The tyranny of endless control

You are but a domestic farm animal, whose life is shaped by government

“Of all tyrannies,” wrote C.S. Lewis, “a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

It is the tendency of many a politician to try to cure us of our ills, and there is seemingly no end to the ills needing attention, nor any consideration as to whether the endless parade of solutions is actually necessitating the endless parade of government-ready remedies.

Photo by Lesly Juarez on Unsplash

Each of the cures, however, at minimum, deprives us of our agency, the ability to actually know and appreciate what is to be human, and make decisions for ourselves. Lewis reasoned that this would have us “classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

Through the generations, from the moment of our birth, the various powers discuss and plot and pass the policies they believe will benefit our wellbeing. And they’re content to do it forever. For them, the bowl is never full, the blade never sharp enough. There is no retreat from the sense that they can do more.

We are, to them, no different than chickens on the farm, with no free will, no awareness of how to live fully and freely but not for their loving intervention.

I suppose the chicken, who only wants the pleasure of a comfortable place to lay her eggs, would never take exception to the notion that everything is provided her and her life infinitely mapped out.

She would never call the farmer’s rules oppressive so long as the farmer arrives in the morning to make sure she is well supplied with food and water. She knows no other life.

I have also observed that chickens left in a coop are more than content to remain there, even after the door to their pen has been opened. The world outside is mysterious, perhaps even dangerous. She even fusses when other chickens break free and dare to step outside the confines of the coop’s safety.

That is where we find ourselves. After years of government actions by various oppressors — legislatures, monarchs, mayors, dictators — meddling in the affairs of mankind, the decisions have been made that define you: what you eat, where you sleep, what and where you will learn, what medicines you will take and for which conditions. And the life-altering decisions keep being made, humanity shaped into something was never meant to be. But does not doing so, eventually, cause the bowl to spill, the knife to blunt, the soul to never know security?

Like the chicken, humans accept their own captivity as long as their prison wardens — we call them politicians — are willing to vote for them the things that might seem to keep them comfortable and safe. But there is no end to the comforts a politician could reasonably offer, their only limitations being the size of their imaginations and the willingness of their contemporaries to go along with the vision.

Old officeholders fall away, and new ones take their place. You’d think after decades, centuries, and millennia of fussing about with humanity, writing the laws that finetune our behaviors and direct our live to the governments’ purposes, their task would be complete. But still, they come up with new things: mandates, restrictions, programs, incentives, taxes, penalties, and fees to shape the conditions that ultimately make or break you as an individual or provider for your own family or business.

I have never encountered a politician or bureaucrat who could describe to me what their State of Perfection would look like, their final iteration of the volumes of codes and law that shape what they believe society should look like.

Which government programs, not yet in existence, would need to be added? How big must a government be? How much funding is enough? How many more new laws would need to be passed? Is there an end to the number of new regulations that might need to be written and enforced?

“Once we pass this law/create this program/add this new requirement, all will be perfect and the legislature’s work will be done,” said no one ever.

Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people's approval
and you will be their prisoner.

Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.

— Chapter 9, Tao Te Ching, translation by Stephen Miller