http://www.freeofstate.org/new/?page_id=4

"We aspire to a world community without enemy, without war. Man is not enemy of man except through lies of the State and State of the lie. Once violence is chosen as method, falsehood becomes principle. Our direct eyewitness experience shows that the State owes its existence to violence, and maintains itself by lies, coercion, and war.

Stateless society is essentially need-based, and not greed-based. It is essentially self-protecting and self-regulating, without institutionalized compulsion. So we are not going to be governed, knowing that to be governed is to be coerced and violated. We shall govern ourselves.

We must evolve to a higher level of consciousness, or die out on a wasted earth. We hold that Liberty with self-rule is a better way to that peace which is so essential for survival of the human species.

The battle is for the mind of man. The path is made by walking. We are taking steps. These words mark our footprints. We try to live by respect for life. We strive for a life that harms none.

We are declaring our birthright of individual liberty, free of State coercion. Our right to life includes the right to respect the lives of others, for we cannot live without society. Respect for life demands the right of non-cooperation in the tax-financing of State murder. We are advocates of non-political means to achieve freedom. We shall be free.

We feel that mankind is facing a moral and spiritual crisis, of which ecological, social and political problems are but symtoms of a deeper cause. We are working for solutions. We welcome ideas and participation. May you live long, live free."

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HOW SHALL WE LIVE?

“Civilization does not mean electric lights. It does not mean producing atomic bombs, either. Civilization means not killing people.”

~ Nichidatsu Fujii, Buddhist Nihonzan Miyohoji Temple, quoted in Columbus & Other Cannibals (1992) by Jack. D. Forbes, PhD, Professor Emeritus, University of California

Shall we live by love, that our species may survive –
or shall we live in fear, and suffer premature extinction.
This is the root question.

Can a human society, organized into Nation-States, which in the 20th Century collectively murdered an estimated (published) 231 million people, be called a “civilization?” Is there a better way for six billion human beings to organize their lives? What is the most urgent question we can ask about our survival?

“When faced with a radical crisis, when the old way of interacting with each other and with nature doesn’t work anymore, when survival is threatened by seemingly insurmountable problems, an individual life form – or a species – will either become extinct or rise above the limitations of its condition through an evolutionary leap.” ~ Eckhart Tolle (A New Earth, 2005)

* If we destroy the Earth, how shall we live?
* What is the purpose of my life?
* What role does State-sponsored terrorism and war play in that purpose?
* Is our crisis moral-spiritual, or economic-political?

“Every violent act, no matter how complicated its reasons, has a final stage: someone has to pull the trigger or push the button. The most reliable way to eradicate violence is to start with this final stage – that is, with the individual’s refusal to participate in violence. If there is no executioner, there will be no execution.” ~ Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

* So we question ourselves: would I pull the executioner’s trigger - that is, would I myself be the executioner?
* Then, why with my income tax do I pay the executioner’s hire?
* Why should I petition and plead and write letters against the war?
* Why not just stop paying for it?

FROM VELJIBHAI DESAI, A TRUE FRIEND OF MOHANDAS GANDHI

My Basic Convictions

Mahatma Gandhi’s inspiring thinking on industries, combined with my practical experience of 30 years as Mechanical Engineer, has carved the following Basic Convictions into my heart.

1.) All the dreadful problems appearing nowadays in the world such as unemployment, hunger, exploitation, disparity, pollution, urbanization, war are direct result of heavy and centralized industries.
2.) Modern civilization based upon wasteful expenditure of natural resources is destined to end in near future.
3.) Twenty first century is not in the hand of centralized heavy industries. Undercurrent of decentralization has already started. By beginning of new century, the world will throw away the dogma of industrialization.
4.) Idea of “Everything under one roof” has become outdated. The process of splitting the bigger factories into small units has already started.
5.) Principles of more economic viability for bigger units are illusory. In fact, where social cost is considered, bigger units can never be viable.
6.) Giant complex technology has given rise to a complex way of living, due to which greed and selfishness have captured human minds and we have lost the way of happiness.
7.) Real happiness is possible only through simple living, which is possible through simple and small technology only. Complicated machinery makes simple things also complicated.
8.) World can live in peace and harmony only if we create self-sustained societies.
9.) When production is made for consumption and not for marketing, present theories of economics crumble.
10.) Small is possible at every stage, in every industry, in every country. Small is inevitable in every industry related to primary needs of the common masses in every country.
11.) Present tax collection system can exist only on centralized form of heavy industries. This facilitates and increases legalized robbery of people by governments.
12.) Transport is the curse of mankind. It facilittaes spreading of evils. Worldwide transport gives rise to worldwide exploitation.
My Horror
Whenever I see aany big factory or industry, I am horrified to look at it, because it looks to me as demon threatening the extinction of humanity, its culture, its liberty, its ethics.
My Solace
Whenever I see any tiny cottage industry, I am pacified to look at it, because it looks to me as God’s blessing enriching the lifestyle of mankind, its culture, its liberty, its ethics.

