Statism

Pronounced "State"-"ism"
The Psychology that creates "the state."
The belief in "authority" or the "right to rule."
A mindset which when understood, prevents Democide.

Referenced from Slides 50-58, 332, 443 of Health Revealed:
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What is Statism?​

Statism is what gives other human beings the “authority” or “right to rule,” as specifically detailed and defined by Larken Rose in his book “The Most Dangerous Superstition.” In other words, Statism is what creates the state (i.e. government).​
 

Statism involves people blindly trusting or believing in authority, experts, “the science,” government spokespeople, etc. without questioning. Statism is often associated with "order-following." As a concept of study, it remains largely unknown in modern times by the general public and among academics or researchers.

“‘Authority’ can be summed up as the right to rule. It is not merely the ability to forcibly control others, which to some extent nearly everyone possesses. It is the supposed moral right to forcibly control others... The belief in ‘authority,’ which includes all belief in ‘government,’ is irrational and self-contradictory; it is contrary to civilization and morality, and constitutes the most dangerous, destructive superstition that has ever existed. Rather than being a force for order and justice, the belief in ‘authority’ is the arch-enemy of humanity... People who consider themselves educated, open-minded and progressive do not want to think of themselves as the slaves of a master, or even the subjects of a ruling class. Because of this, much rationalizing and obfuscating has been done in an attempt to deny the fundamental nature of ‘government’ as a ruling class. A lot of verbal gymnastics, misleading terminology and mythology have been manufactured to try to obscure the true relationship between ‘governments’ and their subjects... The message here is not that we should try to create a world without ‘authority;’ instead, the message is that it would behoove human beings to accept the fact that a world without ‘authority’ is all that has ever existed, and that mankind would be far better off, and people would behave in a far more rational, moral and civilized manner, if that fact were widely understood... To be blunt, the belief in ‘authority’ serves as a mental crutch for people seeking to escape the responsibility involved with being a thinking human being. It is an attempt to pass off the responsibility for decision-making to someone else: those claiming to have ‘authority.’ But the attempt to avoid responsibility by ‘just following orders’ is silly, because it requires the person to choose to do what he is told. Even what appears as blind obedience is still the result of the individual choosing to be obedient. Not choosing anything is not possible... It should be self-evident that if thousands of basically good people were all seeing the world as it is, they would not be desperately trying to kill each other. In most cases, the problem is not actual evil or malice, but simply an inability to see things as they are.”

— Larken Rose, Author, Screenwriter

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The Two Types of Statism​​

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Quoting Researcher Kris Nelson

The authority to forcibly control (ie. Government or The State) is about some telling others what to do by giving orders or commands of compliance. Others are expected to comply and obey, or face negative consequences for refusing. It's saying your actions are subserviant to another's will. They decide what your behavior will be. What you rightfully do with your body, or your actions, is not yours to decide. The authority decides what you can or can't do with your body. They are claiming ownership of actions that come from your body, and hence claiming ownership of your body. Accepting authority (Statism) to control is to accept being owned by another, to accept being a slave (often associated with Mental Slavery).
 

Experts — the other form of perceived authority (often associated with the Appeal to Authority logical fallacy) — individuals (often in the form of public figures and influencers, including but not limited to practitioners, scientists, content creators and entrepreneurs) can give suggestions, recommendations, or make claims of truth; but each individual has to make their own decision as to what they do, and discern for themselves if something is true or not, not simply do it or believe it to be true because an authority said or wrote it. Even without the authority to forcibly control, if you simply accept the word of perceived authorities as truth, then you're still in a position of disempowerment, of Mental Slavery, in thrall. 
 

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The Stanley Milgram Experiments on Statism

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Quoting "The Most Dangerous Superstition" by Larken Rose

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The Stanley Milgram Experiment, conducted by psychologist Stanley Milgram at Yale University in the 1960s, is one of the most famous and controversial studies in social psychology. The Milgram studies were designed to determine to what degree ordinary people would inflict pain upon strangers simply because an “authority” figure told them to. For the complete description of the experiments and the results, see Dr. Milgram’s book, Obedience to Authority. The following is a short synopsis of his experiments and findings.

