23 POLITICS and LAW
To begin this subject of politics and law, it is necessary to see that the Machine cannot be made subservient to humanity whilst automatic reality exists, yet also to see that nowadays especially humanity will not submit to total dictatorship of the Machine. But when we talk of democratic freedom we are looking through conditioned eyes at a relative freedom. The fact is that we are first of all subject to automatic lore, on the principles of which the Machine is founded. The law has chiefly reflected that lore but, where the latter has conflicted too obviously and painfully with human morality, politics has changed the law in the human interest. In many ways domestic life is on average less brutal than it was, but in very few respects does our reality serve our true interests. We do not normally perceive this because we are so used to being harnessed to the automaton as to believe politics to act freely in our general interests. The law is essentially much less protective of us than it is a vital protective of the innumerable practices and institutions of the Machine, in a reality where automatic interests are to be preferred.
The origin of politics was public unrest, in the days when the Machine was in its infancy, and kings, rather than the automaton - the self-acting mechanism of the competitive pecking order and money economy - appeared to be in supreme command. The ruling minority could not safely remain so without the implicit consent of the majority, and the latter were becoming ever more aware that they were unnecessarily oppressed and exploited. But it was the nature of kings, as it was and is the nature of the underlying automaton, to oppress and exploit its human units of labour. So conflict was inevitable, because it is in the nature of the human mind, especially when it suffers injustice, to grow in awareness. As long as kings were obstinate rebellion was the majority's only remedy. But rebellion did not suit authority; it threatened its position and ruined its affairs. Neither did rebellion suit the majority, for it brought hardship and rarely succeeded because the authorities had the power, the weaponry, and held the purse strings. Even when it did succeed, the outcome was always a new ruling minority to replace the old, with little real change.
But the rise of unrest and the growth of awareness were unstoppable. Neither the ruling minority nor the great majority could defeat the other, for there has to be a place for each in the Machine. So, short of very radical change, the only possible outcome was for the former gradually to give away its power to the latter, whilst the automaton retained, and in fact increased, its power over both. This was a continuing compromise of which politics became the instrument. Politics, government and the human majority are distinctive labels applied to separate and unequal groups of humans representing humanity at large in different and inappropriate ways, because all actually represent the conflicting principles of the automaton.
It is important to realise this - that politics is not concerned with true morality; with the real fundamental interests of humanity. The political institution has already sold out these vital human concerns to the Machine, which was founded and formed by, and continues to rule by, the automaton. Politics represents the struggle for power - an automatic invention - amongst different authorities, financial interests, ideologies, cultural groups, ambitious individuals and adventurous ideas. Each of these seeks a comparatively small part of the much greater power which existing reality exerts on us and which should not humantruly exist.
So politics does not represent true humanity but those facets of human being which are in service to the automaton, and their relationships with the Machine which serves the same master. Therefore politics is a compromise between our personal, but automated, interests and the impersonal self-interest of the Machine. Our outer shells have already compromised our inner true morality, or overruled it altogether. This is because there is no place in the Machine for purely human moral matters. It follows that truly moral objectives cannot be pursued with success politically - they would not be accepted as realistic - and it further follows that for the same reason such objectives are not easily pursued by any other normal means. As long as the present reality continues politics may not challenge the Machine, because it is party to the Machine, and therefore may not truly serve humanity.
The law is said to be the rock on which 'democratic' society rests. It does recognise certain human rights, but does so in the context of automatic reality, whilst you and I are now trying to judge this false context from outside. It should be obvious that the law does not uphold fundamental human interests. It is not a full positive guide to humantrue moral behaviour. It is an institution, of the Machine, which presumes, with realistic reason, that the automaton is our positive motivation and guide and therefore that negative inhibition is the proper function of the law, to keep the positive instinctive drives from reaching extremes. We take profitable advantage of our fellow-humans as a matter of course, not because the law directs, but usually in ways which the law does not prohibit. When we do it in unusual ways, which the law does prohibit, we are said to commit crime. Neither law nor politics are concerned with humantruly right practices so much as reconciled to wrong. They embrace a standard of morality which has a high tolerance of inhumanity, so that wrong practices are given wide scope and brought to a stop only when a point is reached where the dulled public conscience cannot but awaken in protest.
