Go back six hundred years and put today’s atheist somewhere where he’ll be tortured to death for questioning the existence of God. What will he do? To answer this question, look at how skeptical he is about sacred beliefs enforced today at the point of a gun.
When it comes to a God in which people believe merely because others believe, with no argument or evidence, our atheist vehemently objects. But when it comes to legal tender for all debts public and private, in which people believe merely because others believe, with no argument or evidence, today’s atheist has nothing to say. This kind of cowardly hypocrisy, perfectly willing to challenge ideologies no longer backed by the sword, but unwilling to challenge equally arbitrary and preposterous ideologies backed by machine guns, seems to me among the most contemptible forms of cowardice.
“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of land, thought of saying ‘This is mine,’ and found people stupid enough to believe him,” says Rousseau, “was the true founder of civil society.” Two centuries later, we remain stupid enough to believe tyrants own the earth, with no argument or evidence, merely because we’re threatened with violence if we refuse.
The idea of respecting someone not particularly noble or intelligent merely because he's rich has never been one I could really wrap my head around. It just seems so abjectly servile and cowardly. There were slaves brave enough to talk back to their masters even when they were being whipped to death. But today, when the penalty is far less dire, we don’t even think of disobeying our corporate masters.
The German poet Heinrich Heine complained that his generation obeyed their capitalist lords even without chains or a lash. They were so eager to obey, they hearkened to even the faintest hint from their masters. The slavery was deep in their souls, says Heine, and this kind of spiritual slavery is as dire as any material slavery enforced by whip and chains could ever be.
“The fruits of the earth belong to everyone,” says Rousseau, “and the earth itself belongs to no one.” The propagandists of the power elite tell you it’s a privilege to serve in their corporate tyrannies. Don't listen to them. Put down the new employee handbook. Pick up Rousseau instead. “How much misery and horror the human race would have been spared,” asks Rousseau, “if someone had torn up the stakes and filled in the ditches?” It’s not too late to tear down the electrified fences that exclude us from the enclaves of wealth, and take our world back from the tyrants. The level of corruption in our economic and political system has reached the point that the claims of the world’s billionaires to own all the land and means of production are worth no more than the paper they’re printed on. Let’s tear them up and start again.
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