as on an assembly line in a factory, put together in a matter of days or weeks, all processes working in harmony, the output being a functional product with an acceptable level of quality. Rational government must be grown, from the stock and nutrients of a society, and it grows in rationality only to the degree that the society tolerates an orientation to reality, and to the degree its citizens have freedom and responsibility.

Rational government can grow and be maintained only from the rationality of the people. Even if you could magically institute rational government overnight, it would wither and die from a lack of popular support and from perversion by those who hunger for power in the absence of integrity or rational direction.

Unfortunately, the world has never witnessed a truly rational government, simply because there has never been a culture rational enough to develop or support one. The pressures toward delusion and its attendant ignorance have been too great. Populations, regardless of their innate capacities, have been maintained largely in conditions of servile delusion, in ignorance and religious superstition, unable to accept their own nature or the nature of their problems.

This is as one would expect, simply because there has been little control over governing bodies and the other instituted fantasy factories within our cultures. Up until this century, one could make excuses on the basis of insufficient factual knowledge. Such is no longer the case.

If you wish rational government, turn first to the task of achieving an increase in rationality levels within the population. This can only happen by open debate and the dissemination of factual information reflecting the realities of the Cosmos and our own real nature. It can only happen if there is free and open discussion on any topic, including the fundamental fallacies, our most precious delusions. It also requires confronting any institution, group or individual that is proffering myth or misdirection, when that entity is attempting to compel or proselytize.

Progress is possible only if the myths and fantasies can be exposed for what they are, dissolving in the process. It will require a large amount of individual activity, rejecting and vigorously attacking the falsehoods, fantasies and fantasy peddlers within the culture, regardless of their origin or stature.

This means increasingly providing forums for factual information and enhancing the dissemination of such information. It means placing penalties upon the deliberate dissemination of false or delusional material. Popular rationality can come about only through the gradual replacement of delusion with reciprocal reality, both in terms of individual cognizance as well as cultural and institutional premises, structures and codes.

The truth about the nature of the Cosmos must be widely disseminated and large measures of autonomy and responsibility must be returned to the individual. Only then will groups and societies begin to make real corrections.

Positive changes can be achieved only by rational individuals who turn to the task of confronting the irrationality within their own cultures, attacking the delusional propaganda and pressing for the dissemination of truth.

Unfortunately, the process will take time that can be ill afforded, while populations grow exponentially and destructive systems compound problems. What is needed is a independent action by every individual who recognizes a delusion being propagated. Even the most timid can slip notes into books, write anonymous letters and do a thousand worthwhile things without exposing themselves to censure. Anything to stimulate a rational thought is movement in the right direction.

This needs to be a movement to not only relentlessly present the fundamental realities to the people, but elicit the participation of individuals, encouraging them to take direct action and organize to discuss and disseminate reality-reflecting information, while monitoring and exposing the organized stupidities of their culture.

In short, we need you and anyone you can reach, in both the public and private sector, talking, thinking and moving toward the realities so long suppressed. We need people who can provide forums for presenting the realities, speakers who will stand on thier feet and tell the truth. As significant numbers become aware of the basic realities, governing elements will feel the pressure and be compelled to change.

The growing awareness and discontent, on the part of diverse peoples, is the source of the vast changes that are taking place around the world today. What is lacking is enough factual knowledge for people to understand the roots of problems, not only what to reject, but what to move toward.

A rational government could be achieved, not by anarchy or violent revolution, but by people attacking the delusion and ineffectiveness, the pathological systems and false premises within their own cultures, weakening the pathologies and moving structures to make corrections, piece by piece.

Again, rational government will be established only to the degree that individual rationality within a population has been achieved and demands for rational government are forthcoming. Government, at any level, will never willingly relinquish its power or cease its relentless drive for domination.

