Does the House Stand?

Currently, there is much debate over whether or not some entertainers should be forced to stand for some kind of political ceremony. Not standing is said to be some kind of disrespect to the idealism of the current view on the construction of the idea. It - those that want everyone to stand - say it is against the traditions of the people.

The great irony is that I've already directly discussed this exact position in Saint Horz, the Stone Saint. The story there is called "Yoked" where at length Horz tries to remind an angry crowd of people that they have misunderstood the nature of the thing they are worried over. It doesn't work out for Horz, they try and Stone him, which fails, like all such things would. But the point is clear to the Saint, people are unreachable. They have, by bad epistemology, come to accept a method of understanding things without actually having to learn why they understand them. Such people will never be reachable. It isn't even possible to get them to see something because they have zero methods of really examining their own minds. They cannot go into themselves and say, "Where did that method of thinking come from?", "Why is that method of thinking, and thus my way of determining my own thoughts, the only way I can see things? Why is this my reality?". It's almost hilarious because people will say of their enemies, "Why can't they see my point of view?" But at the same time, they are incapable of saying, "Why can't I SEE THEIR VIEW?" As if trying to really teach your own mind a new method of thinking is anti-natural, immoral, wrong. Thus, most people accept that no new learning is real to them.

The post on facebook that made me want to broach this subject again - why can't we change our thinking - was some owner of one of these groups of entertainers saying that his troupe will stand or they will get fired. It should go without saying, that as employees, they should understand their role in the organization and if there is a contract in place that requires them to stand or if the language of the contract indicates that they should be forced to comply with orders at some future requirement, then there is little the individual who signed said contract can do. Either there is a contract or there is no contract and the individuals are not being asked to stand, but are in fact being threatened and thus their cooperation would be made under duress, forced by compulsion. 

Either they are standing by contract or they are being forced to stand by extortion. Neither of which suggests the religious nature of the reason why people would stand in the first place. For isn't the whole concept of the notion of standing for attention a non-individualism? Isn't it a construction of social concourse? Isn't it nothing more than the same thing as going to church to participate in prayer and devotion? Isn't it similar to any kind of public event that could as easily have been done by the individual without the constraints of others? Such acts are anti-individual and thus, by design; communism. The people that are demanding they stand are doing nothing more than suggesting a moral truth in giving orders:  Befehl ist Befehl --- its the defense the Nazi's used.

I think of Neo from the Matrix, on the floor, struggling for breath. Standing over him Morpheus looks down and says, "You think that's air you're breathing?" 

Neo can't get out of his own way. 

He's been too well programmed and accepts someone else's opinions on the metaphysics of the universe and his method of learning is based, hook, line, sinker on the whole construction that was the matrix.

The same is true for this situation.  

For most people will talk about Liberty and Freedom and yet they pull in the air that the communists have been feeding them: that it is ONLY this social construction that is the reality. It is the notion of some undefinable nebulous thing called Nation that should supersede those ideas of Liberty and Freedom. And that is where it starts: Liberty is no longer a construction of individual reality, but merely an ideal that should be striven toward, but not singularly. The individual has no right to strive toward it on their own unless he goes toward it with the wave of society. You can see this by the fact that everyone gives the whole thing lipservice by suggesting that the entertainers have the right to not stand, but that they also have the right to boycott them for not standing. 

Yet how is it possible to really be for Liberty and Freedom and at the same time find that you have the authority to suggest that some construction of socialism, the forced involvement in something, has a moral prerogative over the actions of anyone? How does standing have any value in the individual's conception of Liberty?  It can't. Even the arguments for standing suggest that it has nothing to do with Liberty: 

"We stand because we're showing respect", "We stand for all those that have died for our freedom". Needless, it always comes back to showing something for others. That is communism.

I ask, "Who are you standing attention too?" Most of the time the answer back from people is, "The Country". Then I ask, "Who is the country?" They say, "Well, I mean to the ideas of this country, like freedom of speech and the right to pursue your happiness" But of course, they don't even see that they mean only their happiness, damn the rest of the world and the opinions of anyone else's happiness.  But the reality, of course, is they are not saluting their own freedom, but are instead protecting the machinery of government, by suggesting that it is a moral truth that can force any kind of social action on us and we must obey.

If we were saluting our own Liberty we could do that without symbols or an oath. If we were saluting to the individualism invented by the founding men of the nation, we could do that without pledging allegiance to an object; an object that has no limit, no mind, no method of being part of a human beings reality. By pledging allegiance to an object, one simply indicates that whoever owns that object can make those that pledge do whatever the object requires. In George Orwell's 1984 the object was Big Brother:

"Does Big Brother really exist?"

"Of course he does."

"No, I mean, does he exist like I exist?"

"Winston, YOU DO NOT EXIST."

In reality, bowing to Big Brother is merely to ensure that Big Brother is the only reality. Pledging of any kind, where that pledge is not first made of the individual to themselves, is already anti-Liberty and anti-freedom. 

Which brings us back to Neo, sucking in air, trying to catch his breath.  Luckily Neo had Morpheus who wanted him to change his method of looking at what reality was actually formed of, but we, real human beings do not have such a character. Instead, when we are down on the ground sucking breath we are told we must accept the suffering of ourselves as our reality.

Which is it? 

Men are self-definable and have the right to build, by contract, relationships with others.

or

They are mere illusions of the State, left to concede authority over their own lives when demanded to do so.