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Convincing people to believe in the myth of government.
Posted on: January 2, 2025 at 14:03:41 CT
TigerMatt STL
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Government is fiction. It doesn’t exist in objective reality. It is an imagined order, a system based upon myths. Gravity will exist even if we stop believing in it. Radioactivity will still be dangerous even if we don’t know it exists.
Imagined order systems, based upon myths, such as government are not stable. There is no guarantee they will last.
In order to maintain this myth of government, there are two requirements to maintain the myth.
1. Coercion
The myth creators/sustainers need to continually enforce peoples’ beliefs in the fiction. This is often done with violence. Armies, courts and police make sure that the people comply with laws of the imagined order. For example, when Americans decided that African slaves should enjoy the right to freedom, they had to fight a war to enforce this principle in the South.
2. True Believers
Coercion isn’t easy - it’s actually hard to coordinate violence. Armies, courts and police won’t be effective at enforcing the imagined order of they don’t believe in it, or at least something. Soldiers and police must believe in the myth of god, the nation, honor or money. It doesn’t matter what myth they choose to believe, as long as the resulting behaviors lead to enforcing political order. So, for instance, a soldier may not believe in the imagined political order he’s supposed to defend, but if he believes in the myth of money, he may enforce the political order anyway.
How do you get people to believe in the imagined order in the first place?
First of all, you don’t tell people that it’s imagined. You maintain that the society was created by gods or nature, thereby making it part of objective reality.
Next, you constantly remind people of the imagined order’s principles until the imagined order feels like a natural order. You can do this by inundating your citizens with these principles from childhood in the forms of fairy tales, art, traditions, propaganda, and fashions.
Imagined order systems, based upon myths, such as government are not stable. There is no guarantee they will last.
In order to maintain this myth of government, there are two requirements to maintain the myth.
1. Coercion
The myth creators/sustainers need to continually enforce peoples’ beliefs in the fiction. This is often done with violence. Armies, courts and police make sure that the people comply with laws of the imagined order. For example, when Americans decided that African slaves should enjoy the right to freedom, they had to fight a war to enforce this principle in the South.
2. True Believers
Coercion isn’t easy - it’s actually hard to coordinate violence. Armies, courts and police won’t be effective at enforcing the imagined order of they don’t believe in it, or at least something. Soldiers and police must believe in the myth of god, the nation, honor or money. It doesn’t matter what myth they choose to believe, as long as the resulting behaviors lead to enforcing political order. So, for instance, a soldier may not believe in the imagined political order he’s supposed to defend, but if he believes in the myth of money, he may enforce the political order anyway.
How do you get people to believe in the imagined order in the first place?
First of all, you don’t tell people that it’s imagined. You maintain that the society was created by gods or nature, thereby making it part of objective reality.
Next, you constantly remind people of the imagined order’s principles until the imagined order feels like a natural order. You can do this by inundating your citizens with these principles from childhood in the forms of fairy tales, art, traditions, propaganda, and fashions.
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Convincing people to believe in the myth of government. - TigerMatt KC - 1/2 14:03:41
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