We can only expect governments, especially in democracies, to reflect the mentality of the governed. If, over the years, you think you have been watching a progressive degeneration in government rationality and integrity in the United States, you are correct. It has been echoing a downturn in the rationality and integrity of the people. Fortunately, there have also been people gaining insight into some of the more blatant reasons for our growing problems.

Paradoxically, the group that initiated a movement toward correction of our own government also includes the Religious Right. These Republicans may not recognize or accept the real nature of existence, but they do recognize the vital necessity for fiscal integrity within the society and the governing systems.

They also recognize the need to return autonomy and responsibility to the individual. However, this group is completely oblivious to the factual nature of existence, and the fact that religious belief is the fundamental cognitive pathogen of slavery.

This ignorance is absolute for those who have a strong vested interest in their religion, a personal 'Gawd' and the Creation theory of existence. They are highly reactive to the real face of nature. Knowledge of fundamental existence would completely destroy their beliefs.

Religionists will not be able to recognize that goodness issues from knowledge and the intellect, not from "God". They will not recognize the nature of their own rationality, that it reflects their very being and depends upon the real knowledge they have acquired.

But, though the absence of objective rationality is largely engineered by the institutions of a society, it is the individual who must grapple with the correction process. The correction of belief systems, and institutional systems, can only be achieved through real knowledge gained by individuals, at the expense of their beliefs.

The basic lack of popular rationality has been engineered by diverse cultural institutions in their struggle to maintain and extend their control over the fruits of human labor. This insidious engineering has taken place over the entire course of human history, and will be very hard to dislodge. The situation is particularly critical now, as we are running out of time, space and resources. Ignorance, superstition and the increasing press of population make an explosive mixture in which humanity is quickly lost.

In our quest for a higher rationality, the ultimate responsibility must always remain with the individual, simply because it is the adult individual who must accept or reject each piece of information.

The low rationality of the society is such because individuals have accepted the myths and absurdities of authority, the meaningless as wisdom and misdirection as progress. Although the individual is largely controlled by the culture, the bulk of fundamental absurdities being instilled during childhood, it is only the individual who has the power to self-correct by examining and rejecting those falsehoods. The number of individuals who will confront and reject cultural myths, becoming functionally rational in the process, will determine the fate of societies and, ultimately, the fate of the species.

There is no magic solution and there is no decree of nature that says this species must survive. Every species eventually becomes extinct. The difference with Homo sapiens lies only with the degree to which we can engineer ourselves and our environment. Only the activity of the species itself, in terms of its individual members, has the possibility of assuring that we will long endure. To maintain Earth's ability to support an increasingly diverse myriad of life and chemistry and to continue to evolve, we will need all the knowledge and individual effectiveness we can garner.

In the case of the United States, the sad condition of this 'Land of the Free and Home of the Brave', is that it has been flogged, flacked, fingered and sodomized by the mindless minions who call it home. The individual has accepted the insanities and acted accordingly.

Although saturated with propaganda twenty four hours a day, we, as individuals, remain the ones who must take responsibility. We are the only ones who can reject the propaganda.

Yet, in the face of better knowledge, we remain in denial. We want to believe. Few will take an unfiltered look at the real state of existence or the real nature of problems. We don't want to get involved with the accumulating problems. We don't want to think. We want our beliefs and our diversions and we carefully keep our conversations limited to the trivial and away form the serious questions. By deferring to government, we allow ourselves to be led blindly in every conceivable direction, band-aiding symptoms and accepting random motion as an indication of progress.

We accept the most mindless rhetoric and approaches from our leaders, refusing to use our own judgments and ignoring the relationship between our approaches and the growing problems. We watch governmental violations of the most basic principles of nature, and of our most basic and necessary freedoms, with hardly a murmur of protest. We try to blot out the uglies, simply by refusing to look at them or think about them, allowing, or demanding, that government take charge and solve our problems.

