Humankind is arguably the most enigmatic species on Earth; the greater our successes with individual sovereignty, freedom, and liberty, relying on our inherent free will-driven pursuits of living self-determinate lives, the more readily we inevitably slip the chains of bondage and subservience to ruling authority tightly around our own throats. Simultaneously being both solitary creatures by Nature yet having to socialize in order to both survive and reproduce, it is fair to suggest that ours is a species riddled with paradox.
It has been suggested that the first known human species arrived between 6 and 7 million years ago. Homo sapiens, our branch of the species, is said to have appeared between 200,000 and 300,000 years ago, that the first known complex civilized society is believed to have established itself in Sumer, located in Mesopotamia (now south-central Iraq), in the 4th millennium BCE, and the first king – Sargon of Akkad – is said to have risen to power and ruled between 2,334 and 2,279 BCE. This tells us that modern humankind lived together, work together, and grew and evolved together – unsupervised by King or ruling Authority for as much as two millennia and did just fine, able to organize themselves and work together to achieve both their individual and collective goals for a great many generations before the first king rose to rule over them.
Everything we knew about ourselves and the world around us came from our observations as well as our lived and shared experiences. As we continued to produce subsequent generations, we passed down our wisdom and experience, and their subsequent generations likewise lived, learned, evolved, and passed on their own understandings and experiences to their subsequent generations.
Despite not being given a name until as late as Sophocles (497-406 B.C.E.) and, later, with Aristotle (384–322 BCE), these were the early origins of what is now known as “Natural Law,” and nature and natural processes were the only governing authorities over every living species. The basic idea of this concept asserts that “there is a natural justice that is valid everywhere and does not depend on the laws of any one group of people.”
We know from the archaeological record that our ancestors, as the Sciences continue to discover new information about our origins, Mesopotamia was one of the places our species landed during the so-called “Great Human Migration” out of Africa that began approximately 120,000 years ago. We were nomadic, wandering people who moved about from place to place, keeping mostly to ourselves and our small family groups. That we ultimately picked Mesopotamia to put down our early roots and begin developing a culture and larger society is attributed, in large part, to the location and abundance of resources around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
It is not hard to imagine what the earliest days in Mesopotamia might have been like for the first settlers there. They would surely have surveyed the area, finding water sources, food sources, and good locations to pitch camp; level ground and some degree of security from potential predators would likely have been considered critically important. It’s a safe bet they weren’t working from a rule book or set of laws they were required to follow. There would only have been order, cooperation, and the combined efforts of individuals and small groups of people working towards common goals.
Taking this one step further, consider the natural progression that surely took place all those centuries ago; once the initial flurry of activity to get settled was completed, they would have eventually progressed to the point of having to attend to the more mundane tasks of further securing supplies and resources to sustain the larger group.
The community would have divvied up assignments and done so based on individual merit, competence, and capability as they had displayed these characteristics in the initial stages of building the encampment. Likely, as well, no one got a “free ride” and, in accordance with the primal Darwinian imperative, through natural selection, only the strongest were allowed to survive, and only the merits of an individual’s character and contribution were used to determine who was allowed to stay and who was cast out and forced to survive on their own accord.
At the most Primal levels of our species, independent of our rank, role, or status in larger communities, in the context of that Darwinian imperative mentioned above, we are born, and we die, and during the time in between, in the name of survival, we labor to hone and refine our skills and abilities, in harmony with our environment and available resources, such that we have adequate shelter, sufficient sustenance, and successful reproduction in order to continue the species in the name of avoiding our own extinction.
Accordingly, we make adjustments along the way because we are driven to perfect our individual imperfections, moving ever forward towards improving our individual Human Condition. These things are the fundamentals of natural law and instinctive human behavior, and we do not pursue these imperatives at the direction of, or command from, any dynasty, empire, kingdom, or ancient republic.
