The Cruel Power of Social Tyranny

Too often, those of a liberal temperament focus too keenly on the oppressive nature some governments can develop and lose sight of the all-powerful oppression that can be inflicted by those not in government. Neighbors, family, and long-time friends can all become more tortuous than the inquisitor’s rack. What’s more, such a transformation can take place in such an unbelievably short period of time. Those who were just enjoying dinner with you, not but the other day, can develop a taste for you, and cannibalize your hopes, dreams, body, family, and soul without hesitation.

For you see, all governments are a pristine reflection of their populous. This is what many enlightenment figures (the same figures who developed economic modalities and political modalities that lifted the world from the oppression of ignorance and the noble filth of barbarity) forgot to consider in their final analyses. Well not all of them, lest we forget the minds that crafted beliefs that fueled the reign of terror that brought the enlightenment to a screeching halt (the shadows of those beliefs can be seen to this very day).

Nevertheless, many great philosophers and thinkers, even to this day, forget to take into account this eternal coupling between society and governance. If a society is honorable, the government follows in kind. If the society is grizzled and hardened by unfortunate providence, so is the government. If a society is so scared of opposing ways of thinking, the government shares this fear. If the society is fueled by loathing jealously and readily participates in great lies, so does the government.

What’s possibly more terrifying is that while governments (no matter how oppressive) are still reigned in by laws of social creation, society faces no such restriction. Yes, societies are still bound to laws rooted in basic human morality (do not murder, do not steal, and so on), but they are not bound to the same extent as a government. For instance, a government may be restricted by law from prohibiting what you say, but their citizenry bares no such restriction. If a social group decides to silence dissenting voices, they can and they do. If (through the restriction of the written and spoken word) society decides to control what can be thought and what cannot, so it shall be. What if individuals in the society decide to fleece unsuspecting pioneers and entrepreneurs of their various creations? Government may snatch away these creations before the righteous indignation of their populous does, but only if their citizenry allows. If society decides to recklessly redefine what constitutes murder and thievery, the government will capitulate. How many innovations and revelations have been quashed by this social tyranny? How much progress (social and otherwise) was ripped away from us before we could taste the fruits that such progress could bear? No one can say.

As the falling sands of time have so regularly and predictably shown, eventually social tyranny will be reflected by the face of their government. And then what will become of a cruel society? A society that cared so little about the prosperity and freedom of others that they blindly reconstructed the very laws that restrict their government, all to take vengeance on others. What can be done for you, you the poor soul now condemned to live in such a rotted state of being? Who will save you from the heel of your government (now strong as steel), a government who will now utilize their new oppressive freedom on you and the ones you love? Who will free you from the cold and merciless reflection of your own society?

Imagine what could have been if those early 20th century proletarians, who were so intoxicated by the fruits of their victory (after defeating the tyrannical bourgeois), would have been of a sound enough mind to abandon cannibalistic rage and undeserved judgements after their revolution. Imagine if they were unwilling to participate in great and monsterable lies? Imagine what could have been if they had cast away their indignation in favor of temperance? Their vengeance for understanding? Imagine what could have been the fate of the paradise so sought after by the proletarians in their nations of the great experiments? Just imagine, will you! But, unfortunately, you cannot, as they, consumed by biblical jealously, never could achieve their heaven on Earth. The land of milk and honey so easily envisioned by those in the great revolutions the world over, quickly became a disfigured wasteland marred by destruction and flowing with rivers of blood. You cannot imagine their paradise because you cannot look past the millions who perished in search of their paradise, who left behind people that carried on only to find despair and malignant afflictions of the worst kind. You cannot move past imagining what beauty that could have been brought to the world by those lost in the statistics of the great leaders, had not their lives, hopes, and dreams been so cruelly snuffed out.

All social groups, no matter the locale or history, suffer from this social malignancy to one degree or another. While not immediately recognized by any one group (no matter how sanctimonious, indignant, or well-intentioned they may be), inevitably the trunk of the rotting tree of blind ideology and undeserved loyalty identifies various troublesome branches as blighted, and decide (to keep the rest of the tree pure as the driven snow) that the limbs must be lopped. After all, who wants naysayers in their midst? Naysayers that could undermine the entirety of your movement, your beliefs, your group, or your legacy. Surely you must trim them from your trunk and allow the other wretched vermin of the land to ravage their fallen bodies. After all, what you are doing is for the greater good. It is for the betterment of, not only, your own tree but the whole of the forest and everything therein. Mustn’t we save the fauna? Mustn’t feed them (lest they starve and perish)? So why not feed them branches our tree no longer needs? Mustn’t they, the lowly animals, also be brought to salvation through your tree of life? Even the most vile, repugnant, and voracious animals among them deserve at least a chance at realizing and relishing in your paradise, less of course they aim to introduce snakes into your walled garden of Eden. Then they must be cast away, like those blighted branches and suffer the same fate as they.

This is, of course, what anyone in any given social milieu will say to themselves in order to comfort their restless minds, so anguished and tormented by the reality of their actions (no matter how small or relatively insignificant such actions may, in reality, be). Especially those living in a society that requires willful and complete acceptance and commitment to devastating lies. What must they tell themselves, in their beds cloaked by the uncomfortable night, to overcome the deaths of their compatriots and the torture of unknown masses? If they allowed themselves to speak the truth of what they’ve done, they would realize that it’s the thoughts dwelling in the depths of man that is the true blight. How sinister, how self-aggrandizing, how contemptuous such thoughts must be to turn the most audacious and, seemingly, well-meaning beliefs into that of horror and unending suffering? So obvious, yet covertly horrid, are these thoughts that one can hardly recognize them as their own. And, if such a person so entrenched in denial and self-torment were to accept this universal truth of man and how it affected, not only, their tree but the forest and everything living in it, what would happen to them? Mustn’t they suffer the same fate as the branches they so readily lopped off? Mustn’t everything feel the sting of the executioner’s axe? Mustn’t their whole tree be the sole source of the pestilence that plagues the forest, or at the very least one festering pustule of it? To accept such a truth would crumble such people like a piece of discarded paper, with all of its potential whisked away by uncaring fate. No, such a person cannot believe such heresy. They’ve just been infected with the blight that was spread by those dissenting branches. How odious these treacherous branches have been, making you doubt the intentions of your actions. These horrible branches are just trying to save their own skin, can’t you see!? How sly and devious these horrible branches are with their “truth.”

Except there is nothing to see. There never was and, eventually, such loyal branches will be trimmed as well. It's only a matter of time. Possibly the most miserable thing about the fate of these loyal branches, discarded and ignored by their comrades-in-arms, is that, even as the verminous pests devour their flesh, they will continue to believe that their fate was due to those other blighted branches. They should have been cut off sooner! If they had, maybe just maybe, they could have bore witness to the paradise that those left standing are sure to see.