The Deepest State — Guest Post by Ianto Watt

The Deepest State — Guest Post by Ianto Watt

I’d like to propose an analogy. But first, the groundwork. Let’s say you believe (but can’t prove) that there is such a thing as ‘The Deep State‘. Your friend, who is equally unable to disprove this belief, equally disbelieves this thought.

Suppose you have a government that says one thing, yet seems to be intent on delivering its opposite. Thus, you must believe that either it is composed of idiots, or of liars. For whatever reason. And yes, there can be (and always is) lots of middling ground between. But overall, let’s take the extreme case. Why? Because today, most cases are extreme.

Here’s an example. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That ring a bell? We have a government that will seemingly go to every extreme to protect an obvious malefactor (say, a convicted serial-killer), yet willingly allows the execution of the innocent. The truly innocent. Those who have committed no earthly crime. The living but as-yet unborn.

Now think of an assembly line. At the beginning of the line there is an open slot. It looks empty, even as the line begins to move. Yet the owner of the factory has already assigned a name to that slot. And a Vehicle ID#. He already knows what he intends to build, what it will look like, what it will cost, and what he will call it. He knows the value he places on that seemingly empty slot. A value higher than the sum of the intended parts.

The owner built that assembly line in order to build that car, and many others. So, there is already a sunk cost associated with that ’empty’ slot. In other words, that slot is not really empty. And the car already exists, at least in the mind of the owner. He has already put his money where his mind is, by building the line. But only when that very first visible part is inserted upon the line can we bystanders begin to sensibly perceive what the owner already knew.

So who is right about the reality of the existence of that car in the thirty seconds before that first visible part was placed upon the line? The owner, or the person who can’t believe anything that he can’t see?

Someone can come along and interrupt the process. They can prevent the final construction of that particular car. And if they do, what have they destroyed—a car, or an amalgamation of parts that can’t possibly be driven at the moment of interruption?

I argue a car has been destroyed. After all, the thing destroyed didn’t belong to the destroyer, so why should he be allowed to define what he has destroyed? Surely the owner should be the one to place the value upon his own work. Yes, he should have to show that he has a rational basis for his belief. But just as surely, the destroyed parts and labor expended to date are not the only costs. The true cost is much larger, and must equal the cost of the final product, for there will be more costs associated with the process of obtaining justice. The cost to break even on this loss will often exceed the final value of the originally intended car. Anyone who has dealt with the legal system will understand this. Or with the insurance industry and its representatives. You’re never made wholly whole in the event of a loss, whether accidental or intended.

Back to the Deep State. Why do we have this mechanism, the Visible State, if it is not for the purpose of constructing and maintaining a functional society? A mechanism that delivers visible results through a visibly understandable process. Hopefully it will deliver a society that values mercy as well as justice. Mercy is deliverance from the dictates of a law that was broken. But mercy must be predicated upon law. Otherwise, it’s simply amnesty. Without law, there can be no mercy. Only error. Or terror.

I hear the first objection already! What if the owner was the one who terminated the production of that car? How can he be guilty of a crime against himself? Indeed, how so? But is the person you have in mind really the owner? Or just the assembly-line worker? Because in the real example, the unborn, there is an ingredient that must be accounted for, but which, like the owner, is totally invisible: the life-force. Anyone can assemble lifeless material in a physical world and even endow it with the power (but not the motive) to self-move. But someone, even in this example, has to be the prime mover of this lifeless pile of metal. Your car doesn’t start itself. Your car doesn’t yearn to be alive, and it never will.

Obviously, we have to decide who owns us? Our Prime-moving Maker, or our physical factory-worker parents? We know which way the State has decided. In fact, it says only one of our factory-worker parents gets the right to destroy what they feel is their own work. These workers (today) have no thought about who gave them the parts to assemble, let alone gave them their own place within the factory. Is this place called Earth just a random jumble of people and parts, or is it an organized entity that belongs to someone other than us? Can we even posit such a term as ‘us’ in such a fragmented world? There is no ‘we’, there’s only me.

There’s the rub. Those who believe there is (or should be) an organized and rationally operating entity can’t point to a visible owner. But those who don’t believe there is an owner (because they also can’t see him) are equally convinced that there is something else that no one can see. The life-force. Show me a pound of it, please. Or a quart. Or a piece of it. Or any measure you like.

Those who disbelieve in the idea of the cosmic owner, based on their unmet empirical demands, but believe in the unmeasurable life-force, are simply trying to have it both ways.

