I altered a layer of my identity earlier this year (2016) which was so deep rooted that I didn't even realise that this was how I identified until recently. I do not recall the first time I had become aware of the word, 'statist', but naturally, or unnaturally depending on how you look at it, this was how I subconsciously identified. A statist is somebody who views “government” to be good and righteous. It is this opinion of mine which has changed to the opposite position. Whilst it is only an opinion, it is not the same minor event as realising a change in the flavour of a preferred ice cream. It is an uncomfortable change to accept in ones own mind. Believing that government is a good thing was so deep rooted for me and so accepted by myself, peers and the population in general via popular opinion, that I don't know what got me to even consider to examine it in the first place. I imagine that I dismissed it without proper consideration many times myself prior and probably predicted chaos and destruction, after all I was a statist and it seemed so plausible. This identity change took years to take root inside my own mind. This text is a look back and examination at what had occurred in my own mind during this process.
I recall voting twice in my life. Once in my teens in the local elections, where I voted for Labour and the other time was at about age 27 in the general election of 2010 when I voted for the Conservatives. I do not recall so much my thoughts regarding why I voted Labour in my youth but I was fresh out of a government high school and had moved in to a government college and I think it would be fair to say that I felt entitled to a certain amount of pampering within my parent's household and I felt a shameful lack of responsibility with regards to contributing to the costs of that household. So little was expected of me, it really was a socialist paradise up until about age 19 when I decided to move out. Once I began to crave my independence I felt completely unprepared. At this stage it became sink or swim. I can recall my thoughts with much more clarity as to why I voted for the Conservatives in 2010 and I opted to vote for the Conservatives because I thought that they would be financially preferable to me than Labour would be. I had began to accumulate some wealth.
From this we can observe a shift in my mindset from left to right over an approximate seven year period. My thoughts were very clearly restricted to, 'which party shall I vote for?', with an oblivious outlook with regards to what other flavours were even available within the political spectrum. I was familiar with the other main political parties of course, even the Monster Raving Looney Party, but I didn't know that all political parties stood on a spectrum which ran from 100% government on the far left and 0% government on the far right. This is quite embarrassing to admit, nevertheless it is true. I was motivated by the desire to not continue living with my parents and naturally I needed to pay for things so in turn I had naturally began to work my socks off and I felt that the Conservatives would “provide” preferable living conditions in comparison to Labour.
I don't know what prompted me, but in 2012 I decided to read, 'Economics in One Lesson', by Henry Hazlitt. I was aware that it was available freely from mises.org and I read it on my mobile phone. This was my introduction to minarchism, which stands on the far right of the political spectrum at about 5% government. Why I can't remember what prompted me to read this is frustrating to me, but whatever it was, it must have been the planting of the seed. To use this analogy of 'planting the seed', we know that before a seed is planted the soil must be appropriately fertilised if it is to take root and I suppose for me this was a mistrust in government and seeing its corruption. Government will always always be pernicious. If the state does not take by way of the threat of force it ceases to be called government and it is just another ordinary service provider and then naturally it must compete with other service providers. This is evidence which will always always be open to the scrutiny of any individual who cares (or dares) to scrutinise.
Judging by the timestamps of some of my online conversations it wasn't until 2014 that things seemed to move forward for me, but I had still not looked in to anarchy. It was soon to appear on my radar though. I recall watching a youtube documentary called 'money as debt', by Paul Grignon, and a switch seemed to go off inside me. I was really quite appalled at how the “money” system operates but I accepted this as new knowledge and although I have witnessed it being dismissed as nonsense, it is indisputable. Mike Maloney's fantastic and more professionally produced youtube video series, “Hidden Secrets of Money”, describes the exact same thing as do numerous other sources. Also in this year I shared Stefan Molyneux's brilliant youtube video, “The Story of Your Enslavement”, which is completely anarchistic but anarchy still wasn't at the forefront of my mind because the solution had not become apparent.
During late 2014 I began reading Larken Rose's, “The Most Dangerous Superstition”, and anarchy firmly came in to play for me. I must have been familiar with his youtube videos before I decided to read this, as he does promote the book at times during his videos, so it seems a plausible explanation for what prompted me to read it. I have a great appreciation of Larken Rose's work and out of all of the anarchist “celebrities”, I find myself agreeing with Larken Rose more so than anybody else and I highly recommend this book which you can download by clicking here.
It was his speech titled, “Why Speak of Violence”, which had the most profound impact on me. I believe it was this year (2016) when I watched this. As most human beings from the British Isles I was a staunch anti-gun advocate, although it never needed saying because seemingly everybody in this part of the world is anti-gun, so lets just say it was a firmly fixed opinion. It seemed to be as fixed of an opinion as my opinion that, 'murder is bad'. However, after I started studying liberty, I found that I frequently would consider the morality of any given situation be it hypothetical or from reality. If the question, 'should we be allowed to carry guns?', was ever posed to me I would have said, “of course not”, as an instinctive reaction, but this is the wrong question. I prompt the reader to simply consider the word, "allowed", within the question.
The land mass of the British Isles is not property which is legitimately owned by anybody. There are sections of land upon it which are privately and legitimately owned, such as houses and farms with their erected borders, but it is not as a whole legitimately owned by anybody. If it were, then the question is fair and the owner has the right to decide, but this is not the case and to believe otherwise is to believe that another person has a higher claim to your property than you do. The appropriate question is, 'do I accept it to be a moral action for somebody to threaten me and my neighbours with violence should any one of us peacefully obtain a firearm?' The ramifications of a certain answer to this do not justify a change to the answer. It was an, 'oh shit!', moment for me when I realised that my answer to this question was, 'no, I do not accept it to be moral'. It felt like the intellectual equivalent of being hit with the force of a cricket bat to the face and a tooth being knocked out. It was a shock and it was uncomfortable, but it was rational and that tooth was never going back in.
Why did I walk down this path? I don't know. I suppose I can comfortably say that I did not identify as a tory (conservative) despite opting to vote for them in 2010, so this part of my identity was still open to persuasion. I suppose I could say that I began questioning the world that my daughter would be stepping in to when she came to be in 2011. I suppose I could say that I wanted to make sense of things. I suppose that I could say that I wanted to keep all of my wealth and trade portions of it with the people of MY choosing. I suppose I could say that I embraced the idea of 100% freedom.
I am a capitalist in its most principled form, but this word is ambiguous. I am an anarchist but this word is ambiguous too. In order to specifically define myself to the reader I may have to introduce a new word. I am a voluntaryist. I believe that the only moral human interactions are those which are done voluntarily. Who can disagree with that? I'll tell you who. The statist, that's who.