The Resistance Party…and Power.

A cautionary tale?

The Resistance Party, any third party, is an attempt to take power from the powerful. To replace the current ‘interpretation’ of the world with our own interpretation.

All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The world itself is the will to power – and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power – and nothing else!

Friedrich Nietzsche

Each human being contains “the life force.” The life force exists at its root to propagate itself, life itself, in order to survive. The will to survive, is the will to power. But not all wills are created equal. For the vast majority of humans (at our current state of evolution) the will to power is satisfied when it achieves one thing: comfort. When we have yet to achieve comfort, or when comfort is taken from us, we seek power. When we have achieved comfort, we stop. This is human nature.

The vast majority of humans will only seek to use the power of resistance when they have been made ….uncomfortable…. enough.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The oppressed are not comfortable, thus they seek power.

Jean Anouilh:

   God is on everyone’s side … and in the last analysis, he is on the side with plenty of money and large armies.

Those that have plenty of money and a large army are comfortable, they seek to maintain that comfort by maintaining power. To seek power, you are seekimg their power, you are seeking to make them…uncomfortable.

Frederick Douglass:

   Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.

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Those who seek power greater than their own personal comfort are those who are not comfortable until one of two conditions are met. On one side, the condition of all humans agreeing with them what comfort is. On the other, those who are not comfortable until every other human is comfortable, with each person having the power to interpret what comfort is, for themselves.

Those who require the condition of all humans agreeing with them what comfort is to be comfortable, are tyrants. This condition is based on fear and insecurity. They can only be secure, and thus comfortable, if everyone agrees with them, if everyone lives their lives the way the seekers of this condition think they should. This has proven throughout human history to be a more powerful motivational force to seek power than any other. The people that need this condition for their own comfort will do absolutely anything to obtain it. Including killing, torture, rape and any other bad thing you can think of. Including keeping all of humanity in a mental prison for their own comfort. These people seized power loooong ago and have handed it down to their successors over the course of history. They are the power structure that rules our world. Over time, the have learned the most important truth to maintaining power…bread and circuses. If you ‘allow’ most people to be comfortable, they will not seek to take power. They will not revolt or resist. Keep them fed and amused, and not only will they not challenge your power, they will believe you when you tell them they are free. Despite all evidence to the contrary.

Carl Sagan:

   One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. The bamboozle has captured us. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

Keep them ‘free enough,’ and they will comply…enough… with the condition that tyrants need to be comfortable. They will believe what you believe. And once they believe what you believe, once you have them bamboozled…you can begin to stretch their beliefs. As long as you stretch them slowly enough, as long as you boil the frog at the right pace, they will stay bamboozled. They will believe they are comfortable. They will not revolt…or even resist. They will deny, and rationalize, and grasp at any and all straws that reinforce the (now illusory) feeling of comfort.

Admitting you are uncomfortable is…uncomfortable. Admitting that someone else has the power to make you uncomfortable, robs you of your dignity. It s humiliating. Resistance and revolution happen when the ruling class, the tyrants, the powers that be…. boil the frog too fast. When the comfortable masses are humiliated by being made to realize that they have been bamboozled, made to realize that they are not free. When they are forced to realize that their imagined freedom and comfort are illusions. When they are reminded (or learn for the first time) that beneath the concept of physical comfort, of being fed and amused, there is another kind of comfort. The comfort of true freedom and self determination and dignity. Then and only then will they truly resist or revolt. Only when the feelings of humiliation outweigh the feelings of comfort. Revolt and resistance are not based on ideology, they are based on the balance between comfort and humiliation. Between discomfort and dignity.

Cesar Chavez:

   The first principal of nonviolent action is that of noncooperation with everything humiliating.

Noncooperation…resistance…and revolt (on an effective scale) only happen when “they” get greedy enough to start humiliating people to the point where it is more uncomfortable to NOT resist than it is to resist.

The Powers that be have a relatively simple worldview, uncomplicated by any moral considerations much beyond their own comfort. To them the world is simple, thus their plan is simple.

Arthur Jensen:(shouting) You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won’t have it! Is that clear? You think you’ve merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU…WILL…ATONE!

Arthur Jensen: (calmly) Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that . . . perfect world . . . in which there’s no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.

That is what will make them comfortable.

On the other hand are those who are not comfortable until every other human is comfortable, with each person having the power to interpret what comfort is, for themselves.

In other words….us.

And thus we get to the central human problem with power…with resistance, with revolt.

We want the power to make the world as we would like it to be. To make all beings comfortable.

They NEED to have that power to make themselves comfortable.

And needing it, they have learned the ways to win and hold power. While for the vast masses of people, we have to learn those lessons again every time “they” get too greedy and force “us” to resist and revolt.

And thus we get to the central question with power…are we there yet?

Are there enough people uncomfortable enough to effectively resist and revolt? Are we uncomfortable enough to suffer the consequences…which will be dire…of trying to seize power, even non-violently, from the Powers That Be?

And what happens if we win?

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.

Friedrich Nietzsche