Politics is also an institution of the Machine, allied to governing authority and the existing concepts of reality rather than to people and their inner morality. Were this not so, politicians, honestly doing what they are supposed to do, would be bound to turn against the Machine. We the people accept this as inevitable, just as we accept automatic reality. We have scant respect for politicians but believe politics to be a game they have to play and we have to depend on. We do not expect it to have a humane bias because we innately know that we do not have control of our lives. We expect politics to be in a continual state of confused argument because experience has shown that agreed consensus is impossible in this competitive reality. The scene of this reality is set against an automatic backcloth which shows human moral aspirations as at best impractical and at worst naive. In a 'democracy' it is possible to say that affairs are ruled by majority opinion, but this is not real human opinion. It is that which the majority have selected from a number of automatic options because there are no better ones particularly no humantrue options - to choose from. I am not saying that we do this knowingly, and it may be that we feel we are doing the right thing. I am saying that we would know in our heads, and so truly feel, what was right were the opportunity to make the truly right choice presented.
Automatic reality sometimes imposes moral blackmail, for instance in wartime when the individual is faced with the easy conventional choice of military service or the painful choice of pacifism. Since to kill is clearly contrary to human morality, which governments are supposed to represent, the choice of peace should not be left to courageous individuals but ought to have been made already by governments. But the Machine chooses otherwise, and the law reflects the contradictory compromise of politics by forbidding killing on an individual level, calling it murder, but permitting it at the national level, calling it patriotic duty. By the time the individual is faced with this choice, which the law takes the right to impose, war is already a fact, and a matter of life or death. By this time his or her country has declared its cause right, and its enemy's cause wrong. But the enemy has done the same, and both cannot be right. If all individuals on all sides were to choose peace there could be no war, and that would be morally right. It is clear that the true morality of the individual is not reflected in world affairs. Instead the Machine is normally able, when it wishes, to impose its amorality or immorality on humanity with the help, or without the hindrance, of politics and law.
It has been pointed out in the last chapter how we tacitly concede that humanity cannot win its battle with the Machine. We salve our consciences by making a show of humanity, but actually always bow down to automatic authority in the end. Politics facilitates both the atonement and the obeisance. In Germany it allowed Hitler to rise to power despite moral objections because the majority of the people stood to benefit in many ways. In other countries which opposed Hitler, moral objections were politically sustained once the survival of their ideologies and institutions and very lives came under threat. Hitler's new order contained nothing which clashed with the principles of automatic reality. It would have replaced free international competition with domination by one 'master race', but by removing conflict and gearing all effort to its own autoprogressive objectives, in the interests of its own version of the money economy, and by cutting out all purely human morality which got in its way, it would have served the automaton well. The objections to Naziism were the conscientious objections of intellect to the Nazis' abhorrent, excessive inhumanities. Were that intellect now truly fulfilled it would be in opposition to all immoralities, old and new, great or small, together with the dominant powers of the Machine and its human authorities which cause them and the weak compromises of national and international politics which allow them, now as then.
So-called civilised humans have always hankered vaguely after meaningful change. Although great changes have taken place we still hanker, because we have always failed to recognise the source of our dissatisfaction as the false basis of our society. The Machine offers alternative satisfactions, of course, in varying degrees - from lavish for the highly privileged, who will not do with less, to meagre for the underprivileged, who continually demand more. Politics has contrived, by way of compromise and diplomatic intrigue, to give way to each side in turn so that the imbalance remains. As a result humanity is generally reconciled and adjusted to an overall framework which depends and thrives on these conflicting aims and interests. The whole of our history is virtually irrelevant to us because its consecutive events have either been caused by the automaton or related to these contrivances. This does not imply that no political struggle has been well-intended and partially successful, but that politics is now more a means of evading than tackling the important questions and problems, and the Machine offers little but automatic meaning and autoprogressive change. The Norman conquest, for example, established law and order in England to replace barbarism, but it was simply a more organised form of the same old governing recipe. In China, Confucius tried to stabilise society by having all ranks respect, value and be content with their own status and that of all others - unsuccessfully, because it was an attempt to reconcile people to the unacceptable.