Well over a millennia before the rise of Sargon, the earliest beginnings of faith and belief systems began to appear in Mesopotamia. Some argue this was the logical next step in the evolution of communal societies, and the studies and understandings reported by the likes of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Tullius Cicero, Thomas Aquinas, Hugo Grotius, St Augustine of Hippo, and countless others make a strong case that this is likely true.
It is important to distinguish between these philosophers and theologians and the earliest formations of communal faith and belief systems; in the beginning stages of this evolutionary step, the objects of prayer and sacrifice were pagan gods and idols. This makes sense, on a fundamental level, because so much of early civilized life would have been spent confronting many problems, both inter-personally and collectively, as they contended with the effects of nature on their efforts to survive. Asking for help from the Sun or the Moon or a star, or even the soil or the clouds, or making sacrifices of whatever type, hoping that their situations might improve in exchange, is a logical leap to make when all other efforts have failed to make a difference. It should be noted here that these sorts of polytheistic Faith systems continue around the world to this very day.
The next evolutionary step in faith systems would come with the rise of Abraham, four centuries after the reign of Sargon. Abraham is considered the first monotheist and eventual patriarch of both the Israelites (Hebrew people) and the Muslim faithful, and, later, the rise of Christianity. In subsequent sheets, there will be a discussion about what effect the belief in, and worship of, a higher power than Kings and governing systems had on communal systems, but the extent to which the ruling authority of men – presuming itself to be superior to the ruling authority of Natural Law began with Sargon and an in-depth review of that evolution must be presented first.
Although there is debate over the exact time our species began developing the written word, it is widely agreed that it started in the same general area of Mesopotamia where the first king arose. Interestingly, some suggest the earliest writing began a millennia before this period, but the historical record seems to generally agree that somewhere in the 2,000 BCE time frame, the first sets of laws began to be recorded. It isn’t much of a stretch to imagine that these early civilizations wrote a great many more things than just rules and laws, but the degree to which they are used to manipulate human behavior is worthy of deeper inspection.
From the first law ever written in human history, to the present day, laws (and the means and methods of enforcement) are used to manipulate human behavior. That may be uncomfortably direct to read, but it doesn’t change the reality of the Human experience; of the many characteristics that can be said about our species, our free will moves us to either conform to rules and laws or find creative ways to violate them, in selfish pursuits, inventing ever more creative ways to avoid punishment for violating them.
The historical record indicates that there were early laws on matters of faith and belief and that ” the worship of many gods was not only common but expected.” Contrasting this early intervention in the lives of people experiencing, for the first time, a ruling authority demanding of them behaviors that put them at odds with their understanding and lived experience in obedience to the tenets of Natural Law, it is easy to see that the earliest days of this tension between the Individual and the ruling Authority was already doomed to a fate of eternal conflict, and this continues playing out all around the world today.
The human race is made up of two types of people: those that lead (dominant) and those that follow (submissive). The unofficial third type, the “pragmatist,” generally applies to all of us, depending on the circumstances. Much the same can be said about every other species in the animal kingdom, wherever nature compels them to gather together in groups.
When Sargon came to power, many hundreds of years after Mesopotamia had been well established, the fundamental natural laws of human behavior and the instinctive exercise of individual free will to live independent, self-determinate lives began to erode, subjected to the rule of a monarchy. It is important to recognize that this dynamic between the governing and the governed continued unabated for more than three millennia before finally being challenged by the fledgling American Nation.
Rarely discussed in modern-day American public education with any significant emphasis is that the first of our citizens came ashore a century and a half before independence from the King was declared. In much the same way as the first Mesopotamians established a presence, foraging for food and water, building permanent sedentary communities, and giving birth to subsequent Generations that would inherit and carry forward their customs and traditions, America was built from the ground up in much the same way. In 1620, only 102 people came ashore in Plymouth, Massachusetts. By the time Independence was declared, 150 years after the early settlers arrived, the population had reached more than two and a half million people.
They built neighborhoods, towns, and cities and established 13 colonies stretching from New Hampshire to South Carolina that would eventually become States. They established systems of Commerce and trade and built successful Industries in fishing, fur trapping, farming, shipbuilding, textile manufacturing, and iron making.