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Subjects were asked to volunteer for what they were told was an experiment testing human memory. Under the supervision of a scientist (the “authority” figure), one person was strapped into a chair and wired with electrodes, and the other – the actual subject of the study – sat in front of a shock-generating machine. The person in front of the “zapper” machine was told that the goal was to test whether shocking the other person when he gave a wrong answer to a memorization question would affect his ability to remember things. The true goal, however, was to test to what degree the person in front of the zapper machine would inflict pain on an innocent stranger simply because someone in the role of “authority” told him to. The zapper machine had a series of switches, going up to 450 volts, and the “zapper” subject was supposed to increase the voltage and administer another shock each time the “zappee” got an answer wrong. In truth, the “zappee” in the tests was an actor, who was not being shocked at all, but at given voltage levels would give out shouts of pain, protests about heart troubles, demands to stop the experiment, screams for mercy, and eventually silence (feigning unconsciousness or death). In addition, the “zapper” machine was dearly marked with danger labels at the upper end of the series of switches.

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The results of the experiment shocked even Dr. Milgram. In short, a significant majority of subjects, nearly two out of three, continued through the experiment right to the end, inflicting what they thought were excruciatingly painful – if not lethal – shocks to a complete stranger, despite the screams of agony, the cries for mercy, even the unconsciousness or death of the (pretending) victim. A significant majority of participants, approximately 80-90%, obeyed the experimenter's instructions to administer potentially lethal shocks, even when they were visibly uncomfortable and distressed by the actions they were taking. The findings of the Milgram Experiment have been replicated across various cultures and settings, consistently demonstrating high levels of obedience to authority figures. Dr. Milgram himself succinctly sums up the conclusion to be reached:

“With numbing regularity good people were seen to knuckle under the demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and severe .... A substantial proportion of people do what they are told to do, irrespective of the content of the act and without limitations of conscience, so long as they perceive that the command comes from a legitimate authority.”

Of note, in the experiments there was no threat that the “zapper” would be punished for failure to obey, nor was there any special reward promised for obedience. So the results were not merely showing that an ordinary person might hurt someone else to “save his own neck,” or might hurt someone else if it somehow profited himself. Instead, the results showed that most people will inflict excruciating pain, even death, upon an innocent stranger for no other reason than that he was told to do so by a perceived “authority.” This point cannot be over-stressed: there is a particular belief that leads basically good people to do bad things, even heinously evil things. Even the atrocities of Hitler’s Third Reich were the result, not of millions of evil people, but of a very small handful of truly evil people who had acquired positions of “authority,” and millions of obedient people who merely did what the perceived “authority” told them to do. In her book about Hitler’s top bureaucrat, Adolf Eichmann (sometimes called “the Architect of the Holocaust”), author Hannah Arendt used the phrase “the banality of evil” to refer to the fact that most evil is not the result of personal malice or hatred, but merely the result of blind obedience – individuals giving up their own free wit and judgment in favor of unthinking subservience to an imagined “authority.” Interestingly, both Arendt’s book and Dr. Milgram’s experiments offended a lot of people. The reason is simple: people who have been taught to respect “authority;” and have been taught that obedience is a virtue and that cooperating with “authority” is what makes us civilized, do not like to hear the truth, which is that truly evil people, with all their malice and hatred, pose far less of a threat to mankind than the basically good people who believe in “authority.”

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Key Findings of Dr. Stanley Milgram & His Experiments on Statism

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1) Many of the subjects of the experiments showed signs of stress, guilt, and anguish while inflicting pain on others, and yet continued doing so. This fact demonstrates that these were not simply nasty sadists waiting for an excuse to hurt others; they did not enjoy doing it. Furthermore, it shows that the people knew that they were doing something wrong, and did it anyway because “authority” told them to. Some subjects protested, begged to be allowed to stop, trembled uncontrollably; even cried, and yet most continued to the end of the experiment. The conclusion could hardly be more obvious: The belief in “authority” makes good people commit evil.