We demand that government institute programs to deal with our every wish. Government, of course, is very willing to oblige, even though it has yet to solve its first problem. Government energetically takes authoritarian command and continues to intrude itself increasingly into our lives, usurping individual prerogatives while compounding problems and the procedures for addressing those problems. Government feeds both the problems and itself, as it grows to staggering proportions, moving us toward systems and events that have the capacity to trigger a species-wide collapse.

Here in the U.S., we are quickly reaching the limits to which the productive elements of the society can support current governmental 'solutions'. The people, their delusions in full sway, noisily protest governmental ineffectiveness and fiscal incompetence while clamoring for still more laws that will generate additional programs, controls, taxes and problems. They expect government to magically provide for their unlimited demands, although, clearly, the societies's resources can never keep up with those demands. They demand more government, although governmental involvement already exceeds functional limitations.

We fail to accept the fact that Government cannot solve our problems, or bring them to within tolerable levels. Individuals must make most of the decisions and address their own problems, directly. Individuals must control their own lives, not government. Autonomy and responsibility must be returned to individuals in a lot of areas that will largely dismantle current governmental involvement. Government must be brought to recognize the principle that the individual OWNS him or herself; that government can validly serve only as supplement or backup to the individual, never taking primary responsibility, except in areas the individual clearly cannot address, such as dealing with other dysfunctional governments. Eventually, all governments will be required to take the back seat if humanity is to avert species-wide degeneration, destroying the infrastructure required for our continued positive evolution.

Due to our delusions, we have become a collection of special interest groups, power groups and dysfunctional individuals. We spawn governing systems riddled with false premises and structures and now face the unpleasant task of dismantling them. Clutching at straws, we have tried to force government to solve our problems and take care of us. Meanwhile, government, faced with the problem of keeping everyone happy, continually increases its spending and its sphere of authoritarian control. In the process, it has placed the society under a burden of debt and government distributed entitlement that is difficult to comprehend, much less fund. Resources are increasingly funneled into non-productive systems and activities.

Government continues pouring money in the direction of the loudest voice, subsidizing and entitling beyond any hope of resources to cope with it. Expecting to monetize the growing monetary hemorrhage, manipulate public perception, and completely mindless of the fact that present approaches are only making problems worse, our governing systems continue largely undeterred and, in spite of rhetoric to the contrary, have yet to relinquish any appreciable jurisdiction, returning autonomy to the individual.

Increasing numbers of people, realizing the impossibility of our Magic Kingdom and feeling helpless, become cynical, many of them giving up and refusing to even think about the problems. There is a shift toward getting while the getting's good and screw everybody

else, the fading of humanity. The loss of governmental integrity over the years has encouraged the loss of social and individual integrity.

The individual, believing that he or she is impotent, that there is no way to solve problems, becomes apathetic. Many give up on anything other than just existing, grasping at any passing diversion. Extra energies are shifted toward escapism, rather than toward personal growth and correcting our systems.

Our billowing populations reflect our failure to educate. Our most deluded and least effective members have the highest birth rates, poverty, criminality and insanity. We refuse to accept an immutable fact of nature, that a human life is of value only if it is of some physical value; that, as populations increase, the value of a human life not only disappears, but becomes a negative. Our planet suffers from its human infestation.

We refuse to think. Discrimination, in any form, has been made a dirty word, blinding us and preventing us from addressing problems in every quarter. We watch complacently, as legislatures and our judicial systems compounded bad law and precedence which in no way addresses reality nor the root causes of our problems. We never dare recognize that some problems can not be legislated away; never dare to see that our approaches are just not working. The sum total of this cumulative mindlessness has led us to the exact point we find ourselves today. The results could have been none other.

Unfortunately, the uglies we ignore do not go away. They never do. They grow. They have grown to the point where they now threaten the most successful society on earth.

Authoritarianism is deeply ingrained in the human psyche. It is as old as the concept of God. It is the human impulse to take on the powers of a god, arbitrarily and by force, imposing conditions upon others. It is completely devoid of a valid basis.