They did not do these things by order of a King, they labored for themselves and each other. History has a long record of repeating itself, as it had been with the rise and fall of Sargon three and a half Millennia earlier; the unquenchable thirst for power through war and conquest by a King and his Parliament drove up an unsustainable debt that was put upon the colonies to repay. With the sugar tax in 1764, and the Stamp Act in 1765, England began its intervention in the lives and livelihoods of the colonists and began to exert increasing pressures that would, by the time of Thomas Paine’s arrival in America and the battles at Lexington and Concord, set into motion a declaration of Independence and a war fought to secure it.
In the introduction of Paine’s “Common Sense,” published in the spring of 1776, we are given words that are every bit as relevant in our modern-day struggle between the governing and the governed here in America, as well as the global conflict being waged by international elites to strip nation states around the world of their sovereignty, and rights to manage their own National affairs. He rightly points out here that all of Humankind is threatened by the efforts of a small number of rich and powerful elite few to impose Global management and control over the natural, inherent (God-given) rights of the entire global population:
“The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances hath, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all Lovers of Mankind are affected, and in the Event of which, their Affections are interested. The laying a Country desolate with Fire and Sword, declaring War against the natural rights of all Mankind, and extirpating the Defenders thereof from the Face of the Earth, is the Concern of every Man to whom Nature hath given the Power of feeling; of which Class, regardless of Party Censure, is the Author.”
As it relates to Paine’s mention of party and class, it is important to understand how these separations in a society evolved. By its very nature, the meaning of the word “govern” (“conduct the policy, actions, and affairs of (a state, organization, or people)”) is in direct conflict with the concept of “natural law,” which is defined as “a body of unchanging moral principles regarded as a basis for all human conduct.”
At our most primal level, we are born with two natural imperatives: survival and reproduction. Neither of these rely on the direction of others in order to be successful, yet once we began to gather together in large groups and organize ourselves into communities, there began to appear a system of ranking that separated us into those two earlier mentioned types of people, dominant and submissive. In the general evolution of a society, it’s natural next step in development would have been to establish a hierarchy that put one individual in charge who would then delegate various tasks to the most trusted members of the group to help that person lead.
In an ideal society, where each member, most especially the leader, equally shares a commitment to the happiness and well-being of the other members, these types of hierarchies serve the community well. Unfortunately, and there are more examples across the span of human history than can be counted, wherever leadership puts itself above others in the group, the entire system eventually collapses. Notably, it is almost always because of the ambitions, vanities and self-indulgences of the people in charge that social systems lose Collective cohesion and fall apart.
Food for thought:
“The relationship between a man’s benevolence and the exercise of his power over others resolves to an inverse proportion while the measures of his freedom and liberty are tied, exponentially, to the depths of his humility and Grace.”
From the earliest days of the first Kings, the separation between the leadership of a community and the membership of that community evolved over time to become the accepted way of life. It didn’t happen immediately, and if Sargon’s historical records are to be believed, there were plenty of rebellions and revolts. But if history and natural law teach us anything, it only takes a generation or two for even the worst of things to be considered “just the way things are.” Forced to be pragmatic in the name of their own survival, societies have no other choice than to simply settle into their fate and make the most of what they are forced to live with. This is where the previously mentioned”pragmatist” comes in, and Paine even mentioned it in his pamphlet: “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.” Further, this sentiment found its way into the final version of the Declaration of Independence with this observation: “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
Between those days in history and our present time, there have been many different systems of governance that have been tried, many of which ultimately failed. Of the few that remain, several in particular deserve further inspection because hybrids of these are being tested around the world (now 8 billion strong) in order to install a global system of governance run by a small number of rich and powerful elite classes with designs to manage and control every aspect of the lives of the entire human race.