2) The subject’s income level, education level, age, sex, and other demographic factors seemed to have little or no influence on the results. Statistically speaking, a rich, cultured, educated young woman will obey an authoritarian command to hurt someone else just as readily as an illiterate, poor, male manual laborer will. The one common factor shared by all of those who continued to the end of the experiment is that they believed in “authority” (obviously). Again, the message to be learned, however troubling it may be, is logically inescapable: Regardless of almost any other factors, the belief in authority turns good people into agents of evil.

3) The average person, when the experiment is described to him, not including the results, guesses that the compassion and conscience of most people would prevent them from continuing through the entire experiment. Professional psychiatrists predicted that only about one in a thousand would obey to the end of the experiment, when in reality it was about 65%. And when the average person, who has not actually been tested, is asked if he personally would have gone to the end of the study if he had been tested, he usually insists that he would not have. Yet the majority do. Again, the message is troubling but indisputable: Almost everyone hugely underestimates the degree to which the belief in “authority,” even in himself, can be used to persuade good people to commit evil.

4) Dr. Milgram also found that some test subjects, defying all reason, were determined to blame the results of their own blind obedience on the victim: the one being shocked. In other words, through whatever twisted mentality it took, some of those doing the shocking imagined that the one being shocked was somehow to blame for his own suffering. With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that when police officers are caught assaulting innocent civilians, or when soldiers are caught terrorizing or murdering civilians, or when prison guards are caught torturing prisoners, their defense is often to blame the victim, no matter how much the authoritarian aggressors have to mangle the truth and logic in order to do so. Interestingly, even though at the Nuremberg trials, “just following orders” was not accepted as a valid excuse for what the Nazis did, it is still the standard response from countless soldiers, police, tax collectors, bureaucrats, and other representatives of “authority” whenever the morality of their behavior is questioned. Both in Milgram’s experiments and in countless real-life abuses of power, those who intentionally hurt others simply fall back on the standard excuse, claiming that they were not personally responsible because they were merely following orders. In the Milgram experiments, several subjects even directly asked the “authority” figure which of them was responsible for what was happening. When the “authority” figure said that he was the one responsible, most subjects went on without further debate, apparently comfortable with the notion that whatever happened from then on was not their fault and they would not be held liable. Again, the message is difficult to escape: The belief in “authority” allows basically good people to disassociate themselves from the evil acts they themselves commit, relieving them of any feeling of personal responsibility.

5) When it was left up to the “zapper” what voltage to use, only very rarely would he go above 150 volts, the point at which the one pretending to be shocked said he did not want to go on. It is very important to note that up to that point – and almost all subjects made it to that point – the “zappee” let out grunts of pain but did no: ask for the experiment to stop. As a result, the one doing the zapping could quite reasonably say that the one being zapped had agreed to the arrangement, and up to that point was still a willing participant. Interestingly, of the few subjects who did not go all the way to the end, many of them stopped as soon as the “zappee” said he wanted out. This could be dubbed the “libertarian line,” since, once the “zappee” asks to be unstrapped, for the zapper to continue anyway constitutes initiating violence against another – the exact thing libertarians oppose. Unfortunately, those who stop at the “libertarian line” are only a small minority of the population. As for the rest, the findings are disturbingly clear: of the people who would, at the behest of “authority,” shock someone who calmly said, “I don’t want to do this anymore,” most would continue inflicting pain even if the victim was screaming in agony. Is this because most people are evil? No. It is because they have been conditioned to do as they are told and have been indoctrinated into the most dangerous superstition of all: the belief in “authority.”

