Imposed Imbecility
By Rob los Ricos

"... that made you a moron - potential H-bomb..." - the Sex Pistols, God Save the Queen

One of the greatest obstacles to overcome in the struggle against capitalism is the sense of dependency its methods of production have forced upon us. By forcing people to spend most of their time in productive, redundant and unskilled labor, people must depend upon the specialized production of other workers to provide the food, clothing, shelter and countless consumer gizmos that we’re trained to want. Prior to the era of industrial enslavement, most households and families were considered functional or not by that households ability to be more-or-less-self-sufficient. This has been true of societies from the time of nomadic bands through the ages of village communities. The dislocation of peasant populations by the various states during the (on-going) period of enclosure forced people into desperate poverty and into factory labor and immigration to the newly-conquered colonies abroad. Both the rise of industrial capitalism and European conquest of the new world would not have been possible if not for this immiseration of peasant house-holds. After all, why go abroad to seek one’s fortune, why buy shoddy, mass-produced dry goods, when everything one needs is at home? Living, in the days prior to industrial enslavement, was what people did throughout the course of the day- preparing food and things that would be necessary for one’s comfort and survival in the future. Now, however, people must make a living. Not only are we forced to make profits for corporations, but we are also compelled to structure our lives around our labor activities. To make also means to force. Whereas life once flowed in gentle rhythms of light and dark, now we must structure our days according to regulations of the clock. Our society jumps according to the dictates of the factory.

Most people accept this unquestioningly. Most people are not only unwilling to take a critical glance at these imposed conditions of their lives, but are actually incapable of doing so. All the institutions of industrial society serve one main purpose; to enforce a feeling of helplessness upon the masses. Their master stroke is achieved by convincing people to embrace their dependency upon the industrial nation-state by selling it to them as empowerment. Even the most intelligent, capable people of the modern societies have fallen into this trap. They can’t help it. They were trained to be self-repressing imbeciles from the moment of birth on.

The Nuclear family - incubator for imbecility.

All of us are born as free beings in a thriving, dynamic world of abundance. The totality of nature’s plentiful banquet is ours for the taking, for sharing, for cherishing. This must be denied us, at all cost by the forces of the state and capital. Should we awaken to and demand our birthright, all industry and nation states would vanish, made irrelevant by our refusal to accept their limitations.

Unfortunately, the machinations of industry are so entrenched into our lives that the denial of our birthright begins at the moment of our birth. Immediately we are subject to the regimentation of numbers - weighed, measured, timed, classified, documented. Once in the grasp of the nuclear family, we are shackled into the role we are expected to play all our lives - that of the helpless, drooling idiot, someone to be looked after, cared for, spoiled and tolerated.

The straight jacket called childhood enshrouds us and few escape its bonds during our lives.

In the times before the era of childhood, young people spent all their time in the company of adults, mainly their parents. Infants are observant and intelligent. They could see what their parents did during their day - cooking, grooming, creating things, working their gardens. By the time they were old enough to walk, they were capable of helping their parents out, if only in very slight ways. The more the young person grew, the more the person contributed to the maintenance of the household and the well-being of its members. This was a source of pride for the young man or woman. Is it any wonder then that a person raised in this manner would be capable of starting their own household at the age of 13, 14, or 15? Having encountered few limitations other than those of their physical and experiential development, these young folks grew steadily in confidence and ability until they knew they were ready to move on to adulthood.

In the prison of childhood, the child is protected from the demands of the real world. Pushed aside, ignored and neglected, the child is protected from being a person and is treated like an imbecile. Taught to be quiet, still and out of the way, the child is left dependent upon the family, or more often - total strangers, who take great care to stop the child from growing, from realizing their abilities, from claiming their rightful place as living beings in a world of abundance. The nuclear family is just the first method of repression the young person experiences. Later, the expectations of society are made manifest through the school system. This is just a training ground for the life of meaningless drudgery to follow.

