The Tyranny of "We"

By Chris Rossini

Let's say you want to be an authoritarian. You want to rule over other human beings by force (or the threat of force) if they don't obey your commands.

You immediately run into a problem. Human beings are free to choose. Everyone that you want to boss around is one-of-a-kind and completely unique. What each person thinks, values, and chooses are out of your control. In other words, each person naturally has individual independence.

This is a conundrum for you.

How are you supposed to boss around a bunch of unique individuals? It would be much easier if humans were like homogeneous robots. All your non-thinking human robots just wait around for your command, and follow, without question.

But you cannot have that...and that bothers you.

So you start thinking.

You come to realize that you'll never be able rule a bunch of  individuals who are aware of their independence. You'll be inundated with rebels at every turn ... if they are aware.

But what if you could blur that awareness?

What if you can trick a bunch of people, and have it so that they are not aware of their independence?

You could definitely rule over them....right?

If you can somehow convince a critical mass of people that they are not individuals with independence, maybe then you can start bossing people around and attempt to mold humanity in your own image. After all, you're the brilliant one. You believe you've been put on this Earth to arrange it the "right way." Everyone else is just too stupid to understand that.

Now, you know that you're not going to be able to blur the awareness of everyone. But you're OK with that. There will always be rebels who are aware of their independence. But if you keep the number of rebels at a minimum, that's good enough.

Your main focus is in getting a critical mass of people to buy into your new idea that you like to call "collectivism."

Under your idea of collectivism, all individuals (other than yourself, of course) are to think in terms of "we." 

You....are the "I". 

So when you decide something, everyone else believes that "we" decided it.

This is so brilliant, it just might work!

"We" should help the poor.
"We" should get out of Afghanistan.
"We" should fix the electoral system.
"We" should educate people better.

....and the grand-daddy of them all ---- "We" are the government!

Bamboozle enough people to think in these terms, and the world is your oyster!

You've just stripped a critical mass of people of the awareness of their individual independence.

They still have that individual independence, of course. You surely don't have the power to take it away. But if they're not aware of it, you've de facto achieved the same result.

Now, of course you know there is no "we."

There are only 7,000,000,000+ individual "I's" walking this Earth.

The Creator didn't create "we's."

The Creator created "I's".

Remember the Declaration of Independence?

It's in there: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Individual Life --- That is Free --- To pursue its own Happiness.

But the belief in a fictional "we" is all that you needed. And now you can roll-up your sleeves and make the world over.

The endgame though, is much different than what you may expect.

You can't make the world over, even in the name of "we." You can do nothing but create a very expensive and terribly costly lesson for you, and everyone that believes you.