Responsibility and Infantilizing Society

Anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin, in his work "Law and Authority", wrote the following regarding society's tendency to demand legislative action in place of real action:

In existing States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil. Instead of themselves altering what is bad, people begin by demanding a law to alter it. If the road between two villages is impassable, the peasant says, "There should be a law about parish roads." If a park-keeper takes advantage of the want of spirit in those who follow him with servile obedience and insults one of them, the insulted man says, "There should be a law to enjoin more politeness upon the park-keepers." [..] If the employer lowers wages or increases the hours of labor, the politician in embryo explains, "We must have a law to put all that to rights." In short, a law everywhere and for everything! A law about fashions, a law about mad dogs, a law about virtue, a law to put a stop to all the vices and all the evils which result from human indolence and cowardice.

In short, instead of taking responsibility for our freedom, security, and economic well-being, we call for empty laws that often do nothing to solve the problems we are presented with. Wherever the world is imperfect in our eyes, we delude ourselves into thinking that government action can make everything better.

In the aftermath of the recent mass shooting at Virginia Tech, many Americans are calling for tougher gun laws or other legal responses to the tragedy. In fact, this shooting should have revealed that the state is largely incapable of preventing such violence or responding to it in an effective, timely manner. Of course, the police are now combing through all of the shooter's belongings and records, trying to piece together his motivation. Their investigations, however, do nothing to protect the people or prevent future massacres.

Is it not tragic that the police -- who proudly proclaim their motto as "to serve and protect" -- totally failed to protect these people? This is not to say that the police should have known the shooting would happen, or that our society should be so saturated with police that one is always present in the event of such an attack. The most obvious lesson of this tragedy -- and sadly, one that few seem to be recognizing -- is that by empowering the government at the expense of the people (through gun laws and similar measures) we actually make ourselves less safe, even as we make ourselves less free. There is a constant process of militarization occurring throughout the country, where SWAT teams and heavily-armed police forces blur the line between military and civil defense. Behind cover of the "War on Drugs" and the "War on Terror", our government is coming to view the American population more and more as the enemy -- a process that Americans largely accept because they believe they benefit somehow from this "security".

The constantly-parroted conventional wisdom of the "trade-off" between freedom and security cannot stand up to the realities of the world presented by this and other tragic events. If Americans would open their eyes, they would see that many Americans are held hostage by violence in this same way, where gang violence prevails and innocent people are barred from protecting themselves and their families.

The actions of our government are transforming our society into a population of victims, and yet Americans are still surprised when they are victimized. A person who puts their faith in government can be nothing other than a victim -- whether it is the state that fails them or criminals and murderers who prey on them, a person who has given up responsibility for themselves and their well-being should expect nothing but hardship.

Somewhere along the line, Americans stopped being responsible for themselves and ceded to the state all their political power and social responsibility. Unsurprisingly, the result of this has been the infantilization of our people, who stand up to no intrusion by government, and remain helplessly exposed to the predations of criminals, terrorists, and psychopaths. The proper reaction to a tragedy like that at Virginia Tech is not to demand action by the government or the establishment of new ineffectual laws; it is to begin reversing the trend that has left us so vulnerable in the first place. This means asserting ourselves against the state and empowering ourselves as individuals. This is not only right but necessary, since it is only as empowered individuals, not as subservients of the state, that we can secure our own safety and liberty -- a fact that was made shockingly clear last week at Virginia Tech.