Thursday, May 10, 2018

One Hundred and Sixty Seven

Sallust said few men want freedom; most only want just masters.  He was wrong.  Men tell themselves they want justice, personified in just masters; but what they really want is order.

Most men don’t care whether their masters behave in a way some philosopher defines as just.  They know justice is only a word.  Only fools and madmen debate what that word means, and what each of us would be entitled to in a just world.  In this world, those who have not yet been driven mad by their suffering and/or the suffering of others know might makes right, and we're entitled to whatever we can take and keep.  Most of us therefore want masters whose whims and lusts are orderly and predictable.

Some claim might makes right because we’re animals, like any other.  But animals in a state of nature are social, with a sense of right and wrong.  We’re antisocial animals, preying on each other and asserting what we call our free will by doing what common sense tells us is wrong.

We're trapped in a cage of our own making, which we call civilization; and we’ve gone mad, as all caged animals eventually do.  Now that we’ve accepted there’s no escape from this cage except by dying, we've decided to destroy ourselves.

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