Humans have a common, culturally borne, mind set to accept information on the basis of 'authority' rather than on the basis of objective evidence. It is the traditional way societies are organized and operate. Compliance is taught in every culture. The seed is planted that the individual is inadequate to determine the validity of information and must depend upon authority. People are taught to accept information purely on the basis of its source, not on evidence of its validity. However, as popular knowledge increases, these traditions appear to be braking down.

Common to every culture is the acceptance, if not the open adoration, of authority. By authority, in terms of a governing system, I refer to arbitrary authority wherein there is no mandated objective of mating governmental activities to reality and where accountability is evaded; where determinations are at the caprice of the governing entity and where the will of authority is enforced by any means deemed necessary.

An authoritarian system of control is one in which direction and authority to act emanates from an entity at the top (top-down control). The head of the organization, whether it be a system or an individual, directs assistants who, in turn, direct others, etc. Arbitrary commands filter down through the system. There is little or no mandate for objective validity. This is a "do as you are told" system. It is as old as the species and has serious limitations in orchestrating human productivity. The limitations of authoritarian control have come to our attention in the last few years, having first become clearly recognized in industry as a process that could not compete with more effective systems allowing decisions and information access at the level of the activity.

The first signs of dysfunction which could no longer be ignored was that such systems began to loose effectiveness beyond certain levels of size and complexity. As organizations grew, a point was invariably reached beyond which top-down control could no longer be maintained. This problem first became significant in government, but aroused little attention. There was no effective recourse. Effectiveness was not expected there and, in any case, the fog of propaganda, entrenched bureaucracy and the power of force would prevent any correction in this area, at least until the public became aware and demanded changes.

Such dysfunction in business meant loss. It meant that GM could no longer compete with Japanese companies that were beginning to allow autonomy and control at lower levels of their organizations more directly involved with a problem.

Authoritarian systems reflect ignorance of the fundamental nature of matter, wherein every entity, from a single ring of primary motion to the ponderous swirl of a galaxy, exhibits a natural autonomy, doing what it is and resisting deviation from that activity. The human animal, especially, needs to exercise autonomy as our survival now depends upon knowledge and our objective intellect, the ability to adjust and change to an ever changing environment.

Authoritarian systems do not tolerate the autonomous individual and the functions required for human effectiveness, as these are a threat to imposed control. They attempt to ignore the limitations of real existence. The authoritarian typically imagines an idealized condition and then tries to force its actualization.

As information and real knowledge becomes increasingly easy to obtain, such systems try to maintain their positions by increasing the use of force, propaganda, isolation and cosmetics. They are often found trying to convince the public and their functionaries that they are modernizing, while increasing resources are expended attempting to impose control and make extant systems work.

What they are trying to maintain, however, becomes hopeless as the negative effects of such systems overtake their ability to maintain and force functionality. These systems eventually reach a point where increased authoritarian pressures only further diminish control. Overwhelmingly, nature's control is internal, not imposed from an external entity. Even in the case of bees or ants, the activity patterns and drives are inborn. It is not externally imposed.

Look about you at the sources of most of your information. It comes from representatives of our various institutions. The smiling face on the TV screen or the book jacket is forever directed toward you accepting an 'authority.' To what degree can you trust information issuing from our institutions? Again, look about you. Virtually every problem that confronts humanity today issues from authoritarian systems and institutionalized thinking.

I am not saying that some valid information does not issue from our sources. What I am saying is that it should not be accepted unquestioned, that it should ultimately be accepted or rejected on the basis of factual reality, not the source.

Either information is true or it is false. This is the one fundamental dichotomy of nature. Either something exists or it does not. Discovering which is usually very easy. The more a person is attuned to reality, the easier it becomes. False information is not only devoid of supporting evidence, but requires obfuscation and fabricated support by additional false material. Our institutions have vested interests in maintaining the cultural delusions. Any thinking which would expose cultural falsehoods and weaken the delusions undermines their influence over the public. Mainstream portrayals of existence and conditions, as well as the current levels of social pathology and dysfunction, reflect conceptualizations and approaches which are simply wrong and, cumulatively, have denied us the ability to deal with the real problems.