- Into the Herd -

The child is forced to undergo years of imbecility training. Total strangers shall prevent the child from developing opinions, from thinking independently, from thinking critically. The child is taught to be quiet, be still, to repeat what they are told, to obey unquestioningly, to speak only when spoken to. But the young person is full of energy and curiosity. To be still and quiet is unnatural, repulsive even. In having the discipline of school forced upon them, young people learn the most important of all lessons - those who behave in the most unnatural way are rewarded and praised. They also learn another lesson : deviations from expected behavior will be tolerated so long as one gives the appearance of fulfilling the authority’s expectations. This is the most important lesson. In this way, the normal acting out of childhood energies is reified as rebellious, troublesome behavior. As the aging children grow past the point where they could have - in an earlier time, passed into adulthood, these same childish urges are still seen as rebellious behavior: talking out of turn, doing what adults do but forbid their children to do, not doing what they are told to do. Imbecile rebellion is allowable as long as the supposed rebel otherwise goes through the motions of fulfilling society’s expectations. This isn’t a problem for almost everyone. Their heightened state of imbecility prevents them from challenging society’s hold on their lives, from realizing their birthright. After serving their sentence, the old child is paroled into the outside world. Here they will put into practice what they’ve learned- to obey without thinking and not challenge authority. Abhorred behavior is punished by sending the unruly child to a sexually segregated re-education center called jail. Here the old rules are once again emphasized: do as you’re told, speak when spoken to, lights out and go to bed. The rules of imbecility are simple. Imbecilic rebellion is mildly punished. More severe punishment is meted out for superseding the rules of imbecility, by ignoring the rules and making a greater imbecile of oneself. Severe punishment is reserved for those who interfere with other’s imbecility. These people can be locked away for life, even put to death. But more severe still is the penalty for suggesting that one’s existence need not be imbecilic. True rebels are the only actual danger to the forces of the industrial nation-states. Not only must they pay for their thought crimes with their freedom or their lives, but the imbeciles must denounce them and subject them to abuse and humiliation in the process. More interested in kissing the ass that shits on them than trying to stop the flow of shit over them, the imbeciles wail and rash their teeth to think that anyone, any one person anywhere at anytime, would dare to live outside the structures of domination which define the life of the imbecile.

The rewards of imbecility are a heightening of the helplessness and impotence of the faithful. The privileged must be protected from the rest of the herd - secreted away behind secured barriers. Unable to perform even the most basic task, the privileged must obtain surrogate mothers to tidy up after them, to procure and prepare their meals, to make plans for their activities. These utterly incompetent fools are worshipped by other imbeciles, who fetishize and envy those who have risen above them. This gives the privileged a feeling of power. The implied power is sanctified by the herd, many of whom aspire to partake in this exclusive state of advanced imbecility. To prove their worth, the imbeciles must demonstrate their idiocy through ruthless obsequience to everything that diminishes human existence. Compassion is seen as weakness. Love is a matter of ownership. Annihilation is called progress. Anything that can be done to generate profit is justifiable. Mountains are leveled, rivers dammed, forests murdered, species of every sort of living thing obliterated to provide the imbeciles their privileges. Remember, the imbeciles can only survive by forcing the uninitiated, the under privileged, even the remaining free human beings to provide for them. Once reduced to destitution, the marginalized can be bribed into becoming the armed enforcers of imbecility, ensuring the comfort and safety of the imbeciles of the world and removing anything or anyone not being utilized for the never satiated demands of expansive imbecility.

Death Watch of the Imbecile.

A lifetime of loyal service to the continuance of imbecility is rewarded with the misery and pain of slowly dying in increasing pain. Their bodies have been ruined by their labors, by their exposure to lethal industrial processes and its by-products. They have poisoned themselves with cigarettes, pharmaceuticals and liquor, horrid food, filthy air, stress, anger, hatred. The fortunate ones can then pay for the privilege of correcting and lessening the impact of this damage through medication, surgery and the intervention of medical technology. The exhausted people do not demand that those responsible for causing this damage accept responsibility for the harm they’ve caused. Nor do they demand that the responsible parties and their methods of production cease to continue inflicting this damage upon their descendents and the world in general. They are, after all, imbeciles. Indeed, many of these people’s continued miserable existence is dependent upon the continuation of the processes of industry which wrecked their bodies and their lives.

What is to be done about all these imbeciles? Those of us unwilling to perpetuate the domination of imbecility must break free of its grasp. We must learn to care and provide for ourselves and invite others to share in our adventures in self-(re)discovery. In this way, we can create a new cycle of expansive, life-enhancing existence, an undertow of liberation to pull back the tide of death-dealing industrial states.

Reject imbecility by embracing your own ability to meet your needs outside the santified disability of the imbecile.*