A Counterblaste to Government

King James I of England — of the King James Bible fame, published in 1604 “A Counterblaste to Tobacco.” A “counterblaste” is a forceful response or retaliation. There can be no more “forceful” response or rebuke than that offered by a sovereign monarch, whose words and acts were said to result from divine inspiration.

Within the text, the King stated:

Have you not reason then to bee ashamed, and to forbeare this filthie noveltie, so basely grounded, so foolishly received and so grossely mistaken in the right use thereof? In your abuse thereof sinning against God, harming your selves both in persons and goods, and raking also thereby the markes and notes of vanitie upon you: by the custome thereof making your selves to be wondered at by all forraine civil Nations, and by all strangers that come among you, to be scorned and contemned. A custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse.

That “government warning” came more than FOUR HUNDRED YEARS ago. In my mind, if one continues to smoke after the KING warned you not to, the onus is on the smoker not the state and not society. Government condemnation did not result in the immediate cessation of smoking, and smoking continues today. It continues despite that ancient warning and despite ubiquitous government campaigns and labels going back nearly 60 years — two generations. No one who smokes can sincerely claim to be ignorant of the certain harms. That first puff, which burns the throat and lungs and which induces an involuntary cleansing cough, should be warning enough.

We are creatures of vice. We are no more going to eliminate vice from the human condition than we are going to eliminate the need to breathe. That is not to say that vice is necessary for life, but it is necessary for many to “feel alive,” even if the long-term effects are deleterious, detrimental, and self-destructive. We have not only smokers, who are addicted to tobacco, but we also have alcoholics, whose recklessness is an even greater threat to society at large, and drug abusers, whose deliberate ingestion of poisons make self-harm even more certain and potential death even more likely. The obvious threats to health and safety have proven insufficient to deter addicts and casual users from vice.

Now, we have agents of government — including the Surgeon General — proposing that we put “warning labels” on Social Media apps and platforms, as if their conspicuous dangers are not already known. Nanoseconds of introspection tell us that Social Media is bad for us. We all know intuitively and from personal experience that the euphemistically denominated “Social” Media is, in fact, anti-social. Like other vices, “screen time” is addictive and feeds compulsions. It is also divisive and destructive. By using this digital instrumentality, persons have ruined lives (both inadvertently and deliberately). Something that is touted as bringing people together has been instrumental in tearing apart persons and peoples, and it continues to rend the fabric of society itself.

At the birth of “The Face Book,” Mark Zuckerberg (in)famously said:

Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard just ask. I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS. People just submitted it. I don’t know why. They ‘trust me.’ Dumb f**ks.

It has been said, “If you’re using a ‘free’ service, you are the PRODUCT not the CUSTOMER.” That is “OK” so long as the users realize that fact and so long as personal information, which is “freely” disseminated, is not utilized to the users’ material detriment.

The government now argues that users are being manipulated and harmed. I would argue that users KNOW that they are being manipulated. I would contend that the harm is conscious and self-imposed. I would also argue that government is hardly an institution worthy of chastising others for lies, deception, and obfuscation. Government has been attempting to manipulate the people and to socially engineer society for years, decades, and generations. Government is less concerned about eliminating abuses of power generally and most concerned about assuring that the institution has a monopoly on such abuses.

I have never “trusted” Mark Zuckerberg or other IT moguls, but at least I know their motivations: money and power. Most of us are familiar with the opening line of the famous quote, from Lord Acton, but the balance of the quotation is most telling:

Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority.

As power trends toward absolute, so does the certainty for corruption and with corruption come abuse oppression and tyranny. Therefore, I am most distrusting of an omnipotent state, which is operated by self-serving political minions and through government technocrats. The political classes crave vicarious power, and they covet the position prestige and profit to be derived therefrom.

The agents of government would have us to believe that they are acting selflessly and altruistically. They contend that they are acting in OUR best interests. They argue that we would appreciate better their micromanagement of our lives, if only we were smart enough to understand what they were doing “for us” — as opposed “to” us.

Even if their efforts were sincere — and obviously I am not convinced that they are, I am constantly reminded of “moral busybodies” in the words of C.S. Lewis:

If we are to be mothered, mother must know best. . . . In every age the men who want us under their thumb, if they have any sense, will put forward the particular pretension which the hopes and fears of that age render most potent. They ‘cash in.’ It has been magic, it has been Christianity. Now it will certainly be science. . . . Let us not be deceived by phrases about ‘Man taking charge of his own destiny.’ All that can really happen is that some men will take charge of the destiny of others. . . . The more completely we are planned the more powerful they will be.

. . .

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may 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. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

These are not new concepts and ideas. These are not new dangers and consequences. They are “new” to us. Through institutional knowledge and the collective wisdom of the ages, we have the opportunity to avoid repeating the mistakes of others. Regardless, the solutions and fixes — even to problems deemed novel — do not exist within vice — whether represented by mind-altering substances, mind-numbing social media, or mindless bureaucracies. The answers are within ourselves.

If we eliminate the perceived “need” for vice (i.e. demand), we eliminate the market for vice (i.e. supply). That is the greatest fear of media moguls and the political classes: That persons acting in their own best interests will make purveyors of vice and their addictive snake oil obsolete.

Unfortunately, the words of H.L. Mencken have never rang truer: Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.