Iconoclast: Legal Illegitimacy

In the prior entry, I talked about the religion of economics and the fake god it worships called money. Now we’re going to venture into the dark rabbit hole of how it has allowed us as a species to ignore the science of human behavior by propping up an obsolete system known as man’s law.

We live in a universe that is governed by one supreme order. This order cannot be broken nor violated regardless of how hard we may try. It is called Natural law. It is the only law that matters in the span of the cosmos. Natural law in its basic definition means that humans are born with a natural moral code and that our behaviors are based off this code. Its through understanding of this law that we can understand the nature of ourselves and why we behave the way we do. No matter where you go in the universe, this law will always apply. To expand on the definition of natural law beyond just humanity, we can look at the laws of physics. The law of motion, thermodynamics, gravitation, the Archimedes principle, etc. These laws cannot be broken and everything depends on them.

I said all that so that with this basic understanding, you are more able to see the obsolescence and utter pointlessness of manmade laws. Like money, the concept of man’s law is entirely made up, hollow, and only as sturdy as the institutions that uphold it. Man’s law is a stack of paper and ink that if burned would only last so long as the memories of those who know them don’t fade. Unlike natural law, man’s law is only followed out of fear of consequence. Natural law ensures the continuation of the universe, whereas man’s law ensures the continuity of a select system. Natural law is unchanging, whereas man’s law changes based on several factors. Natural law does not discriminate, man’s law is based on culture.

We’ve been brought up to believe that man’s law is necessary in order to keep peace and order within a society. We believe that without man’s law, there would be chaos similar to a Mad Max scenario. What we fail to take notice of is that the only purpose man’s law seems to serve is the determination of consequence. A law that says it’s illegal to murder does not prevent murder. Not one society on this planet has an instance of zero murders being committed with an anti-murder law in place. We have seen time and time again that if someone intends on committing an act of violence, no law in the books is going to stop them. Thus, the police are a reactionary force, not a preventative one. Drug laws do not stop the trafficking of drugs, instead they criminalize the victim of an addiction brought on by the pressures of the fake system they’re born into.

When the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed in Baltimore earlier this year, I remember seeing a news segment that mentioned how “lawmakers” were going to come together with proposals on how to prevent another disaster like it from happening again. I remember shaking my head when I heard it because it wasn’t a legal issue that caused the bridge to collapse, it was a technical failure of the ship

that struck it. No manmade law is going to prevent an accident like that from happening when a technical issue is going to follow in accordance with natural law. You can have a manmade law that says all cars must stop at a red light, but if the car’s brakes fail, its going to go through the red light anyways and cause an injury or a fatality because it is following the natural law of inertia. The issues of our natural and technical world are not legal problems, they are technical problems. We cannot legislate our way into a better world.

Now one could say that laws are made so that technical issues can be prevented or that safety is insured, but as I said earlier, those laws will not matter if they are not followed. Take the recent controversy involving Boeing. The technical failure of the doors blowing out was caused by the lack of following safety procedures (man’s law). The only thing the law did was bring consequence to that event, but the damage was still done, not prevented.

Let’s change gears for a moment and refocus back on to the human equation regarding natural law and man’s law. In the previous entry I touched a little bit on how human behavior is influenced by their surroundings and the constant focus or indirect need for money. I mentioned how even those who commit atrocious crimes are from either a direct or indirect need for money. Mental health is not addressed from an early age due to the lack of funds and lack of priorities of insurance companies to pay for the treatment necessary. Psychology and psychiatry both study the behavior of the human brain as it reacts in direct obedience to natural law. It is through such study that we can better understand the criminal mind, or rather, the human mind. When a person commits a murder, our society, full of artificial manmade laws, riles us up and we automatically begin demanding they be incarcerated or executed. We feel the innate need for vengeance as images of the victim and their families are flashed across the tv screen to play on our emotions. We involuntarily take the easy way out and assume the perpetrator is “evil” or unredeemable.

Of course, it’s understandable that we feel this way because we immediately imagine ourselves in the shoes of the victim and their families and our empathy for them takes over. Rarely if ever do we do the same for the perpetrator because it’s an uncomfortable and undesirable thing to do. It’s taboo to want to place ourselves behind the eyes of a killer. However, if we are to fully understand human behavior in accordance to natural law, we will have to learn to do so. It is by no accident that a high number of perpetrators of sexual crimes were at one time victims of the same thing themselves. Especially if it occurred during their adolescents when their brain was still developing. Yet, when we see them standing in a court room on trial, we automatically feel nothing but disgust for them and even go so far as to hoping it happens to them again when they arrive at the prison. As difficult as it is to do, we should instead critically think for a moment and ask ourselves if the person would have committed the horrible act if they received the help they needed years prior.

What about those with less severe crimes? What about those who steal? Those who come from a poor background or neglected upbringing? What exactly does a prison sentence do for them? It locks them in isolation with others like them in hopes that punishment will magically change their entire past. Prison doesn't solve the problem, it compounds it with psychological stress. This is why recidivism is so high. Prison, just like man’s law is based entirely on punishment and not on rehabilitation. If money was not an issue, each criminal that is processed could be brought into a facility, have their brain analyzed, have their past evaluated, and the identified problem could be immediately addressed before release.

