Gregory Yates: thoughts, theses and collected theologies.

A ’good-for-nothing’ just believes that good comes to nothing, and thus does nothing good. 

…I like it!

I woke up to the soothing voice of Stephen Fry, thanks to my new clock, and spent the next five minutes quietly mourning for wasted mornings without this gentle alarm. Let’s just hope it continues to, err, actually wake me up.

Thought I’d share that. I’ll get back to work (essay writing - wonderful!) so I have enough time to get through more of Paradise Lost later, and perhaps, years late, complete the first Halo game.

Belated goodwill, etc, your king, etc, christmas, etc. 

I actually did have a brilliant post, good-to-go, about judiciary and how, essentially, law is arbitrary by definition - but then IE decided that I didn’t, in fact, deserve to blog. I find it hard to be too aggravated by this, though, as yesterday I recieved an offer to read English Literature at Corpus Christi college, Oxford; understandably, I’m wearing too much of a grin about the place to be significantly affected by a technological hitch.

I’ll part with some ironic words:

"The anarchist is the enemy of humanity, the enemy of all mankind, and his is a deeper degree of criminality than any other." - Theodore Roosevelt, 1901.

I wholeheartedly agree. An anarchist is the enemy of humanity and mankind, as those imply organised collectives that, in some way, gain some validation by merit of them being collective; an anarchist views humanity as a huge group of separate individuals, and mankind as a similar collection of individual men. To an anarchist, there is no banner behind which people can unify, as we all possess wholly different politics, philosophies and desires; when this is attempted, individuals are forced to yield to a majority, or even a minority (as with government) viewpoint. It is a dangerous fallacy to act on the presumption that there is a ’mankind’ so much as there is a ‘lot of men’ - so, yes, anarchism is the enemy of humanity and mankind.

As for ’criminality’, well, yes, but I find it very difficult to be insulted by a word that was effectively contrived to explain an already contrived idea. If I reject concepts of ‘legal’ and ’illegal’ as pointless and arbitrary, in the manner that I have described on this blog, then it follows that a word with the function of describing one who does just this is a little feckless. Law is an extension of authority, which in turn is something anarchy opposes viciously; therefore, when Teddy refers to anarchists as ‘criminal’ he is essentially arguing that anarchists are anarchists.

Never mind, eh?      

The standard argument against the rejection of arbitrary state ‘rules’ goes as follows:

1. The rules of Britain are clearly defined and concern the whole of Britain.

2. You live in Britain.

3. If you did not like the rules, you could just leave.

4. You have not left, so you must appreciate the rules. 

I’ll challenge two significant premises of this argument - the first being that we are expected to be aware of the ‘rules’ of this country and the second being the more general idea that these policies are reasonably entrenched within society. I will begin, naturally, with the first.

Consent implies knowledge. If a CEO of a particular business I have just been employed by for details for me, on my first day, the company policy - perhaps it is considered unprofessional to wear a brightly coloured shirt, among other things - and I agree to work according to these principles, then of course I have consented. My boss has a legitimate mandate to impose sanctions on me, providing I was aware of the punishments for transgressions in the first place. If I wear that ostentatious pink shirt, I can expect reprecussions. Nothing wrong with that. 

However, let us suppose that he murmured and mumbled parts of it; I asked him to speak up, but he largely ignored me. As a result, I know the vague outline of the policy, but the details escape me. Unbeknownst to poor I, wearing brown shoes is a gross violation of this corporation’s ethical code; when I wear them the next day, I am punished severely, more so than I could have possibly expected. I was aware that flamboyant clothing was generally off-limits, but not that brown shoes crossed the threshold of ‘unprofessional’! Far from it.

Now picture the government as this ambiguous CEO. The analogy (like all my carefully picked analogies!) stands up surprisingly well. The government, quite simply, has laid out a contract. By living in Britain, and working for the government - we pay taxes, which equates to financial labour, and are in return given law and order, foreign defence and economic regulation - we agree to take on company policy. Problem is, the terms and conditions laid out are difficult to comprehend. In the same way the dithering CEO mumbles certain parts of the company code, so does the government give us hazy, sometimes incredibly difficult to comprehend, details on the law. For example, I know that assault is illegal, but what about self-defence? I know I am allowed to defend myself, but what constitutes ‘reasonable’ force?

Obviously, I can go to look this up - but this is one issue among many that I would presume the vast majority of the population are blissfully unaware of. Nobody, save for perhaps the judiciary (and even they are unsure of certain aspects of law) could know every regulation involved with living in this country, especially given the incomprehensibility of many legal documents; some date back decades, even centuries. It is just not practical to ask a member of the public to memorise each and every law, but if they don’t, they find themselves at an ignorant loss. Perhaps if we did know the entirety of the British law, we would scoff and say: "I’m not agreeing to that!" and thus refuse to vote for any political party continuing this law at the time of a general election?

We probably never will. Again, it just isn’t feasible. The government’s mandate to impose their rules upon us seems to be little more than an extremely long contract, predominantly comprised of barely legible small-print.

If this is what passes for consent in government, I’ll stick with anarchy, thanks.