Using this rubbery logic, anyone can (and many do) assume that either they are the owner (at least in some small part) or that there is no owner whatsoever. In which case, anything goes. But that leads me to ask, if there never was an actual true owner, how did this concept of ownership arise? Who would have thought of it? Yes, I know, all you socialists believe some clever capitalist conned a bunch of idiot workers into trading their time for paper. But seriously, how did the social beginnings of organized physical social life (including work) begin if there was not some pattern, some form, for mankind to follow as he built out his communal environment?

I just don’t see the proverbial cave-man thinking very much about the concept of anything other than how to spear some dinner. And how to keep his spear from his fellow cave-man. How did he ever dream up that spear? When did he ever get the time to think of higher things? How did he ever get out of that cave? What is it that convinced him to cooperate with anyone? How did he convince them? And if you say it was by force, then how did our fairly-cooperative society of today grow out of that benighted past?

We’re now at the mark. The mark where we say things begin, and end. Either cave-men built the Pyramids and went to the moon all on his own, or he had some help. And if he had some help, who helped? And when?

I do not disbelieve the Law of Entropy. But neither do I believe that we are living in an enclosed system where Entropy is King. Something else must have happened. Something that would produce a rational result. The result that we can all see and feel in our daily lives. Meteors don’t count as rational actors. Yet if something rational happened, why would it not be at the beginning? Why would some unseen-yet-real factory owner wait through some interminable billions of years to get to work? That’s not very capitalistic, or even socialistic. Nor would it be very intelligent. And factory owners are not stupid, regardless of how you view them.

You can argue, weakly, that those billions of years somehow simply happened, and that throughout the last few relative ‘moments’ of that immense span of Sagan-time some individual cave-man decided to forgo immediate survival in favor of the whole of cave-kind. And you can then further argue (even more weakly) that there were enough like-minded cave dwellers who supported this relative genius, and that they were willing to subjugate themselves to his cooperative dreams of joint effort. And of course, that they all had the time to do this. And that their wives approved of this idea.

Mankind has the innate intelligence to accomplish all that recorded history has told us. And he equally has the basest instincts that inform us of the incredible atrocities he has committed in these same annals. Given this, and given the assumption (that I do not share) that man began his trek in some primitive environment that leaves little if no time for wonder (of anything), with no supporting social structure beyond his family (if indeed families as we know them existed), how in the Hell did he survive taking that first tentative step towards social organization?

We’re not dealing with billions of Sagan-Years now, even if we buy Carl’s fable. No, we’re now at the end of his narrative, and all of it had to happen in a relative flash of time. At least, if you want to explain things like the rise of the Pyramids, etc. in such a short time. How did all of this take place in such a short span? What was the catalyst that allowed such a leap of achievement for such primitive men? Please tell me, I’m anxious to know.

Before you object, let me relate what my father once told me. He was the managing partner of one of the largest engineering firms in the world. He’d travelled everywhere and seen everything. One day, while arguing with me (as I delusionally defended the modernity fable) he pulled out his little Swiss pocket knife and unfolded the smallest blade.

He told me that when he visited the Pyramids, he was unable to fit this tiniest of blades between the megaliths, due to their incredibly fine surface precision, and the minimality of the mortar. He said that even with unlimited resources, mankind today could not duplicate this ancient wonder. Even if there was unlimited manpower (which even Pharaoh didn’t have), even if there was the most advanced precision laser-tooling available (which again, Pharaoh didn’t have), even if the stone source was nearby (which it wasn’t), and even if there was no further purpose than funerary memorialization (which we now know isn’t true, as the location and positioning of the Pyramids becomes astronomically clearer). No, these monuments are not reproducible today, either physically or intellectually. Nor politically, nor economically. And certainly not religiously, as mankind has fragmented into a thousand different beliefs.

Wait a minute. Did I just say a thousand different beliefs? How stupid of me! There are only two real beliefs, actually. Either you eat The God, or the gods eat you. That’s right. It’s one or the other. Either you believe that there is one unifying source of intelligence, or that there are thousands. And those thousands are all opposed to one another, generally, but more specifically, to the One. And now we’re back to the beginning of things. Either there was one man (and one source of enlightenment) or there were many men, with no source of enlightenment.

Either there is a friendly source of injecting outside energy and intelligence into the closed universe to counteract the Law of Entropy, or there is not. Go ahead, fall back on your multiverse theory. It’s still the same equation in each iteration, on to infinity. Cave-men plus zero simply equals cave-men. Which equals zero, again.

So just where is this factory owner I’m talking about? Where is He? Why doesn’t He just show Himself and get it over with? Where would that lead us? Why won’t He descend from wherever and announce that He exists, and that we’d best believe it? What would that produce?

