A Fundamental Truth About Government

July 6, 2019 Fatih Siyasi 752 Views government, truth

It goes without saying that a common denominator throughout politics is government. It also goes without saying that government impacts the lives of most, if not all, people on a daily basis. Yet there is a fundamental truth about government that is seldom discussed or even considered by most people.

Government Defined

Dictionary.com defines government, the noun, as “the political direction and control exercised over the actions of the members, citizens, or inhabitants of communities, societies, and states.” Nothing against Dictionary.com, but it seems like something is missing from this definition? Like it’s lacking something. Well that’s because, there is something missing.

People. This definition leaves out the word “people”.

You see, government is not just the political direction and control exercised over the actions of the members, citizens, or inhabitants of communities, societies, and states like the definition reads. It’s the political direction and control exercised by some people over the actions of the rest of the people who make up or inhabit communities, societies, and states.

Now I’m not trying to pick on Dictionary.com for their definition of the term “government”. On the contrary, I chose to use their definition because I think it’s the best one you’ll find online. And the other definitions don’t bother to mention people, anyway.

But it is the role of people in defining government that leads us to the fundamental truth about government and the point of this post. And that fundamental truth about government is that government doesn’t actually exist. It’s imaginary. Government only exists in the minds of human beings. Government is a fiction.

To borrow a phrase from the movie The Matrix, your mind makes it real. This is achieved through something political science calls “legitimacy”.

Legitimacy

The term “legitimacy” is defined as “the right and acceptance of an authority, usually a governing law or a régime”. What this means as a practical matter is that government is an imaginary thing that has authority and value only because enough people believe it has authority and value. It naturally follows that without that belief by a large enough number of people, government will cease to have authority or value. In other words government would cease to exist.

I know this is all very ephemeral, so let’s look at something more concrete.

Apples are apples . . .

To the right is the picture of an apple. You could choose to call the apple “house” or “dog” or “music” and even genuinely believe that it’s one of those things. You could even believe the apple doesn’t actually exist. But none of that will change the fact that somebody can bite into the apple and they will receive nourishment from it, and even pleasure if it tastes good. In other words, whether you or I believe that thing is an apple or that it exists won’t change the reality that it is, in fact, an apple and that it really exists.

Now compare the apple with the Soviet Union. For most of the Twentieth Century, the Soviet government seemed very real to everybody on Earth. It exercised authority over a vast territory and hundreds of millions of people for roughly seventy years. It wasn’t destroyed in a war or by natural disaster. The Soviet Union collapsed because it lost legitimacy. In other words it ceased to exist when enough people stopped believing it had authority over them. When that happened, poof, it was gone. That’s because ultimately the Soviet Union was a fiction, it was imaginary, just like every government that exists today or has ever existed.

So what?

If you’ve stuck around this far, you may be thinking so what? The so-what is this. Most people treat government as this immovable object, an unchangeable fact of life. But, in fact, government is a fiction, it’s imaginary. It only exists in our minds and therefore only has the authority and control over our existence that we give it.

When you really consider the implications of this fact, it can be overwhelming because the implications are broad and far-reaching, and can also be very personal. Accepting this fact may challenge a person’s worldview and their very personal identity. But it’s a truth that bears keeping in mind because this also means that what government is and what government can do is not fixed. Nor is the existence of government an unchangeable fact.

Most important to understand, and make no mistake about this, there are those who make it their business to think about this truth and use it to exploit the power accorded to government and, in turn, the rest of humanity. As the saying goes, “knowledge is power”. What do you think the result is when a small number of people pay attention to this fact when the rest of us don’t bother considering it at all? And isn’t there evidence that we are living in such a situation right now?

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