“States are not agents of morality and peace. They are instruments of force, disruption, disorder, death, dismemberment and war, instigated by those who rule them, and command others. Peace is not brought by bombardment, shock and awe and machine guns.”
~ M.S. Rozeff, 29 October 2003

* Is non-violence possible in a society of Nation-States?
* Is non-violence possible without truth?
* Does the State respect life? Or does it promulgate death?
* Does the State reflect the true nature of man?

“Civilization does not mean electric lights. It does not mean producing atomic bombs, either. Civilization means not killing people.” ~ Nichidatsu Fujii

So we ask –

* Since the State is conceived in violence, maintained by violence, with its minions profiting from violence – is the State an instrument of civilization?
* How is a sane person, respecting the lives of others, to live?

“Love is what men live by.” ~ Leo Tolstoy

* How do we live, if not by Grace?
* What greater moral responsibility – and at once today’s greatest moral crisis –than caring for Creation?
* Does the State – with its bombs, missiles and poison gas – care for Creation?
* Does the State promote Life, or deliver death?

“It is to this Truth that is God, non-violence and morality that man owes his first allegiance. This loyalty, this devotion, this consecration is higher than that owed to any institution of man.” ~ Mohandas K. Gandhi

* Does the State lie?
* Do I owe allegiance to this institution which lives by lies alone?

“The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from the violence to which it owes its very existence.” ~ Mohandas K. Gandhi

* Leaving aside beliefs of soul, surely I do have a moral conscience.
* Since the State can never be weaned from violence, to which do I pledge my allegiance: organized massive violence, or the dictates of my conscience?

“He or she who supports a State organized in a military way – whether directly or indirectly – participates in sin. Each man takes part in the sin by contributing to the maintenance of the State by paying taxes.” ~ Mohandas K. Gandhi

* The State is the tool of mankind’s violence. Should I support it?
* I pay tax to buy weapons for the Taliban (or the most recent thug-of-choice) – who later use those weapons to kill my countrymen. To whom does this make sense?
* For whom does it make dollars?

“Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the State becomes lawless and corrupt.”
~ Mohandas K. Gandhi

So we ask,

* Does the State murder? Does it torture? Does it poison, waste and destroy?
* Do I pay taxes?
* In this way then, do I not finance murder, rape, torture and destruction?
* If someone passed a donation basket asking funds to go murder the infant child of his neighbor, would I contribute voluntarily?
* Do I then pay my taxes voluntarily?
* If I do so voluntarily, am I not a financier of murder?
* If I do not do so voluntarily, then am I other than slave?


“Must the citizen, ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think we should be men first, and subjects afterward.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

* Is my personal conscience alienable?
* That is, can I assign my conscience and my will to another?
* Can any other person “represent” my personal conscience in decisions of war and peace, life and death of others?
* What then is “representative” government if not abdication of personal responsibility for decisions of life and death of other people?
* If it is not abdication of responsibility, or acquiescence to finance murder, then is it other than slavery?

“How does it become a man to behave toward this American government? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau wrote more than 150 years ago, before 600,000 were killed in the Civil War, before Hiroshima, before poison gas, before the genetic defects from Agent Orange and depleted uranium, before the unremitting global carnage of the American Imperium. So we ask, how does it now become a man to behave toward this American government?

“A wise man will not wish righteousness to prevail through the power of majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.“When were the good and the brave ever in a majority?“Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in a government? Is it not possible to take a step forward toward recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There never will be a free and enlightened State …until it comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

So we ask, all other forms of governance having been tried and failed, and having entered an era of mind-boggling destructive technological power, is it not time to try self-governance? By which we mean voluntary non-coercive association and cooperation among free individuals, who are not subject to any external authority beyond that which they impose upon themselves by unanimous consensus-to-the-last-person?

