Assume There Is No God

What is the most important choice you will ever make?

(Assume there is no God.)

The single clenched fist lifted and ready,

Or the open asking hand raised and waiting.

Choose:

For we meet by one or the other.

                                                  Carl Sandberg.

In the beginning there were humans, roaming around, huntering and gathering. Then some berk decided to plant seeds and come back the next year to see what happened. The result was an ancient agricultural community, settled around a stable food source. 

This community got a bit nervy about other communities in the area and also needed its own people to stop threatening the stable food source by thieving and fighting. So they chose a chap to handle all that stuff and keep everyone safe. But what happened when this community joined another community, becoming bigger and more complex in the process?

Since the 1700s single communities have spread across ocean and continent, creating new demands, and mixing with other communities in awkward ways. No longer is mere security, provided by one man or a small group, enough. Now, the act of keeping communities safe through government is a profession practiced by millions, from neighbourhood level right up to space exploration.

Which means all of your life is defined by its relationship with government. Our educational options, drunken behaviour, conservatory extensions, tree chopping, television viewings, and car buyings are all shaped by what the government has decreed is acceptable. We cannot build there because the law says no (it is our neighbour's property). We must give up our income because the law says to (it funds the provision of things we need, like healthcare).

We acquiesce to this situation. We are used to it. We are used to the understanding, both instinctive and learned, that we must follow the law; this understanding is so simple that we never register its presence - it's almost silly to point out. 

We simply make sure our actions are in accordance with this law. Even our births, marriages, and deaths are all limited by what the law requires. We sign the right papers and pay the correct fees to ensure all is proper. We grasp its 'open, asking hand', greeting the long arm of the law as an honouring companion, and don't think too much about it.

But many people break the law. Many do not accept the state's structuring of all life.

No agrarian community can tolerate the theft of crops, or violence in the streets, limiting the labour needed for harvest. Such action must be stopped. This is also the primary responsibility of the modern state: to maintain security so that citizens may contribute to common welfare. The government, and the government alone, may use violence in order to achieve this. 

If we cannot choose to live in conduct with that security, then the 'single clenched fist' will meet us. Regardless of all else we do in life - who we marry, what we do with our money, where we work - the iron fist will punish a failure to acquiesce to the state. It will deny us freedoms; it may hurt us physically, confine us to small spaces, take from our property, or even kill us. 

It is this simple. This is why most simply shake the law's hand, agree to its terms and conditions, and move on.

And nothing we do - assuming there is no God - can escape these parameters. Our only freedom is in this greatest choice: the open asking hand, or the single clenched fist?

Choose.