The overwhelming majority of our deceptions have been generated by, and reflect, delusional material emanating from institutions.

Authoritarianism is fundamentally destructive. It can function only in terms of suppression and parasitism. It functions by interfering with, or suppressing, human behavior, as it extracts resources from productive systems.

Arbitrary and authoritarian systems are closed systems. They are highly reactive to other controls which would require objective validation and accountability. Further, such systems ultimately exist to benefit themselves and, lacking objectivity, must ultimately depend upon propaganda, coercion and physical force to back their mandates. These systems are the generators of endless adversity. They are the systems that have prevented human progress throughout history. They are consistently destructive.

This is the essential nature of any organization which depends upon authority as an operational premise. It may lay claim to an ultimate authority in the form of a 'god' or a more mundane figure or principle, or in the case of government within the United States, authority that supposedly issues from the 'consent of the governed'. That the governed are maintained as mindless and manipulated chattel is obscured in the ever-shifting fogs of rhetoric and propaganda.

Because of the fallacies in premise structures and a deluded electorate, our governments continue to be authoritarian, depending upon propaganda, deceit, bribery and force as they coerce increasingly resistant and angry compliance with their mandates. Because they follow the authoritarian model, where control is imposed rather than augmented, our governments cannot avoid being incubators of conflict, contradiction and the adversary position.

Authority imposes its mandates upon the individual, making the assumption that it has a right and the necessity to usurp individual autonomy. It assumes that the individual must be forcibly controlled, that the individual has no natural capacity for rational self control. Under such control, a population does indeed lose self control. Such concepts are in direct conflict with the nature of existence and human nature.

It is always the individual who is best equipped to assess his or her own needs and drives, who is the source of what rationality and integrity humanity possesses. It is the individual who exists in the numbers necessary to address the exponentially growing problems. It is the individual who possesses the natural autonomy, a natural right to self determination. Only the individual can accept or reject information and determine objectively rational responses to external stimuli. But the individual needs to be equipped with real knowledge, and to be dealt with truthfully.

Although individuals have differing levels of insight and knowledge, the ability or the right to impose standards upon a citizen can never be validly arbitrary. Only individuals who have lost rights of citizenship, due to damaging others, should be subjected to imposed standards, and only then to standards in sync with nature and species effectiveness.

There are no natural rights, as such. However, to operate in opposition to natural drives and systems insures failure. The idea of rights is a human concept, borne of intellect and natural drives. It springs from an ability to distinguish between equity and inequity. The human being asserts rights because of the drive to move autonomously, reflecting natural functions of existence. Because of the intellect, it also can empathize and recognizes the necessity of defending the same rights for others.

In authoritarian systems, the system assumes domain over the individual, not recognizing rights other than those which it grants. In doing so, it is in opposition to natural systems. For humanity to maintain rights within authoritarian systems, those rights must be assumed, insisted upon, and exercised. The individual has no autonomy and self determination unless he or she asserts it. There is always some individual, some group or authority ready to strip the individual of such freedom, if allowed to do so.

It is the individual who must make the ultimate decision to accept or reject external mandates. If that individual is objectively rational, very little external control is necessary, or tolerable. This is the real meaning and necessity of freedom.

This, then, is the basic problem of governing. Government inevitably does some damage to the individual. That damage is proportional to the degree to which individual determination is lost. The point at which this damage is justifiable, by the effectiveness and amenities wrought by government, is quickly exceeded. Governmental involvement in excess of this point is dysfunctional, cannot be justified and is invalid.