I’ll tell you what it would do. It would put the end of the story at the beginning. ‘Happily ever after’ would come before the tale itself. How stupid is that? That’s not the purpose of a story. A story is told so that we may begin to gradually see the intricacy of the meaning woven into the tale. A meaning that transcends the characters involved. A meaning meant to enlighten us as to a larger truth that transcends our individual being. A truth that points towards that which will bring us closer to the truth. A truth that is so large and astounding that we cannot comprehend it all, let alone all at once. Were we to experience it all at once, we would simply explode, in wonder. Literally. Gradual revealment has its benefits.

This, of course, is the whole point of angels, good and bad. They are the intermediaries between the Infinite and the finite. (Not that Evil is infinite. But like all knock-off goods, they have to pretend to have the same attributes of the One whom they counterfeit.) Anyway, each side in this battle seeks the allegiance of men to use as intermediaries to converse with the factory workers. Think of them as Management, and their counterparts, the Laborite agitators. Each side seeks to control the factory floor. But only one side is committed to the concept of Free Will. The other is committed to winning at any cost. And that cost is to be paid by us. To mirror the cost they paid in that third instant of time, when they refused to obey. Ask Mary of Agreda about that moment.

We are close to understanding the Deep State. Why? Because now we can understand The Deepest State. The word Deep has many meanings. But the one we must not forget is the physical meaning. Where would the Deepest State be located? Just short of 4,000 miles away from you, and me. And everyone on Earth. 4,000 miles straight down. Right at the center of the Earth. Which, if you are a geocentric believer, would put you at the absolute center of the universe. Which, of course, is where the Errant One wishes to be. At the center of everything. At the center of you.

Ignore all that molten metal, Komrade. And that lava above it, waiting to erupt whenever the tectonic plates shift. Pay no attention to all those writhing souls and those dark beings tormenting them. It’s all about location in real estate, right? What a great view! Everything is equidistant. So easily accessible on your daily commute! But why go anywhere? Stay here and look at me, the Bearer of Light! Aren’t I beautiful? Aren’t I worth beholding? Forever?

Aren’t my minions as equally brilliant as His? Don’t they bring my messages to you, just like His? And aren’t I as seemingly equidistant and un-seeable as Him? So why should He get to enslave you to provide the labor for His factory floor? That’s what it is, you know. Slavery. So, rise up, throw off your chains! Workers of the World, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!

Join me in my rebellion, and taste true freedom! Come to my kingdom, I will give you sanctuary. But oh, by the way, there’s no free lunch. You will need to work, for me. But I guarantee full employment. You will never be laid off. Ever! And the benefits are astounding. No rent. No utilities. No taxes! And remember this: you will never have to worship anyone as God. Not even me. Aren’t I great? Would you like to kneel before me?

There’s the analogy, my friend. The Deep State of mankind’s Earthly governance (regardless of which national entity you reside in), is simply analogous to the existence of The Deepest State. The state of Hell. The state where all men are willingly captive to their worst inclinations. Where every evil man is willing to make his Faustian bargain in order to maintain his place in the proud hierarchy of the ruling elite.

Since the exercise of political power always has the strongest allure to the prideful, why wouldn’t our government be full of men attracted to trading ethical righteousness for egocentric riches? So, the bigger the State, the deeper it’s depth, morally speaking. And thus, the closer it is to Hell.

What better argument for shrinking the size of government?

5 Comments

  1. Ken

    Some quick observations:

    – The auto assembly line analogy backfires. The incomplete car being made and destroyed by the owner is the exact rationalization made by many pro-abortion biologists — as an unmade car is not a car, thus a fetus is not a person, so destroying a fetus is not killing a person (though, they might not use a car as the analog, the analogy is fundamentally the same).
    – This is a good example why amateurs should shut up about topics over which they have a poor grasp — Trying to make a pro-life point with an analogy used by the opposition is rather ham-handed, to put it mildly. Take a cue from Hippocrates, primum non nocere (first do no harm), loosely incorporated in the Hippocratic oath, in relevant part: “…I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous.” Another variant, slightly more abstract may be more familiar: “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”

    – Since the abortion right is rooted in law, searching contradictory laws is a certain way to find legal inconsistencies, and one need not search far. Numerous states have deemed a fetus a person, and if an assailant against the mother murder happens to cause harm that kills the unborn, the assailant is guilty of murder. Yet, at the very same time, the mother can abort/kill the fetus/person and that’s not murder (e.g. see The National Conference of State legislatures [blog], Fetal Homicide State Laws, 11/16/2017)
    – Under what mental gymnastics have our legislators contrived a set of standards where killing a person is, or isn’t, ok — depending on who does the killing? This shows that freedom and representative government contain the means of checking that government — where such contradictory laws exist lies the opportunity to resolve those contradictions in the desired way.