Political systems date back to at least 2000 BCE and, for as uniquely different as some of them have been, all of them have one characteristic in common: bending the free will of the governed to the ambitions of the governing. In the ancient historical periods of humankind, governing systems (political) and economic systems were effectively interconnected and used collectively to manage and control the activities and quality of life of the citizenry. Free Ancient economics, not constrained by monarchies, were local, with no fealty to any political systems; trade took place between individuals, up close and personal.
In the modern era, however, distinctions between economic systems (Capitalism and Socialism/ Communism) and governing (political) systems began to emerge. Capitalism, as we understand it in modern terms, did not begin until the 16th century, and Socialist/ Communist economic systems appeared roughly 3 centuries later. While these economic systems directly influenced the political systems and methods of control over the populations of Nations using them, their effects and methods of enforcement couldn’t be any more different.
Remember, as mentioned earlier, laws (and their enforcement) are used to manipulate human behavior. As capitalist and socialist economic systems rose to prominence, allowing the tremendous worldwide opportunity for power and wealth accumulation and access to previously unavailable international markets, these economic systems brought with them a wealth and power gap between the governing and the governed that has rigged the game against everyday citizens in every nation-state on the planet. Laws written to facilitate this expansion of economic opportunity did what laws always do; they drove the behavior of those already possessing wealth to find creative ways to accumulate more while making sure the competition would never have a fighting chance.
Interestingly, Capitalist societies use laws against competition and each other within their local governing system to expand their wealth. The Socialist societies used the laws against their own people, confiscating all the wealth and redistributing it to the people however they saw fit. In the several centuries since these systems (communist economics are newer, but is effectively a hybrid of the other two), advancements in technology have completely re-shaped the world, every nation and culture, and all but eliminated the concept of a “sovereign individual” and any respect for, or value placed in, the lives of most of the 8 billion of the rest of us. We have become effectively expendable.
With almost no exception, beginning with Sargon of Akkad and continuing across the span of nearly four millennia, countless dynasties, empires, kingdoms, and ancient republics have risen and fallen. Each of these societies and civil constructs was grounded in the idea that human behavior had to be managed and constrained according to the laws and rules handed down to the citizenry, without their consent, from the highest levels of the ruling authority.
The reality of the Human experience in today’s global economic systems tells us there is a microscopically small number of dominant people in possession of the vast majority of global power and wealth that have successfully forced the overwhelming larger number of pragmatic people into a corner. Most of us, willing to comply in deference to the natural laws of survival-enhancing behavior, are being forced into submission.
As noted earlier, our species is inherently equipped to either conform to rules and laws (written or natural) or seek out creative ways to violate them in selfish pursuits, inventing ever more creative ways to avoid punishment for violating them. Our free will, in concert with our conscience, determines the path we choose and begs the question each of us must answer: Given all the ways that the power of others is being exercised over your life and your natural rights, do you have any freedom left to exercise the free will you were born with?
Assuming that the answer is no, consider that, for all that has been discussed thus far about laws, there is also the governing dynamic(s) that live in those places where there is no law written that prevents certain types of behaviors and activities, and it can be said that the worst of things happen to us wherever the absence of a law, or a calculated unwillingness to enforce an existing one, drives the worst among us to do the worst of things to us.
For all that has been said so far, there is a much stealthier dynamic taking place throughout every governing system around the world, operating just under the radar and out of sight of the rank-and-file citizenry. This dynamic is referred to as the “third rail” of politics, which Britannica tells us is “a difficult issue that politicians try to avoid talking about” and is something worthy of much closer inspection.
Much of the damage being done to the individual rights of citizens, in America and around the world, is being inflicted by this so-called third rail, which, by its very nature, is incredibly difficult to quantify given that the people possessing the highest levels of power are the ones least interested in discussing it. It’s especially difficult to find out very much about this in the larger world outside the United States, but much of what we know about these extra-governmental systems and activities taking place within our borders makes it easy enough to project how these things likely operate outside of them.