Inequity and injustice invariably generates resentment and resistance on the part of the victim. The bulk of government today is occupied with the results of the injustices and other problems of its own making. It wastefully churns on the problems it has created, generating new problems as it goes. Like a snowball rolling down hill, it offers an increasing contact to generate more problems.

To the degree that a government's mandates are divergent from those of nature, it will be authoritarian, unjust and oppressive. Conversely, to the degree to which a government's mandates are in line with nature and the real mechanisms of existence, that government will encourage the growth of rationality and functionality within the population and will be respected by the people. In short, to the degree that government is objectively functional, it will elicit respect.

People can tolerate rational mandates, even when they are harsh. When there are real justifications for a law, the law will be respected, provided its subjects recognize that necessity. It is the unjust or ineffective law which breeds contempt for law and for government.

Governments try to ignore or supplant the indices and mechanisms of nature, only to generate misery and dysfunction proportionally. Laws which move man in directions divergent from the indices of nature meet natural resistance and require force accordingly. Governments, in their quest for popular support, try to justify that force. Such justifications are always superficial, focusing on symptoms and avoiding principals, detrimental effects and real causes.

A government's mandates can only be justified to the degree that they are effective. There are times when force is necessary, witness Desert Storm. This was destructive force used to deal with a destructive foe. However, the subsequent embargo on Iraq cannot be justified. Long-standing effectiveness requires cooperation and mutual advantage, using natural drives born of individual autonomy.

Irrationality and injustice can never be justified by real evidence any more than a lie can be supported by real evidence. In the absence of justification, our governments strive to formulate a rationale that will be accepted by the public, if grudgingly. Such acceptance is dependent upon popular delusion; not justified, but accepted by a large number of propagandized and deluded subjects.

The principles discussed here hold true for any authoritarian organization, whether it be government, a school, a club or an authoritarian household. The concept of arbitrary authority is invalid. It is against the very nature of existence, itself. It is anti-life. Arbitrary authority is never a rational basis for a demand and should always be resisted. Only mandates supported by objectively measurable indices should be accepted. Authority, in the absence of objective reason, is always oppressive and is ultimately dysfunctional.

Even in the control of a small child or other helpless individual, arbitrary authority is not justified. Control, to be justifiable, must be supported by objective indices. Any place or time arbitrary authority is used you can expect its mandates to be flawed.

You can expect force to be excessive and oppressive to the degree that a government follows the authoritarian model. In light of this, consider the nature of our own governments, whether they be national, state, county or city. To what degree are their determinations based upon objective indications? To what degree are their mandates based on the real nature of the problems they address? How often do they consider the conditions under which the individual is most functional? To what degree are your own problems and irritations caused, directly or indirectly, by government?

Perhaps the most telling area is in terms of police powers and our judicial system. Which costs the U.S. citizen more, both in terms of money and in terms of damage to the lives of the population, crime or government's approaches to it?

That every movement of government brings a storm of divergent opinion, and increasing conflict, is inevitable. Such are the fruits of cultivating and codifying delusion.

Is there any question as to why we are so wedded to the belief that the only way to get something done is to force it, the Rambo mentality? Is there any wonder why so few recognize that force generates counter-force? Is there any wonder why we generate the adversary position in nearly everything we do?

Is there any wonder why TV and the movies so heavily portray force and violence? It provides a means of symbolically and emotionally dealing with the anger welling up within us. Is there any wonder why the media can think only in terms of sensation and the adversary position? It thrives on chaos, using the anger and frustration, fanning it, spreading it like a fire.

Do not look to your elected officials to lead us in the direction of higher rationality and the solution to our problems. Nor does it matter who the elected official is. At this date in history, none of them, from a local council member to the President, recognize the fundamental nature of the problem, nor realize the far reaching effects of what they are doing. Further, all are functionaries of fundamentally corrupt systems.