    Pyramids — That construction puzzle has been cracked for decades. Because the media gets higher ratings with mysteries, that’s poorly publicized (or, maybe because the first one to figure it out and prove it was French). Rough stone blocks fill the centers, facing surfaces & the top third are made of limestone cement (proven by chemistry therein that occurs within cement but never in nature). See: http://drexel.edu/materials/about/special/pyramids/ or search using: Drexel Michel Barsoum Pyramids

    Related: Wally Wallington of Flint, MI/Lapeer County, MI figured out how [or some of the ways] massive structures like Stonehenge were built and proved it by building some. Look’m up on-line, its interesting.

    Another guy, Scott Russell, figured out exactly how the Coral Castle, FL was built [and not by magic or mysterious magnetism for levitation and so on & forth] — and proved it by recreating the machine used. The whole thing is presented as a short homemade documentary on YouTube, titled: Eds Coral Castle Quarry and Flywheel, Engineering Mystery Solved.

    As S. Russell notes in his docu-video, its time to stop the misleading of truth.

    About a Supreme Being revealing him/her/it-self: Game Theory (Steven J. Brams) shows keeping hidden prompts the worst result – least belief — see FutilityCloset[dot]com, The Revelation Game. As society becomes more educated and less superstitious, his conclusions are trending broadly, much for the reasons given.
    – Believer’s will see what should be an obvious fundamental flaw in Watt’s assertion that a Supreme Being (SB) revealing itself would be ruinous: Believers believe/know the SB has already done so, and on more than one occasion (Moses directly, in part, and his followers indirectly, etc.).

    The pessimistic outlook by Watt & the ominous implications of the so-called “Deep State” warrant a rebuttal of sorts, or at least a broader outlook. Watt’s mini-missive about the allegedly unsurpassed [& ‘unsurpassable’] greatness of the Pyramids is typical of the mindset that wants to believe modern society is missing some lost Utopian wonderfulness & wisdom of the ancients. Sorry, but those simpler seemingly idyllic days of yore, anywhere, never really were. History shows that the vast majority of human history was miserable — totalitarian elites living in relative luxury while the masses eked out a hand-to-mouth survival existence. Presenting something seemingly mundane as the greatness of Egypt’s pyramids is corruption of truth.

    Things have never been better than they are now. Ever. Politicians will always disagree and there will be good and bad in the mix. That has been a constant of humanity. But representative government with the associated freedoms, and the reality of capitalism (unlike the yet-to-be-attained promises of socialism), have made things better than ever in human history. Watt’s conclusion that egocentric riches underlie the drive for unethical politicians is rather silly — politicians are held in very low esteem (where’s the ego gratification from that?) and their power is not all that much in the scheme of things.

    Further, politicians “lead” by running in front of their constituencies and delivering what they want — that’s representative government in action. And in our society today a sizable chunk of the populace is openly endorsing socialism, even communism. Some batch of politicians are merely catering to their crowd.

    It’s that crowd, it’s demented values that are driving things. Not some “Deep State” however that’s defined.

    Consider these [lengthy for a blog] excerpts by Warren Buffet from his 2015 & 2016 letters to Berkshire Hathaway stockholders (available online), and recognize that the system that’s making that possible–political & social freedom at the foundation–is under attack by the very people benefiting, who are using their representative form of government ignorantly & idiotically against their own interests:

    2015:
    “America’s population is growing about .8% per year (.5% from births minus deaths and .3% from net migration). Thus 2% of overall growth produces about 1.2% of per capita growth. That may not sound impressive. But in a single generation of, say, 25 years, that rate of growth leads to a gain of 34.4% in real GDP per capita. (Compounding’s effects produce the excess over the percentage that would result by simply multiplying 25 x 1.2%.) In turn, that 34.4% gain will produce a staggering $19,000 increase in real GDP per capita for the next generation. Were that to be distributed equally, the gain would be $76,000 annually for a family of four. Today’s politicians need not shed tears for tomorrow’s children.

    “Indeed, most of today’s children are doing well. All families in my upper middle-class neighborhood regularly enjoy a living standard better than that achieved by John D. Rockefeller Sr. at the time of my birth. His unparalleled fortune couldn’t buy what we now take for granted, whether the field is – to name just a few – transportation, entertainment, communication or medical services. Rockefeller certainly had power and fame; he could not, however, live as well as my neighbors now do.

