The Lifeboat Lie

There is a moral code written in our nature. When we take up an unused piece of nature and begin to use it, we instinctively think of it as our property. We take instinctive affront when our person or our property is assaulted by others. We feel instinctive outrage when we see the person or property of others assaulted. And we feel instinctive guilt when, or at least after, we assault the person or property of others. This instinctive moral code is only shoved aside when we enter conditions of extremity (known in ethics as "lifeboat situations"), in which circumstances have forced the human community to devolve into a war of all against all. In those cases, we instinctively cast aside our communal moral feelings for the sake of extreme short-term selfishness. We morally allow ourselves “necessary evils”.

The state has deceived the bulk of humanity into believing that society is inherently in constant extremity: a perpetual "lifeboat situation" in which a great many "necessary evils" must be committed by the state, else the "lifeboat" of society will keel over and everybody will drown.. This is a lie. Society does not require for its survival, or even for its flowering, that certain men be above natural morality. The acts of murder, plunder, and enslavement committed by the state are not necessary evils.  They're just plain evils; just as much as if you or I committed them as private individuals.