Adin Ballou (1803-1890), American clergyman and nonviolence theorist, influenced both Tolstoy and Gandhi. He is here quoted below:

“Government has no rightful claim to the allegiance of man. The principle of Christian resistance is that evil can be overcome with good. Conscientious followers must never injure any human being, nor can they belong to any voluntary association, however orderly, respectable, or allowable by law or general consent that approves as commendable in practice, war, capital punishment, or any other personal injury.”

We ask, how does outright depraved torture and massive crimes against humanity sanctioned by the U.S. government measure against this standard of a Christian society?

We advance the question – does the accident of birth in America, and the “citizenship” thereby “conferred,” constitute one’s belonging to a voluntary association?

* If it is not voluntary, am I free to leave it?
* If not free to leave it, am I not a slave? Or merely a prisoner?
* Do I own myself? Or, does the State own me?

“Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world; by non-hatred alone is hatred appeased. This is an eternal law.” ~ The Buddha

“They hate us for our freedoms,” lies the President of all the liars as he unleashes a “War on Terror” that now threatens the very survival of humanity. Did the Buddha ever receive a greater confirmation?

* Who will say that this man’s decisions “represent” his or her conscience?
* Who will say that this man – who proudly calls himself “The Decider,” and who has the power of planetary incineration at his fingertips – represents him or her?
* Did this head of a “representative” government hear the wails of dying infants in Iraq murdered by his decisions?
* Did he hear the screams of the thousands of women raped by his decisions?
* Whom does he “represent,” if not some darkness within human consciousness above which we all must rise, or die as a species?
* What if I don’t trust you, who claims to be The Decider in my name?
* What if I don’t believe your lies-unto-war?
* Why should I lay down my life – or send my children to murder and be murdered –for the sake of your lies?
* What if I am not afraid of your conjured “enemies?”
* What if I see my fellow man as friend and brother?
* Why then should I finance their murder?
* How do I rotate my anger at their mindless murderous destruction into love for the perpetrators while also acting to prevent their crimes against humanity?

“… during whose seventy-year reign of terror sixty million people died just from the regime’s war on its own nation … I have observed here in Cavendish the sensible and sure process of grass roots democracy where the local population decides its problems on its own, not waiting for the decision of higher authorities. Alas, this we still do not have in Russia, and that is our greatest shortcoming. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn farewell, Cavendish (VT) town meeting, 1994

* Is not the American regime’s global warfare machine waging war on “its own nation,” in that we are all together here as the one nation of humanity?
* What “higher authority” of the Nation State hears the voices from the grass roots of this common humanity?
* Who appointed this “higher authority” to make life and death decisions for any one of us, and also for all of us together?
* What is grass roots democracy?
* Why would I appoint a thug – himself a murderer – to “represent” me in decisions of war and peace?
* For example, nearly a fifth of India’s currently sitting MP’s stand indicted of crimes, including murder (Times of India, 16 July 2007). Correspondingly, in that other “great democracy” called America, the crimes of its legislators are rampant to the point of being legendary. How dare I admit these people “represent” me?

“The law will never make men free.” ~ Henry David Thoreau, Letters, 1860.

* The State calls its violence, Law, and the individual’s, crime. What law?
* Whose law? What say did I have in making that law?
* Am I bound by law that was made in secret session, based on lies and secret information, without my consent, against my wishes, by persons unknown and unknowable to me, in violation of justice, common sense and ethics?

“And what are they going to forgive us for? For not dying of hunger? For not keeping quiet in our misery? For not accepting quietly the gigantic historic burden of contempt and abandonment? For not rising up in arms when all other roads were closed to us?”~ Subcomandante Marcos in the Declaration of 1994 to President Salinas de Gortari.

* Who – in a world ruled by corporations – “represents” these Zapatistas, if not themselves only, as they rise up in defense of their land and their lives?
* Who can represent a people of the land except themselves?
* By what right does an urban legislator sitting in his air conditioned hall “govern” the lives of people on the land, so far away that he does not even speak their language?
* Who, in Washington or Delhi, can “represent” the conscience and the voices of women and children in Alakanuk or Venetie, Kalpatta or Dhankar?

