Spawn of the Leviathan

Once a certain class of parasites in human form came to know how to seize the surplus products of a certain territory that they declared a state, a relatively simple dynamic of events followed, an eternal circle of plunderers and plundered.

But no matter how strong the organized mysticism, dollars for donuts, often there were public and unambiguous outbursts of discontent expressed in peasant and slave rebellions and uprisings, eliminations of the aristocracy, clergy and ruling families. Perhaps the most famous example from the ``old times`` are the slave wars in the Roman Empire, especially the Third Slave War in which the slaves brought the Empire to the brink of collapse. The name of Spartacus has remained to this day as a symbol of the struggle against the state and exploitation. But Spartacus himself is only a drop in the ocean in the 7 millennia-old struggle between parasites and saprophytes on two legs. From today's `forgetting` to file a tax return or to declare real income (double-entry bookkeeping) to the beheaded Archbishop of Canterbury or the emptying of a cartridge in the body of US President McKinley, the struggle is seemingly eternal and lasts with varying intensity, geographical, cultural, psychological and individual differences are also the differences in the depiction of that struggle.

The basic postulates of organized force for the purpose of enforcing the collection of tribute from a population limited by a certain border from another population remain unchanged from the ancient times of Sumer to the present day. The difference is in the technology that has changed and given new forms of plunder.

The old scheme, the divine right to rule, lasted for about five and a half millennia. And quite successfully with the help of the clergy (whether the imaginary companions were arranged in a pantheon, solitary but still tripartite, or one and absolute) the era of the state as the regulator of all relations in society was never seriously shaken, although there were several significant challenges. Until the late Middle Ages. Then slaves become kinda restless.

Thus we come to another defining moment in history, and that is the emergence of nation-states. After the weakening of the influence of religion and its role in protecting the state order, due to the Renaissance, the industrial revolution, the great scientific and geographical discoveries, astronomical heresies, interfaith wars and the corruption of the churches (especially the Catholic), new ideologies and philosophies (perhaps best represented by Diderot's statement `Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest`) and the era of rationalism, the hundreds if not thousands of serf revolts, uprisings and revolutions across Europe and Asia... the need for a new imaginary friend to whom the elite would refer in its continued survival and expansion at someone else's expense was obvious.

Enters the new deception. The Nation.

But that novelty had to impress the priests of secular mysticism as well. The scholars and the literate. To respond to the new challenge of belonging to a group. Larger then thyself. Always. The fear of God is updated with Love for the nation/state.

For the more rational and optimistic, there are also the alleged benefits from the state-bureaucratic apparatus on the taxpayer. Who has to work twice as hard so as not to have time to wonder how much it really costs what he will supposedly receive if he needs it.

But of course, one thing has remained unchanged. The citizen does not have any document where he agrees with the conditions under which he must exist. How much, whether and if he receives something so that he does not become furious and perceives the naked reality, is decided quite arbitrarily. As in Sumer, so in Belgium.

(Roger Mortis 027)