Visualize, if you will, the United States as an org chart in a major corporation; there are three boxes on the top row, each equal in power but separate from the other two. The Box on the left judges the constitutionality of laws, the Box on the right writes the law, and the box in the middle abides by the law to conduct the business of the country like a CEO. Each of these boxes has its own org chart underneath them, and each of them attends to its own affairs, independent of the others, but is required to collaborate so that each of them can function most effectively for the greater good of the people.
This construct was the intention, at least, when our constitution was ratified. Two and a half centuries later, however, there has evolved a second row which each box in the top row understands, with a wink and nod to each other, can be made available to them under the right set of circumstances. With this image in mind, consider the second row to be that third rail and consider, as well, the sorts of things that can live there, where few rules exist, and the freedom those entities have with very little oversight or constraint.
It is impossible to compile a comprehensive list of every organization that operates on the third rail; in some cases, standalone operations work inside a single “bubble” or area of focus, such as climate, abortion, gender, migration, or even tobacco and Pharma, just to give you an idea.
The activities of these types of organizations are not managed by the government. They do not speak on behalf of the government, nor are they subject to Congressional oversight, and this is also true of corporate media, big tech, social media, misinformation/ disinformation/ malinformation activists, professional protest groups such as BLM, Antifa, and the recent rise of the anti-Israel movement along with the countless so-called “election integrity” operations out there today claiming they are fighting to save democracy.
The lobbyist industry functions under a somewhat more restrictive set of rules, as do nonprofits and NGOs, but some of these are eligible for grants and donations from taxpayers, whether they know it or not. Separate but equally difficult to quantify is the so-called “dark money” that is being passed around outside of public purview, said by some sources that can’t be fully proven to be in the billions of dollars.
Google tells us that dark money is “funds raised for the purpose of influencing elections by nonprofit organizations that are not required to disclose the identities of their donors.” Knowing this takes place under the radar and out of public purview, this money is shuffled around to many of the other activities and organizations mentioned above where it cannot be monitored. There is another, far more Insidious dynamic taking place behind the scenes in the United States, as well as all around the rest of the world, that should be taken seriously for the threat it poses to all of humanity in what is supposed to be a world of fairness, justice, respect for human rights, and the fundamental principles of natural law.
All around the world, but especially in the United States, wealthy actors are financially involved in sowing chaos and—directly or indirectly—investing dollars to incentivize disruption in the social order on the streets. As this is being done, some of them are investing their wealth (and profiting from it) in betting against the US dollar (the current but rapidly deteriorating International standard for currency).
Simultaneously, they are donating money to help elect Mayors, Prosecutors, Congressional members, activist Judges, and others with power over the rank-and-file citizens, each turning a blind eye to the effects of increased volumes of crime, violence, and property damage, as they look on in silence.
All of this activity only serves to facilitate a more rapid decline of the American Nation, shredding its already tattered social fabric, and threatens a total collapse of its systems of governance, laws, law enforcement, and the general well-being of the American population.
The idea of outside actors and foreign Nations working to destroy their enemies by any means necessary is nothing new over the course of humankind’s history; war and Conquest, however much these traits might be anathema to the fundamental tenants of Natural Law, are nonetheless what our species got for its trouble when it took a knee at the feet of Kings and governing systems.
To be clear, the purpose of this pamphlet is not to judge the merits of any activities that might be contributing to the conflict between the governing and the governed rather, the purpose here is to inform, and with that in mind, let us consider just how much these activities are widening the gap between the government and the people that elected them into office.
If you were to take the earlier mentioned org chart, showing one line at the top with three boxes and a line below that showing the third rail, it would be fair and accurate to pencil in a third line at the bottom, which would represent the American people. If Thomas Paine were alive today, it’s not much of a stretch to assume he would be irate that we had won a war for our independence in his time only to see the modern generation bending a knee to a modern American monarchy and Parliament, one every bit as systemically corrupt as the one he encouraged us to reject in early 1776.
America won her independence from England a little more than seven years after American citizens demanded it of the king and his Parliament. Some sources indicate that 4,435 Americans were killed, and historical records indicate that the help of Spain and France was a major factor in our ultimate victory. It would take five years of debate and compromise before our current constitution was finally ratified into the law of the land, and the governing system of America is technically considered a “Constitutional Federal Republic.”
