The Psychology of Western Government

[Ed Hurst]

Something I read this morning said it so clearly.

Markets and states do so by fostering ‘imagined communities’ that contain millions of strangers, and which are tailored to national and commercial needs. An imagined community is a community of people who don’t really know each other, but imagine that they do. Such communities are not a novel invention. Kingdoms, empires and churches functioned for millennia as imagined communities…

The two most important examples for the rise of such imagined communities are the nation and the consumer tribe. The nation is the imagined community of the state. The consumer tribe is the imagined community of the market. Both are imagined communities because it is impossible for all customers in a market or for all members of a nation really to know one another the way villagers knew one another in the past…

Consumerism and nationalism work extra hours to make us imagine that millions of strangers belong to the same community as ourselves, that we all have a common past, common interests and a common future.

People abandon the God that provides them with a community for a “god” that provides them with “free” stuff. The government is much easier to satisfy. You don’t have to be polite and grateful to your neighbors when they help you. The government obscures where the help really comes from, and leaves people with a sense of entitlement.

This is a part of the deeper sickness of Western Civilization. The Germanic Tribal background brings with it the presumed feudal ownership without a covenant. This is where Western governments get the habit of presuming jurisdiction, and "ignorance of the law is no excuse." It's a cold and dehumanizing approach to things. Without a covenant, there can be no true justice.