March 15, 2016
Politicians profit from a mythology proven wrong by science. Retweet
We’re about to name the biggest myth of all — the idea that someone must have coercive control over society. Nearly everyone believe this idea, but it’s wrong.
There are many ways we can know it’s wrong, if we simply think about it…
Who is in control of the language we speak — English? Who designed it? The answer is no one.
Who decides how much food should be imported to your city each week? The answer is no one. Those decisions are made by many people in a decentralized way, without coercion or coordination. In fact, all attempts to direct food distribution in a centralized and coerced way have resulted in mass starvation (see the Soviet Union, Mao’s China, and now Venezuela).
We must help people to see this truth — society needs no overall ruler in order to work. The evidence is all around us. But two bits of evidence are especially compelling. They show us that…
- No one is qualified to give orders
- No one is qualified to follow orders
This evidence comes from two of the most famous and compelling scientific experiments ever conducted. Can you name them? Can you explain what they mean? Our new Mental Lever does that. Please check it out…
Should anyone have coercive authority over others?
By Perry Willis and Jim Babka
We’re looking to build a “libertarian society.” The first stage of our plan is to locate 100,000 libertarians to help us spread the Zero Aggression message to a much wider audience. In our most recent count, the new Zero Aggression Project has 1,760 (+677) engaging with this material. You can help increase this number and have a large marginal impact in this launching stage simply by…
- While reading Should anyone have coercive authority over others?, locate the gold box (on the right on your PC, below the comments on your phone). Use the social networking tools, found in that gold box, to share this Mental Lever with others.
- Forward this email to two friends who are libertarians or libertarian-leaning, encouraging them to join you in subscribing. Literally, ask them to sign-up! Asking is that important!
- Like & Share this post from Facebook.
- The Zero Aggression Project needs to raise merely $4,272 in March to cover its monthly budget. Contributions can be tax-deductible, if you itemize.
Re: “mythology proven wrong by science.” that ‘no one is qualified to rule or obey’
“This evidence” is clearly a reference to (without directly referencing) the Stanley Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments as if they are proof positive of the main premise.
Have you actually delved into these experiments? If you have I am confident that you might identify that theses experiments are NOT proof positive of the claims made in the article. I do not say this as a challenge you but rather an inquiry since my experience is that very few people have ever thought critically about these and other famous behavior/social experiments.
A) The Stanley Milgram experiment was not simply one experiment and the other similar experiments that Milgram ran got very different results.
B) The Stanford Prison experiments was repeated in at least one other country and also got different results.
Few people question or realize that both of these experiments were with subjects that were already infected with the ‘follow authority unquestioningly’ mental virus, especially considering that almost all had been through 16,000+ hours in the government indoctrination system (aka Public School System)
This Podcasts delves into VERY different culture that has not been infected by our many ‘Western Civilization’ mental/social viruses
http://thehumanist.com/multimedia/podcast/humanist-hour-183-dr-dan-everett-dont-sleep-snakes
I am confident that if these two experiments were conducted on the Pirahã people we would see dramatically different results.
Hi JD. Thanks for your comments. If you go look at the Mental Lever article this blog post is promoting you will see that we link to articles that discuss both experiments and the various results they have generated. Thanks for the link you provided. I will look at it. We have no quarrel with the idea that people have been infected with an “obey authority” meme, and that the results of these experiments might differ if that meme was rejected. Indeed, it is part of our mission to persuade people to reject that meme. Of course, achieving success with that mission would also mean that coercive authority itself would also be rejected. Thanks again for your comment.