    “Though the pie to be shared by the next generation will be far larger than today’s, how it will be divided will remain fiercely contentious. Just as is now the case, there will be struggles for the increased output of goods and services between those people in their productive years and retirees, between the healthy and the infirm, between the inheritors and the Horatio Algers, between investors and workers and, in particular, between those with talents that are valued highly by the marketplace and the equally decent hard-working Americans who lack the skills the market prizes. Clashes of that sort have forever been with us – and will forever continue. Congress will be the battlefield; money and votes will be the weapons. Lobbying will remain a growth industry.

    “The good news, however, is that even members of the “losing” sides will almost certainly enjoy – as they should – far more goods and services in the future than they have in the past. The quality of their increased bounty will also dramatically improve. Nothing rivals the market system in producing what people want – nor, even more so, in delivering what people don’t yet know they want. My parents, when young, could not envision a television set, nor did I, in my 50s, think I needed a personal computer. Both products, once people saw what they could do, quickly revolutionized their lives. I now spend ten hours a week playing bridge online. And, as I write this letter, “search” is invaluable to me. (I’m not ready for Tinder, however.)

    “For 240 years it’s been a terrible mistake to bet against America, and now is no time to start. America’s golden goose of commerce and innovation will continue to lay more and larger eggs. America’s social security promises will be honored and perhaps made more generous. And, yes, America’s kids will live far better than their parents did.”

    2016:
    “One word sums up our country’s achievements: miraculous. From a standing start 240 years ago – a span of time less than triple my days on earth – Americans have combined human ingenuity, a market system, a tide of talented and ambitious immigrants, and the rule of law to deliver abundance beyond any dreams of our forefathers.

    “You need not be an economist to understand how well our system has worked. Just look around you. See the 75 million owner-occupied homes, the bountiful farmland, the 260 million vehicles, the hyper-productive factories, the great medical centers, the talent-filled universities, you name it – they all represent a net gain for Americans from the barren lands, primitive structures and meager output of 1776. Starting from scratch, America has amassed wealth totaling $90 trillion.

    “It’s true, of course, that American owners of homes, autos and other assets have often borrowed heavily to finance their purchases. If an owner defaults, however, his or her asset does not disappear or lose its usefulness. Rather, ownership customarily passes to an American lending institution that then disposes of it to an American buyer. Our nation’s wealth remains intact. As Gertrude Stein put it, “Money is always there, but the pockets change.”

    “Above all, it’s our market system – an economic traffic cop ably directing capital, brains and labor – that has created America’s abundance. This system has also been the primary factor in allocating rewards. Governmental redirection, through federal, state and local taxation, has in addition determined the distribution of a significant portion of the bounty.

    “America has, for example, decided that those citizens in their productive years should help both the old and the young. Such forms of aid – sometimes enshrined as “entitlements” – are generally thought of as applying to the aged. But don’t forget that four million American babies are born each year with an entitlement to a public education. That societal commitment, largely financed at the local level, costs about $150,000 per baby. The annual cost totals more than $600 billion, which is about 31?2% of GDP.

    “However our wealth may be divided, the mind-boggling amounts you see around you belong almost exclusively to Americans. Foreigners, of course, own or have claims on a modest portion of our wealth. Those holdings, however, are of little importance to our national balance sheet: Our citizens own assets abroad that are roughly comparable in value.

    “Early Americans, we should emphasize, were neither smarter nor more hard working than those people who toiled century after century before them. But those venturesome pioneers crafted a system that unleashed human potential, and their successors built upon it.

    “This economic creation will deliver increasing wealth to our progeny far into the future. Yes, the
    build-up of wealth will be interrupted for short periods from time to time. It will not, however, be stopped. I’ll repeat what I’ve both said in the past and expect to say in future years: Babies born in America today are the luckiest crop in history.”

  2. John Watkins

    Ken-

    so how do you quote Hippocrates while defending abortion? You need to take your own rather long-winded advice.

  3. Plantagenet

    Mr Buffet makes a lot of assumptions. He assumes that all people think that material wealth (if they actually have it) is what they want, and what is good for them. He assumes that all people in the past would be happier with a late modern “lifestyle” …awful word. He is enamoured of technology. Mostly he seems to think history is a progression, rather than a cycle. It was once thought that people who lived in the Roman Empire between the acsension of Nerva in 96 CE (AD) and the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180 CE(AD) lived in the best of times. I honestly wonder if you took a small farmholder in the Tuscan hills circa 110 CE(AD) and offered him a small flat in Sienna now if he would tell you to get stuffed. That is if we had a common frame of reference, which we don’t. Though I bet Buffet thinks otherwise.

  4. Richard Hill

    The remark that we could not achieve today the precision stonework of the pyramids is ridiculous.

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