We have managed, by way of those struggles of humanity against the Machine which politics has taken up, to humanise society in many respects, yet the state of the world is no better, and probably worse than ever it was. This is because politics has also acceded to automatic demands which are against the interest of humanity - the humane advances have been made at the expense of further advancing the automaton. Democracy is preferable to human dictatorship, but is only one step removed since we are dictated to by the Machine. We imagine ourselves free when our differences are represented by two or more political parties locked in competitive conflict. Real freedom will have been won when there are no differences between us or the principles by which we live - when we have agreed on one and the same humantrue constitution of society. We have continual political argument because our society is a competition between different interests. The argument is broadly divided into attitudes, represented by opposing parties of Right and Left. The Right favours increased domination of humanity by the Machine, and gets its main support from persons who personally benefit from automatic reality, or hope to do so. The Left favours increased influence over the Machine by humanity, and gets its support from moralists and people who are deprived by automatic reality. At its best the struggle between Right and Left reflects that between the Machine and our true humanity. At its worst it is merely a battle between the privileged, who want to retain or add to their advantages, and the underprivileged, who want to grab the rewards for themselves.
Therefore politics is an obstacle to humantrue realisation because it debars pure reason and true morality, yet it is the only recognised forum where questions and problems can be discussed with any hope of resolution within the present framework. Our humantrue values are kept private. Publicly, automatic values apply. Individually we would not kill a rival or let a neighbour starve, but collectively we do both. Politics exists because we are divided and cannot agree, because we are saddled with a reality which forbids agreement. Politics depends and thrives on disagreement, without which there would be no further need of it, and it would disappear. Were we all agreed on policy, it would only remain to discuss practicalities, and once they were resolved no more centralised debate would be needed. That politicians do not see this is because they are preoccupied by their profession as well as conditioned by the automatic reality of which that reality is an instituted part, and are governed by its internal codes and ongoing relationships. They are held in thrall by politics in the same way as we are all mesmerised by existing reality, because its affairs are closely related to automatic events - because all this is what is actually happening in the here and now. Politicians are not so much wrong as trying to make sense out of a situation that is wrong. Politics is a discipline which obliges politicians not to persist with a good but unpopular or unprofitable measure, but to substitute a less good, or bad, but popular or profitable measure, so perpetuating the moral lassitude and lack of true perception that can make good measures unpopular.
Law is also an obstacle to humantrue realisation in that to go against the norm can easily involve breaking the law. To oppose the norm openly and so strongly as to defeat it would be difficult without breaking the law because virtually all normal practices and established institutions are integral with the Machine and so protected by law. Besides, any aggressive lawbreaking is likely to involve human suffering and bring understandable retaliation. Under the money economy, especially when power is also wielded by some rigid ideology, the avenues of change prescribed by law are closed to highly radical reform unless overwhelmingly supported by majority will, but the majority are unlikely ever to hear of such proposed reforms through conventional channels, and the prosperous who might hear are unlikely to take notice and promote them. In countries where the majority are deprived and there is strong will for simple reform, the law is likely to be loaded against the majority, and against intellectual reformers, by a rich minority. These are some of the reasons why the Machine, though essentially anti-human, prevails over us even so.
