From the White-PillBox: Part 25
Anarchists often view their fellow man harshly. We can do better.
This article departs a bit from the general theme of these essays, which typically finds White Pills in current trends. This installment suggests a White Pill may reside within ourselves. If we examine some of our own common behaviors, we may be able to improve how we communicate with the uninitiated.
There is no shortage of reasons anarchists can be frustrated with the common man 1. Right in front of people’s eyes are abundant examples of how intrusive and destructive the State is. Their lives are negatively impacted by the effects of taxes, inflation, public education, the health care system, cultural battles, crime, war and so on.
To the red-pilled, in the face of these problems the average person seems utterly blind to their cause, quickly distracted by each new crisis, and easily duped into conforming to the whims of the State.
It is that much more frustrating because as anarchists, we have such clarity of the true nature of the State. The simple truths of the liberty perspective are so obvious that failing to see them seems to be an intellectual defect, even a moral one.
But we should not be tempted into making such harsh judgements of our fellow men.
It is first of all unfair to others to make sweeping generalizations. But it also hurts ourselves. By taking a Black Pill perspective, we are overlooking the reality of what is actually happening in the minds of others, as well as the overall dynamics at work. We undermine our own ability to effectively promote liberty.
The view that we are “wired” for government
A popular notion claims that humans support government because we evolved that way. The belief holds that coercive rulers (tribal leaders, kings, states) have been with us since recorded history, and therefore we have a hard-wired propensity to want government. Or, at minimum, a biological tendency to follow a leader.
This idea commits the common fallacy of confusing correlation with causation. It observes natural selection in all species (including man); it observes some form of government at almost all stages of recorded history; it concludes that a genetic component causes the persistent tendency for rulers.
Instead, several factors far better explain this outcome.
A clearer picture of our evolution and nature
If there’s anything “wired” into us, it is accepting a status quo without much challenge.
This is likely a “safety” bias within us. In our evolutionary past, success needed to be made routine. For example, finding places that were safe and productive; bonding with others socially; identifying successful methods of living. These were all ways of giving permanence to success.
This would suggest evolutionary pressure to “keep good things going”. Essentially, this describes tradition.
Tradition
If our evolution favored traditions, it may explain why they tend to be revered, unquestioned, and defended.
But as anarchists, we are acutely aware of the single worst tradition (since it gives rise to so many tangential evil ones). Namely, the tradition of human rulers. But this is not an evolutionary bias toward government as such; it is merely an unfortunate outcome of the general bias toward tradition.
Mystic leaders
Add to this the fact that early man was primitive even in his reasoning skills. His knowledge of the world was so limited that it is understandable he could only explain the universe mystically.
It follows that some men would convince themselves and others that they commanded supernatural forces. It seems plausible that most men would defer to these people as mystical authorities.
The tradition of authoritarianism was likely all but inevitable.
Our stateless pre-history
The idea that we seek government due to an evolutionary bias has another flaw. It assumes this bias developed over the course of our evolution.
Yet it unscientifically disregards most of that evolution.
Humans started as nomadic hunter-gatherers. This lasted hundreds of thousands of years. Territory and property only became relevant with domestication and agriculture, a mere 12,000 years ago 2. Moreover, primitive states emerged only about five to six thousand years ago.
The “hard-wired government idea” ignores the fact that the overwhelming majority of human history was stateless. Since governments only appeared in our recent history, evolutionary forces could not have had time to work 3.
Evolution cannot claim credit for our history of human rulers.
And following a leader?
This is different from submitting to a coercive ruler. True leadership is a quality that brings value and often inspires others. In a healthy culture leadership is voluntarily offered, and voluntarily accepted. If our history had any role in our tendency to be drawn to leaders, it was likely part of the emergence of the division of labor. We recognized that others excelled at particular tasks. We deferred to their skills so that we could focus on our own best skills. This dynamic would clearly have had a strong selection preference for skills of all sort, including leadership.
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In a nutshell, the propensity for humans to tolerate governments is not a biological tendency. At best, it has the same status as any tradition: an unquestioned social habit persisting on inertia.
The view that people are stupid
There is an obvious arrogance in this claim. We do not observe the inner minds and hearts of others. We can only observe their actions. At best we see only their general collective behavior 4. And even then, this is limited to their public behavior. We know nothing of most people’s private lives, which comprise the vast majority of their life experiences.
In any case, the attack on their intellect is generally in the context of people’s political opinions. But we show a true lack of understanding when we do this. We often forget the majority of humans are indoctrinated into statism. They were born into, and remain trapped in a mental cage. Indoctrination is not freely chosen; when we ridicule them, it is not unlike victim-blaming.
In fairness we should realize we are not all that different. Each of us would like to think that had we lived in the 1840’s, we would have been among the vanishingly small minority of abolitionists. But we should be honest enough to admit we might not have been.
We may be judging our past selves
Virtually all anarchists were not born that way. We started out as indoctrinated statists. We said and did essentially the same things most people still say and do. We probably voted, conformed, repeated the propaganda, called for better leaders, picked political sides, etc.
We were there.
Perhaps we can deal with our frustration with our fellow man by looking in the mirror. Our past selves did not reason sufficiently, or use enough common sense. We were blind because we were taught to cover our eyes and obey. We wish our old selves would have came out of the cult of statism sooner. But we were as duped as anyone.
That’s where others are now.
