17 November 2008

Obama's Hydra

Obama promises change by using government. He will be applying the same tired method that has been tried thousands of times and has changed nothing. As a matter of fact, history teaches us that things will get persistently worse. True change will come not from the heavy and omnipresent hand of government but from the invisible efforts of each individual to solve their own problems in their own way. Here are a few examples to better illustrate my point.

In the movie "Jason and the Argonauts" there is a scene where Jason must fight a monstrous Hydra. During the battle, every time he would cut off a head of the hydra, two more would take its place. He learned quickly that attacking the beast in this manner only multiplied his danger exponentially. He finally killed the beast, not by slashing at the many heads, but by stabbing its heart. Like the Hydra, our society's many persistent and growing ills can be traced back to their source: government.

How does government make problems in society multiply like the hydra's heads, you ask? Why it's simple, really. The government, in an attempt to kill one social problem by granting special privileges to some while denying them to others, causes problems to multiply geometrically. For example:

Group A is given a privilege by law at the expense of group B. Consequently, group B becomes angry and starts antagonizing group A by finding ways around the privilege, or works to get granted its own special privileges (at the expense of A). Of course, all of these things serve to make A very angry. So, in the end, both A and B become entangled in a never-ending cycle of getting more and more laws passed to enrich themselves while denying things to the other. Now imagine if there were a whole alphabet seeking the same source and method to solve their problems? Of course, it's obvious that chaos would soon ensue.

It would be like swatting at flies. No matter how many one kills there will always be more unless one gets to the source of the fly problem, which is the rotting flesh drawing them in. If one wants to control or eliminate the flies in their environment, then one must get rid of the rotting organic matter. If not, then one will be wasting their time trying to kill each individual fly because even more would take its place. Ultimately, one would go away tired and defeated. The analogy is that government is the rotten matter that supports the annoying agencies (flies) in our environment.

The examples above explain why I equate the government to a malevolent hydra. Clearly, the multitude of government agencies that have sprung up in government's attempt to eradicate the ills of the individual and society have only created more ills or magnified the ones they were trying to exterminate.

The government uses the same tired method. It declares WAR on something, develops an agency to deal with it, then passes "laws" (uses force - its only tool) to eradicate it. Of course, the governmental cure actually causes the ill to persist, mutate and spread, which leads to even more of the same failed government action. And, like a insane person it keeps trying the same thing over and over again hoping to somehow get a different result. In fact, the federal government is so insane that it passes 70,000 or so pages of new laws every year hoping for different results. If that is not as useless as batting at flies, then I don't know what is. My question is, when will the government get tired and just go away in defeat like the fly swatter?

Let me remind you of some of the wars government has declared on our society: Education, Environment, Terrorism, Drugs, Poverty, Racism, Illegal Immigration, War (on other countries), and Inflation. The agencies these wars have spawned have become like the vicious heads of the hydra, attacking us and eating away at our Liberty, leaving us in even greater peril than before the "war" started.

So, if you want real change for the better in your life, stop tiring yourself by swatting at flies. Get to the problem's source and root it out. The cure is the truth. The truth to these problems is that they are not society's problems, but are instead problems of the individual. It is up to the individual to solve their own problems in their own way. And solving your problem in your way will liberate you. This liberation will lead to peace and prosperity for yourself, loved ones and society as a whole. Doing nothing and hoping for someone else to do it for you will only bring about unwanted results, disaster and chaos.

(other articles are archived on my Writings page.)

Rebecca Iocca

Home | Writings | Quotes | Links | Probalism