When we think of the law we probably think of crime. It is part of our adjustment to automatic reality that there is bred into us an attitude to certain activity as crime. What is criminal activity? It is the unlawful counterpart of legitimate automatic competitive conflict, or the outcome of unbearable psychological pressure or of material deprivation. It is a loose, unofficial sort of institution, an occupation often handed down from generation to generation which is essentially no more dishonest in its aim to profit from the efforts of others than legitimate business. Generally speaking it offers a degree of independent adventure, excitement, danger, profit, and the opportunity to show initiative and daring on the part of individuals to whom the Machine would normally offer nothing of the kind. Crime at any level, whether it be a matter of sheer survival, of making an adequate living, or of misappropriating millions, always has an element of violence because it goes contrary to a norm that embodies the morality we pretend to, and because desperate criminals are implacably opposed by the law and its determined enforcers who attack the symptoms rather than attempt to prevent the deep causes of crime. To succeed in crime is necessary to most criminals because of the combination of their conditioning and circumstances. Strong opposition may well turn some of them to violence if that is necessary to their success.
There are many kinds of crime and many causes. Some psychopathic crimes are so horrific as to be unforgivable except on the grounds that the perpetrators are so mentally diseased that they must somehow be removed from society for its safety and in their own interests. These may be cases of genetic error about which nothing can be done, Everything could be done to eliminate psychological damage due to bad circumstances and inhuman treatment during upbringing. Crime is sometimes put down to low cortical tone - slowness to inhibit spontaneous violence - but in this connection we must take account of the strong influence of an amoral, and often unjust and immoral society towards violence on the part of the underprivileged, for they are the ones with most practical need to commit crime and least reason to obey the laws of an unsympathetic Machine which excludes them.
Crime could be said to be caused by the inculcation of minds with the instinctive drives of a false and inequitable existing reality, but not with the moral inhibitions of intelligence. Contributory factors could be the impairment of brain function due to serious brain damage at birth or from subsequent head injuries, or due to the direct or inherited effects of alcohol, tobacco, bad diet including excessive sugar, lead and other toxic pollution of water and air. Lawful national inhumanities can encourage or provoke criminal activity. The indifference of authority towards the underprivileged causes vandalism. Unemployment helps to cause civil disturbance. Governmental oppressive injustice provokes terrorism and such governments employ people to become torturers. International bigotry and rivalry has brought about military confrontation, involving the possible use of nuclear and chemical weapons. Such lunatic threats create a sense of insecurity and hopelessness which must contribute to drug and alcohol addiction which, in turn, lies behind much crime.
The fundamental cause of crime is a lawful reality that does not cater for true human morality. It is a reality that does not enable, allow or encourage us to be humantrue but gives us much cause, opportunity and necessity to behave amorally and immorally. This reality produces individuals, in diverse circumstances and suffering from all kinds of mental conditioning and damage, who are allowed the right to their opinions but are made responsible for their actions according to the fixed laws of a society which neither represents, nor is responsible to, their inner values.
So crime is that activity which goes contrary to law, but viewing it without the normal bias we can see that the law is not necessarily moral. For example take two persons, one with money the other without. Both would like a radio. The first goes into a shop and buys it. The second steals it. Now what is the difference between the two cases? Only the difference that the first has money. Does this make his action more moral and himself more entitled to the radio? It does not make him more moral for he got the money by serving the amoral Machine, and he is only more entitled to the radio in an automatic, competitive, money-economic sense. In human terms the second person is at least as entitled as the first but to be a good citizen is expected to submit without demur to a social order which would condemn him or her to deprivation. Other issues are involved here, but I am asking you to consider this particular approach to crime. The crime rate has steadily increased as human awareness has advanced. It would be expected that if crime were the only actual immorality this would be otherwise. The implication is that the Machine has no more claim to true morality than the criminal. This should lead to the realisation that crime is endemic to automatic reality; that it will not be eradicated until the Machine is abolished, and that a humantrue framework alone will make it possible for human society to practice its natural morality.