It should be noted that even Dr. Milgram could not escape his own indoctrination into the cult of “authority” worship. In passing, and with very little comment, even he opined that “we cannot have a society without some structure of authority.” He made a weak attempt to defend teaching obedience to “authority” by saying: “Obedience is often rational. It makes good sense to follow the doctor’s orders, to obey traffic signs, and to clear the building when the police inform us of a bomb threat.” Yet none of those examples actually requires or justifies a belief in “authority.” Despite the way people often talk, doctors do not give “orders.” They are “authorities” in the sense that they are knowledgeable in the field of medicine, but not in the sense of having any right to rule. As for the other examples, the main reason to observe the rules of the road, or to leave a building with a b*mb in it, is not because obedience to “authority” is a virtue, but because the alternative is injury or death. If some non-authority in a theater pulled a b*mb from under his seat, held it up for all to see, and said, “A b*mb! Let’s get out of here!” would everyone else stay where they were because the person was not perceived as an “authority”? Of course not. And if “government” repealed the “law” saying which side of the road everyone should drive on, would people start randomly swerving around? Of course not. They would keep driving on the right side, because they do not want to crash into each other. So, although even Dr. Milgram clung to the notion that the belief in “authority” is sometimes necessary and good, he gave no rational argument to support such an assertion. It is a testament to the strength of the myth of “authority” that even someone who had witnessed what Dr. Milgram had witnessed was still unable to completely give up the superstition. After Dr. Milgram publicized his findings, many were shocked and dismayed by the extent to which normal people were willing to inflict pain or death upon innocent strangers when instructed to do so by a perceived “authority.” Similar tests performed since Dr. Milgram’s experiments have yielded similar results, which continue to shock some people. However, the results really should not be surprising to anyone who has taken a look at how most human beings are raised.

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Human Nature is not Statism

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Summarized Insights from Larken Rose

Humans have tendencies towards both cooperation and conflict, but recent progress has been made in reducing violent behavior (ex. ending chattel slavery, civil rights). Leadership involves voluntary cooperation and consent. Statism involves forceful domination against one's will. The desire for leadership (ex. in a camping trip scenario) is natural, but this differs from accepting violent rule. Statism requires extensive indoctrination and propaganda. Most living beings instinctively resist captivity and domination. If statism and authoritarian rule were truly part of human nature, we would see people actively seeking to be dominated, which is not the case. The Stanley Milgram experiment did show that people are able to say “no” and not comply with an “authority” figure. Additionally, the ancient Chinese philosophy of Taoism clarifies how our nature is that of spontaneous order, often considered the first anti-statist philosophy.

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"Human nature is the beginning and end of political education"

— Henry Adams, 19th Century Author

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Democide, an aggregated result of Statism

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Democide, is also known as “the murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder.” Professor R.J. Rummel from the University of Hawaii, estimates a total democide at 133 million deaths pre-20th century and 262 million deaths in the 20th century for a total of 395 million. This does not include the combatants killed in the 350+ wars between governments since 1800 or the 40+ million international and civil war combatant deaths in the 20th century. Democide is often considered the "top cause of unnatural death," beating all non-medical causes, with lingering question as to how the state may interfere with medicine and vice versa, or the momentary spikes in state warfare.

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Leading Causes of Death on Average, Annually:

Heart Disease — 18.6 Million

Stroke — 10.8 Million

Chronic Lower Respiratory Diseases — 3.91 Million

Lower Respiratory Infections — 2.56 Million

Democide — 2.15 Million

Trachea, Bronchus, and Lung Cancers — 1.8 Million

Car Accidents — 1.3 Million

Tuberculosis (TB) — 1.4 Million

HIV/AIDS — 630,000

Malaria — 627,000

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“I would say, on the basis of having observed a thousand people in the experiment and having my own intuition shaped and informed by these experiments, that if a system of death camps were set up in the United States of the sort we had seen in Nazi Germany, one would find sufficient personnel for those camps in any medium-sized American town.”

— Dr. Stanley Milgram

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