“When your premise is ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ you can skip a lot of boring and distracting discussion and just get to work [Improving yourself and the prospects for peace.]”
~ Alia Johnson

* What higher allegiance – to the murdering State, or to the heart of humanity and my own conscience, which clearly says do not kill?”
* Is it not an act of Love to refuse murder and the destruction of Goodness, Beauty and Truth?
* Why should I be subject to control and domination by people who apply their minds to lies and murder?

“Human intelligence has been distorted and misused by the ego. I call that intelligence in the service of madness. Splitting the atom requires great intelligence. Utilizing that intelligence for building and stockpiling atom bombs is insane. Stupidity is relatively harmless, but intelligent stupidity is highly dangerous. This intelligent stupidity, for which one could find countless examples, is threatening our survival as a species.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, 2005.

* Is a murdering, torturing, raping State qualified to educate and instruct our children on moral values and the ethics of living among mankind?
* What is the most important thing we can teach our children?
* Does the State not do the following things and act in the following manner?
* It governs us, which means we are coerced, controlled, watched, spied upon, inspected, directed, law-driven, numbered, enrolled, indoctrinated, checked, evaluated, censored, registered, counted, stamped, measured, assessed, licensed, authorized, forbidden, corrected, punished, exploited, fleeced, repressed, harassed, abused, judged, condemned, imprisoned, searched, seized, manipulated, brainwashed, restricted, rationed, interrogated, profiled, poisoned, engineered, displaced, devalued, conscripted for war and murder, separated from the beloved, conjoined with hatred, dehumanized and owned as chattel property by an assemblage of criminals calling themselves a government, who have neither right, nor wisdom, nor virtue to do these things.

Are these the actions of that peace and harmony which alone can permit our survival?

“All tremble at violence; life is dear to all. Putting oneself in the place of another, one should not kill nor cause another to kill.” ~ Dhammapada 130

* Is the State capable of providing security? (Look at its origins and the historical record).
* How can we protect ourselves from predation of the State?
* What is the meaning of peace? Can there be peace without liberty?
* What, actually, is the State?
* What is self-government?
* Should we grant control of our lives to an institution whose only moral code is force?
* What is a Constitution? Is it binding upon unborn posterity? Can one generation bind another to its debt, or its war?
* Is sovereign immunity a morally valid institution?
* Is the limited liability corporation a morally valid institution?
* Should corporations have the legal rights of living persons?
* Who owns the earthly biological commons, who decides, and who can participate in its disposition?
* Does a peaceful individual have the right to ignore the State?

“If the history of humanity [the State] were the clinical case history of a single human being, the diagnosis would have to be chronic paranoid delusions, a pathological propensity to commit murder and acts of extreme violence and cruelty against his perceived enemies – criminally insane.” ~ Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, 2005.

* Does an insane man have the right to put a collar and leash on me and control my movements?
* Does a group of criminally insane murdering thugs have this right?
* Then why does the State have the right to control my movements, my livelihood, my life itself with passports, visas, licenses, tax identification numbers, birth certificate?
* What are the natural, intrinsic, inalienable rights of the individual?
* What is the ethical relationship of individual to State? Is it benevolent?
* What are the limits of State power over the individual?
* Is there a valid contract between the State and an individual citizen?
* If so, how is it acknowledged?
* Absent a contract, what rights does an individual in fact have in the face of State power?
* What is the relationship between my ethics and that of the power structure over me?
* Is the Nation-State a good – or viable – plan for long term survival of humanity?

“The activity of an organism any living system must favor both the environment and the organism itself.” ~ A. N. Whitehead

“Survival is that which stays true to life longer than that which stays true not so long. Any physical being which by its influence deteriorates its environment, commits suicide.” ~ Gregory Bateson (Steps To An Ecology of Mind, and others)

* Is mankind morally fit to survive as a species? Do we sufficiently respect life?
* What are the responsibilities of human beings to other living beings and ecology of earth?
* What is our moral relationship with other living beings?
* What is the root cause of separation of ethics from politics?
* What is our deepest existential fear? Does an institutional solution actually exist?
* What is an ecologically sustainable economy? Is its foundation other than an ethic of respect for life?
* Is the internal combustion engine a good thing?
* Is a machine and technology based economy necessarily a good thing for all humanity?
* What is an ecologically sustainable political system?
* Is majority rule an act of violence?
* Why do we fear freedom?
* Is it possible to dismantle the present Nation-State peacefully?