As outlandish and unrealistic as this may sound in our “reality”, doesn’t it sound more prudent than simply locking a group of people in a room behind a cage and hoping for the best once they leave?  If so, then why don’t we do this? Some facilities try to help by having school and work programs but this does not solve the issue. This simply primes the inmate to fit in with the profit-based world outside. It does not solve the underlying issues that brought the person there in the first place. It always falls right back to the good old profit based economic system we live in. 10% of all incarcerated individuals in the US are being held in private prisons. These private prisons generate their revenue through correctional contracts and are dependent on the number of prisoners they house. Through this type of setup, these prisons turn over a $7 billion profit annually. So why would we fund efforts for rehabilitation when recidivism is much more profitable?

Arguments can be made that private prisons are necessary due to the strain on the department of corrections not being able to handle the abundance of incarcerated people within state and federal facilities. However, we need to ask ourselves why there is even a strain. The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world and many of these are due to manmade laws which contain mandatory minimums, especially when

it comes to drug offenses. It’s ironic, America prides itself on being the “free world” but holds the title of the country with the most laws, most regulations, most policing bodies, and most incarcerated in the world. We have federal laws, state laws, municipal laws, ordinances, and stipulations. There are so many laws in the US that the exact number in existence is unknown to a single person. All manmade.

"Remember those in prison, as if you were there yourself. Remember also those being mistreated, as if you felt their pain in your own bodies." - Hebrews 13:3

We vote in elections to hire new or rehire old lawyers and assign the title “legislator” to them with the singular purpose of passing more laws. We have lawyers who prosecute based off these laws, lawyers who defend against the prosecutors and lawyers who judge the outcome. Many laws are obsolete and fall under the premise of “dumb laws”, but instead of eliminating them, we keep them for some reason. We’re told over and over that being a nation of laws is a good thing because laws protect us. This is not true as we’ve already seen earlier. Laws are reactionary not preventative. We have a law that says mugging is illegal, but we can’t depend on that law fully enough to trust walking down a dark alley at night. We hear that manmade laws are what keep us civilized and morally stable, but how civil is a society that locks someone who has unpaid child support charges in a room with someone who is mentally unstable enough to kill?

Even more ridiculous is the concept of white-collar crimes. Crimes which go hand in hand with the fake concept of money and the imaginary constructs of corporations and bureaucracies. Crimes in which the victim is only a victim under the premise that they live within the imaginary construct at play. Such crimes merit heavy prison sentences in which the individual’s natural life is robbed from them all because the make believe system deems it necessary. To drive home my point, imagine for a moment that you’re a child again and you are with a group of friends who just built a fort in the woods. You and the group make up a system of rules that if not followed merit the punishment of being banned from playing with them again. Now imagine breaking one of these rules. Your friends have taken it so seriously that they refuse to see you ever again and you’re not allowed to come near the fort or even the woods for the rest of your life. This is exactly how our system works. We humans have made up a society that operates within the barriers of natural law but have invented our own laws with heavy consequences. Yet, the only reason these laws remain is because the masses continue to participate and follow the guidelines of the made-up system. We all continue to play make believe. In reality, these laws only exist on paper.

So how do we prevent muggings, violent assaults, thievery, and all other forms of crimes that harm others? The elimination of poverty. The ridding of the world from the influence of the god called money. A thief has no reason to steal when he lives in abundance. We don’t see anyone being greedy with oxygen. When all basic human needs are met, crime begins to fade. It’s no accident that crime happens the most in high poverty areas. If you’re in a room full of dogs that are well fed and you throw a steak in front of them, they might look at it for a moment out of curiosity but then they’ll go back to ignoring it. When you’re in a room full of starving dogs whose ribcages are showing and you throw the same piece of steak on the ground, they’ll fight and even kill each other for it. That doesn’t make them evil, it makes them scarcity driven. But what about those who are well off and still commit heinous crimes? Look at the crime and think critically about the motive behind it. When we refocus our attention on educating our young with how to handle differences and conflict, we’ll see a shift in human behavior that we are so quick to dismiss as “our nature”.  

Our educational system has failed us in learning more about ourselves. Our education system is money driven and focuses more on career seeking rather than understanding the world we are born into. Students are taught how to better live within the invisible walls of our “civilized” world and not taught how to better themselves through understanding and critical thinking. How many times have you heard a liberal arts degree referred to as “useless” simply because it doesn’t bring a promising future full of riches? Art is an expression of both culture and the mind. It’s through art that we can understand not only ourselves, but each other. Art can tell us that a child at an early age may be disturbed and we can get them the help they need before they become an unstable adult. Our education should teach us how to be problem solvers, not money makers. It should teach us how to better the world, not how to profit from it.

As I said in the previous entry, police don’t have a job if crimes are not committed, prisons cannot operate if convictions are not made. Lawyers cannot work if conflict is not taking place. Thus, man’s law must remain if profit is to be had.

Up until this point, all entries into the Iconoclast series have shown the problems with our way of life and how our lack of critical thinking has subjected us into living within the confines of an artificial system we feel we have no control over. In the next entry we will look into how we regain control by reclaiming our mind. It’s very evident that our world is sick and we are treating only the symptoms and not the cause. The cause is very simple but for now I’ll end here.

"America's criminal justice system isn't known for rehabilitation. I'm not sure that, as a society, we are even interested in that concept anymore." - Steve Earle