There is a natural tendency for non-stimulated, underprivileged individuals at the bottom of the hierarchical pyramid to revert to barbarism. Excluded from the polite order that the higher reaches of society can afford, they tend to revert to the ruthless, disordered, irresponsibly low standards from which our civilisation has attempted to emerge. They appear to be free to choose more gentle social ways, but when you are at the bottom, without hope of help, that may seem so difficult as to be impossible. In an automated society only those minds are stimulated which the Machine requires intelligently to do its work - the supposed civilised with a degree of status or authority. It might be expected that these privileged humans, especially their leaders and the intelligentsia, would perceive that if the disorderly members of society are to contribute to the responsible order of things they too must have some degree of privileged status. But they do not see it this way. To do so is contrary to the competitive economic conventions of the Machine. Everywhere can be found the rich or very rich living alongside the poor or starving. Such is the power of automatic conditioning which shuts off our outer perception from the compassionate awareness of our inner conscience.
Far from understanding and seeking to prevent its causes the privileged condemn and punish barbaric behaviour, calling it crime, vandalism or civil disturbance and setting the forces of law and order against it. When oppression and deprivation becomes unbearable and people, unable to obtain redress or relief through recognised channels, turn to acts of violence as their only hope, this is called terrorism and ruthlessly dealt with. We see terrorism as despicable but fail to see as equally despicable our own indifference to circumstances so unbearable as to drive people like ourselves to these awful acts of violence. The lesson to be learned is that this competitively violent conflict is the automatic norm. We must understand that by its very nature the Machine must contain an authoritative, privileged upper strata; that in support of this automatic reality the unorthodox self-help activities of the lower orders must be classed as unlawful crimes and stamped out, and that violent actions on the part of the upper strata to win and maintain their advantages must be accepted as lawful.
A problem of law is that it is administered by humans, and of criminal law that it is enforced by humans against other humans classed as criminals. All other conflicting institutions, whether serving the automaton directly, or supposedly serving humanity, or both (like politics), are also served by humans. This masks the fact that the real struggle of our present reality is us against the unnecessary Machine, and that we should not be pitted against each other. But in cases of public disturbance where human protestors are confronted by human police, the Machine makes out that these are different kinds of people rather than similar people having different roles in automatic reality, different loyalties and mental conditioning. The same applies in the case of war, dealt with in the next chapter. In a dispute between the British government and the coal miners' union over the former's decision to close certain mines and to put many miners out of work, the miners struck in protest and picketed all mines in an attempt to force a reversal of that decision. The government brought in large police forces to break the strike and there was violent action and reaction on both sides. Police forces were formed originally because automatic society, especially the competitive money economy, produced crime. Unions were formed because automatic society produced exploitation. Both are supposed to be upholding human interests. That their differences developed into pitched battles before this case was resolved, in the law courts in the Machine's favour, demonstrates that politics, which might have been expected to resolve the dispute before it came to a head or at least to put it into true perspective, cannot successfully prefer or even reveal the true human case where it directly conflicts with the interests of the automaton and Machine.
Everything that everybody does has reason in their eyes. This reason is seldom sound because we presently exist in an unreasonable world. The worst human activities come out of the worst human circumstances. Out of the best human circumstances considerable good may come, but both bad and good human activities are tied to the facts and concepts of an existing reality that is bad overall. Bad, violent activity is humanly unacceptable but is not made good by calling it crime and making it unlawful. To make it good requires that it be made unnecessary and uncalled for. This in turn requires a good reality that removes the causes of crime and embodies circumstances out of which only good can come. Change to a good reality shall only be possible when all minds are stimulated, and when mental stimulation is synonymous with supraconsciousness.
Here let me make a remark that applies to all automatic institutions. Politics and law are unintelligent practices which we take seriously because they are integral with our inappropriate reality. Were they proposed as new ideas they would not be acceptable to intellect, because to practice politics means to be in a continual indeterminate turmoil, and the practice of law indicates that there are reasons for going against the social order as strong as those for conforming to it.
Pt.IV REVELATION
AUTOMATIC CONTROLS
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21 Nations
22 Leadership, Authority and Government
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