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Manuel
Advanced Member
USA
762 Posts |
 Posted - 13 Mar 2006 : 12:50:55
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Greetings,
The following are excerpts, both highlighted and bulleted from HERE
The La Boétie Analysis
Grasping the "La Boétie analysis" is a key to understanding the Terra Libra strategy. La Boétie approached his subject like an outsider observing the strange phenomenon of political behavior. He wrote like someone who had jumped out of the system and viewed it without preconceptions. He somehow unbrainwashed himself so he could adopt a "Martian viewpoint."
What is so remarkable is that La Boétie did this in 1552 or 1553 - four-hundred-and-forty years ago! It is also interesting that modern tyrants use the same formula today to subjugate and dominate their victims. Here are the main elements of the La Boétie analysis as I see it:
·The only power tyrants have is the power relinquished to them by their victims.
·The tyrant is often a weak little man. He has no special qualities that set him apart from anyone else - yet the gullible idolize him.
·The victims bring about their own subjection - the "win their enslavement."
·If without violence the tyrant is simply not obeyed, he becomes "naked and undone and as nothing."
·Once you resolve to serve no more, you are free.
·We are all born free and naturally free.
·Grown-up adults should adopt reason as their guide and never become slaves of anybody.
·People can be enslaved through either force or deception.
·When people lose their freedom through deceipt, it is because they mislead themselves.
·People born into slavery regard it as a natural condition.
·In general, people are shaped more by their environment than by their natural capacities - if they allow it.
·Habit and custom are powerful forces that keep people enslaved.
·There are always some people who cannot be tamed, subjected, or enslaved. Even if freedom were to be entirely extinguished, these people would re-invent it.
·Lovers of freedom tend to be ineffective because they are not known to one another.
·People who lose their freedom also lose their valor (strength of mind, bravery).
·Among free people there is competition to do good for humanity.
·People seem to be most gullible towards those who deliberately set out to fool them. It is as if people have a need to be deceived.
·Tyrants stupefy their victims with "pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes."
·Tyrants parade like "workers of magic."
·Tyrants can only give back part of what they first took from their victims.
·Tyrants attain their positions through: (a) Force; (b) Birth; or (c) Election.
·Tyrants create a power structure, consisting of a multi-layered hierarchy, staffed by a conspiracy of accomplices. Accomplices receive their positions as a favor from the tyrant.
·The worst dregs of society gather around the tyrant - they are people of weak character who trade servility for unearned wealth.
·Accomplices can profit greatly from their positions in the hierarchy.
·If people withdraw their support, the tyrant topples over from his own corrupted weight.
” tyrant who has no other power than the power they give him”
“Shall we say that those who serve him are cowardly and faint-hearted?”
“It is therefore the inhabitants themselves who permit, or, rather, bring about, their own subjection, since by ceasing to submit they would put an end to their servitude. A people enslaves itself, cuts its own throat, when, having a choice between being vassals and being free men, it deserts its liberties and takes on the yoke, gives consent to its own misery, or, rather, apparently welcomes it”
“the more one yields to them, and obeys them, by that much do they become mightier and more formidable, the readier to annihilate and destroy. But if not one thing is yielded to them, if, without any violence they are simply not obeyed, they become naked and undone and as nothing, just as, when the root receives no nourishment, the branch withers and dies.”
“Liberty is the only joy upon which men do not seem to insist; for surely if they really wanted it they would claim it. Apparently they refuse this wonderful privilege because it is so easily acquired.”
“You let yourselves be deprived before your own eyes of the best part of your revenues; your fields are plundered, your homes robbed, your family heirlooms taken away. You live in such a way that you cannot claim a single thing as your own; and it would seem that you consider yourselves lucky to be loaned your property, your families, and your very lives.”
“He who thus domineers over you has only two eyes, only two hands, only one body, no more than is possessed by the least man among the infinite numbers dwelling in your cities; he has indeed nothing more than the power that you confer upon him to destroy you.”
“Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces.”
“we should be intuitively obedient to our parents; later we should adopt reason as our guide and become slaves to nobody”
“we are all naturally free”
“Since freedom is our natural state, we are not only in possession of it but have the urge to defend it.”
” what evil chance has so denatured man that he, the only creature really born to be free, lacks the memory of his original condition and the desire to return to it?”
“Certainly all men, as long as they remain men, before letting themselves become enslaved must either be driven by force or led into it by deception”
“When they lose their liberty through deceit they are not so often betrayed by others as misled by themselves.”
“men born under the yoke and then nourished and reared in slavery are content, without further effort, to live in their native circumstance, unaware of any other state or right, and considering as quite natural the condition into which they were born.”
“we learn to swallow, and not to find bitter, the venom of servitude.”
“It is truly the nature of man to be free and to wish to be so, yet his character is such that he instinctively follows the tendencies that his training gives him.”
“custom becomes the first reason for voluntary servitude.”
“Even if liberty had entirely perished from the earth, such men would invent it. For them slavery has no satisfactions, no matter how well disguised.”
“men of strong zeal and devotion, who in spite of the passing of time have preserved their love of freedom, still remain ineffective because, however numerous they may be, they are not known to one another”
“The essential reason why men take orders willingly is that they are born serfs and are reared as such.”
“liberty once lost, valor [strength of mind, bravery] also perishes.”
“Among free men there is competition as to who will do most, each for the common good, each by himself, all expecting to share in the misfortunes of defeat, or in the benefits of victory;”
“stupefied peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes,”
“The fools did not realize that they were merely recovering a portion of their own property, and that their ruler could not have given them what they were receiving without having first taken it from them.”
“It is pitiful to review the list of devices that despots have used to establish their tyranny; to discover how many little tricks they employed, always finding the populace conveniently gullible, readily caught in the net as soon as it was spread.”
“It has always happened that tyrants, in order to strengthen their power, have made every effort to train their people not only in obedience and servility toward themselves, but also in adoration.”
“four or five who maintain the dictator,”
“The six have six hundred who profit under them,”
“The six hundred maintain under them six thousand,”
“not the six thousand but a hundred thousand, and even millions, cling to the tyrant by this cord to which they are tied.”
“through big favors or little ones, that large profits or small are obtained under a tyrant,”
“Whenever a ruler makes himself a dictator, all the wicked dregs who are corrupted by burning ambition or extraordinary avarice, these gather around him and support him in order to have a share in the booty and to constitute themselves petty chiefs under the big tyrant.”
“men accept servility in order to acquire wealth”
“how great is the number of those who, having by shameful means won the ear of tyrants - who either profit from their villainies or take advantage of their naivete - were in the end reduced to nothing by these very tyrants;”
“the majority of the dictators of former days were commonly slain by their closest favorites”
“the tyrant is never truly loved, nor does he love.”
“Let us therefore learn while there is yet time, let us learn to claim our liberty. Let us open our eyes to our natural freedom for the sake of our honor, for the very love of virtue. As for me, I truly believe I am right, since there is nothing so contrary to reason as self-imposed tyranny. I believe the time will come when support will be withdrawn from tyrants and their accomplices. Then let us watch them all fall from their own corrupted weight.”
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Edited by - Manuel on 13 Mar 2006 12:54:43 |
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Discourse on Voluntary Servitude