If the human condition is to be effectively addressed, it must be on a global basis and by individuals. It requires individuals gaining real knowledge of nature's systems and recognizing the fallacies of their own systems, cultural and governmental. It requires massive dissemination of reality-reflecting information and investigative material on the fallacies and dysfunction of present premises and social systems. It means spreading the word about the real human condition and the principle of Reciprocal Cognitive Exclusion, that will maintain delusion just as well as objective rationality. Hopefully, this book will constitute a beginning.

Ultimately, the fate of societies and the species depends on the level of autonomy exercised by individuals. You and the direct action you take represent the fundamental element of the equation. As the numbers who recognize the real nature of problems increases, pressure will be brought to bear on our governing institutions for meaningful changes. As increasing numbers gain an understanding of the nature of problems, control by propaganda will lose its power over people.

A reality-oriented individual will always gravitate toward rational behavior. He or she does not need an external governing force to mandate such behavior. This is not to say that no governing is needed, but that government's mandates should have objectively valid reasons for their continued existence.

Within any organized group, be it a club, a commercial venture, a space program or a society, there is necessity for organization and for coordination of systems and procedures, some governing system. However, for such systems to be effective, they must be based on, and operate as an extension of nature, not on arbitrary goals and imagined ideals.

Throughout the whole course of human history, humanity has been operating on the wrong model, a hundred and eighty degrees out of sync with nature. It was never valid to base governing activity on arbitrary authority or power. Until such systems are routinely attacked and restructured, the human species will not be able to move in corrective directions.

Governing efforts will succeed to the degree that decisions are overtly rational. It is only to this degree that the organization will have the willing cooperation of the individual citizen and exhibit the greatest effectiveness.

In such systems, the governing controls follow the lead of those most able to solve a problem, usually those very close to the problem. The choice of approach ultimately follows efficiency, that which works. It is the degree of movement in this direction that accounts for much of the high productivity of industry over the past decade.

Correction will require a grass-roots movement wherein the individual generates and propagates rationality in spite of the resistance and countermeasures of the institutions of his or her society. It must be a movement of largely independent action, although such action ultimately tends to become increasingly coordinated and organized. Reality orientation lends itself to the convergence of drives. It is delusion that is forever divisive and the generator of conflict.

Again, increasing popular rationality can come only with the dissemination of factual information, teaching the principles of real existence and through a wide dissemination of literature which attacks the cultural fantasies, as well as attacking any institution, party or individual that is engaged in the dissemination of false information or imposing irrational or dysfunctional activities, laws or systems.

Corrective movement can come only by cumulative pressures being brought to bear on our institutions, triggered by a growing recognition of what has been done to humanity by our authoritarian institutions and the destructive use of force. Only insight as to the nature of problems can provide the necessary drive for correction, a rejection of cultural fantasies, mandates for reformation of our institutions and truth in the materials emanating from our institutions and the media. Where there is dysfunction, look for the delusional premises.

Authoritarian systems of control require a largely deluded public. The limits to which control of a population can be maintained by force are quickly reached and exceeded. Control by the manipulation of public perception is essential. Authoritarian systems, having no valid basis for their assumed position, cannot rule a reality-oriented population. An objectively rational population, cognizant of the principles involved, would not support such government. Under authoritarianism, populations must be maintained at high levels of delusion and ignorance.

Authoritarian Law is limited to addressing the symptoms of problems, not causations. To do otherwise would be counter to its own agenda, that of maintaining and expanding authoritarian control. Governing effectively would reduce the need for governing.

For this reason, our system of law focuses on the act, not the cause, which can never be addressed, other than in the vague terms of political rhetoric; poverty, lack of education, lack of morality, lack of parental supervision, greed, big business, special interest groups, absence of respect, family values, etc.

Authoritarian Law is by nature parasitical. It is a net taker, not a provider. It spawns systems for legal looting, hidden taxation, and arbitrary determinations in favor of the highest bidder. Given the premises upon which it is based, it can be no other way. Authoritarianism, in any form, is fundamentally corrupt.

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