It can keep us grounded if we remember that we came out of it with the help of someone else. Few of us did it by ourselves.
The resulting White Pills
Understanding brings patience
We were once statists. Among all the methods that might have helped persuade us to wake up, it is unlikely that harsh criticism and ridicule was among them.
This principle does not change once we are red-pilled. By seeing our former selves in others, we can add patience to our toolbox.
Gaining perspective on the common man’s actual role in the freedom evolution.
The march toward a free society is undoubtedly a numbers game: the question of how many must understand the importance of self-ownership and private property; and how many must be willing to disregard or disobey the State.
Here lies the apparent paradox: at least some significant number of people would need to defy or disregard the State; yet the average person follows the status quo. They could never be expected to study and grasp the principles of freedom.
This is where two groups come into play: the remnant, and influencers.
The remnant
Albert J. Nock published an article in 1936 called “Isaiah's Job”. It makes the above point about the majority of people. It refers to the rest as the “remnant”. Quoting:
The Remnant are those who by force of intellect are able to apprehend these principles, and by force of character are able, at least measurably, to cleave to them. The masses are those who are unable to do either.
In our context, the remnant describes those who comprehend the ideas of freedom and remember them through the difficult times. When the time is ripe, the ideas are not lost.
Influencers
An influencer is any person who can successfully persuade others. It is always a relatively small minority, though highly persuasive to the majority 5. The term is popular today in the social media world, but is just as important everywhere else.
How do we fit in?
As anarchists we are part of the remnant. We want to see a free society in our lifetimes. But if it takes longer, we carry the ideas forward to keep them alive. As far as the majority is concerned, so long as they remain indoctrinated as statists they cannot be useful in preserving these ideas.
On the other hand, few anarchists are influencers. As it is, all influencers are a small minority of the general population; anarchist influencers are but a fraction of those.
But the White Pill is this: rather than be influencers, it is far more likely we may influence an influencer.
This can be a great source of motivation for us to communicate loudly and often. We can never know who among our audience will be inspired by just the right trigger. We don’t know their age; we don’t know their values; we don’t know their strengths or struggles. But someone, somewhere, sometime may hear something we say, and experience their own red pill moment.
And if they are (or become) an influencer, our influence on them would have played a key part in persuading countless others.
More of the White Pill
The following thoughts provide even more perspective. They allow us to unburden ourselves of unproductive and unnecessary perceptions about the common man.
The idea the public must be taught freedom principles
They don’t…any more than they need to be taught how to build a cell phone. They are perfectly capable of making use of a technology without understanding its principles.
It is sufficient for people to have the choices available. In our modern world people are choosing among an ever growing universe of options. We can take heart that their time, being limited, will be spent less in the non-productive political world. This is a form of disregarding of the State…into irrelevance.
Once we reach a free society, the common man will play little part in sustaining it intellectually or technologically. No matter: we should be happy for the more fulfilled and promising lives they will lead, and not begrudge their good fortune in being born into a free world.
It’s all talk
The common man can actually have any opinion he wants. It is what a person can put into physical action that counts. Many people may hold strong political opinions, but very few act. The most they do in fact, is vote. And (at least in general), voting makes little difference in the grand scheme of things.
And in a free society, they won’t even be able to vote.
Their skin is thickening
This is not to say people are abandoning statism. But they are becoming more immune to the fear attempts of the latest hysterias or movements. COVID was an exception, but it took a health scare to do it (though ironically the cause of freedom was aided by the overreaction). Observe the crises being pushed as of this writing (monkeypox, climate, the Russian war, etc.): they are all sold as if they are world-ending, all in their own way. But this has been true of all the scares we’ve experienced in our lifetimes. Clearly their level of broad support is shrinking (which is one reason we are seeing more of them…the State is getting desperate).
Conclusion
We can improve our perspective of the majority of our fellow men, as they struggle in the fog of statism.
A future essay in this series will provide some suggestions on how we can White Pill ourselves. But as a preview, we can ponder this:
On the one hand, think of the accomplishments of people, in terms of their survival over a difficult and brutal history, their artistic and technical achievements; the personal happiness they can and do create.
On the other hand, think about the track record of the State.
It is clear which of these two better deserve our good will.
I am of course referring to the majority, who have not yet overcome their indoctrination of the legitimacy of the State.
With agriculture and domestication, men stopped being nomadic, and instead settled in one place. This is significant because any ruling class lives off others. As a practical matter this only works within a fixed territory with a large enough population, producing enough excess to sustain the ruling class. This is not possible for hunter gatherers, who would have likely been led by no more than clan leaders, family elders, etc.
This is why organized ruling classes could not have formed any sooner than the emergence of agriculture and domestication.
Keep in mind this argument is used to counter the claim that evolution explains the persistence of government. But the point also works in the parallel discussion of whether a stateless society is even possible. Man survived many tens of thousand of years without a state, and this includes much of his history after agriculture and domestication. While a modern stateless society would clearly provide a stronger argument, our stateless history does prove one thing: our species can survive without a State, since we did exactly that for most of our history.
It is true we are often witness to specific acts that are misguided or egregious. This is when we tend use the phrase “people are so stupid”. We might want to catch ourselves in these moments, as we are drawing a stereotype from one person’s behavior. Such generalizations are the last thing one might expect from individualists.
This is not confined to the freedom movement. The course of history itself is largely defined by those who steered and defined public opinion.