Of the many things that informed the five-year debate over the details of what the Constitution should include, the framers took into consideration the best and the worst of the kingdoms, dynasties, empires, and republics that had come before them throughout the history of mankind. They brought forward those things that had worked in the past. They worked to prevent those things that had failed at the expense of the citizenry, intending to protect future generations from befalling the same fate. They worked, most of all, at ensuring the things that had gone into the “ground up” construction that had stood America up on her feet by the settlers between 1620 and 1776 were incorporated and enshrined.
It should be noted that a great deal of public debate occurred over the five years it took to write and get ratified the Constitution that continues to Define how the American Nation operates. Among these is a very well-known set of 85 Essays written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, and each of these is worthy of greater study. A quote from Federalist No. 6, in the context of this publication, is especially prescient because despite its having been said nearly two and a half centuries ago, every word of this perfectly describes the behavior and motivations of our modern-day ruling class not only here in America but around the world and specifically within the confines of the global governing system slowly being implemented in every corner of the globe:
“Is it not (we may ask these projectors in politics) the true interest of all nations to cultivate the same benevolent and philosophic spirit? If this be their true interest, have they in fact pursued it? Has it not, on the contrary, invariably been found that momentary passions, and immediate interest, have a more active and imperious control over human conduct than general or remote considerations of policy, utility or justice? Have republics in practice been less addicted to war than monarchies? Are not the former administered by MEN as well as the latter? Are there not aversions, predilections, rivalships, and desires of unjust acquisitions, that affect nations as well as kings? Are not popular assemblies frequently subject to the impulses of rage, resentment, jealousy, avarice, and of other irregular and violent propensities? Is it not well known that their determinations are often governed by a few individuals in whom they place confidence, and are, of course, liable to be tinctured by the passions and views of those individuals? Has commerce hitherto done anything more than change the objects of war? Is not the love of wealth as domineering and enterprising a passion as that of power or glory? Have there not been as many wars founded upon commercial motives since that has become the prevailing system of nations, as were before occasioned by the cupidity of territory or dominion? Has not the spirit of commerce, in many instances, administered new incentives to the appetite, both for the one and for the other? Let experience, the least fallible guide of human opinions, be appealed to for an answer to these inquiries.”
It was Thomas Paine who asked the Common man in Common Sense to consider what they had endured under a tyrannical King and Parliament, and ask themselves whether they were willing to consider making a change so that subsequent Generations might be free to live in peace with one another when he said this:
“Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform, and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expence and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.”
This passage inspired the use of the term “pragmatist” at the beginning of this section because it best describes what becomes of us wherever we are forced out of our freedom in the pursuit of individual happiness and self-determination and dragged into a governing system demanding that we sacrifice pieces of ourselves in the name of some obscure greater good. As discussed, this is anathema to natural law, human nature, and the free will inherent in our species from birth across hundreds of thousands of years of existence.
A covenant was struck between the governing and the governed in America on June 21, 1788. A handshake was exchanged that promised the government would derive its power from the consent of the governed and that by sworn oath, the governing would uphold and defend the mutually agreed-upon Constitution, which would be held as the sole arbiter of any dispute between them.
No fair-minded argument can be made in the modern era that this Covenant is any longer respected, and neither is it being upheld and defended in good faith. Yet even as this assertion is made, there is plenty of faults and blame to go around; given the current state of the government we must contend with (once promised to be of, by, and for the people), it is clear that since we vote (or don’t) for the government we get. This makes clear that the bulk of our problems are ultimately of our own nature.
Energy would be well spent looking inward, reflecting on the promise of the Constitution being the arbiter of our differences and the extent to which many of our problems with the current governing system in particular and general society more broadly can only be resolved through our own serious effort here at home to repair the maladministration we have endured from our ruling classes, along with what’s coming at us on a global scale.
