@thesotiris 7 December 2024 more from that month

A threat-based civilisation is not civil The weak barbarism of coercion vs. the steadfast civility of voluntaryism

Rome conquered the Hellenic free cities by force. Yet the Hellenic cities conquered Rome with ideas. The Hellenics submitted reluctantly to Rome. Yet Rome voluntarily adopted Hellenic ideals. Which conquest was more meaningful and more timeless? https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-roman-empire-was-socialist Indeed, the threat of violence from the imperium dominates the physical… but the ideals of freedom move the spirit - the only thing that can be indominable. https://sotiris.substack.com/p/the-roman-empire-was-socialist-addendum **As long as violence is the only way to organise society, there can be no civility.** Morally speaking, violence can only be used as self-defence against direct threats. But when violence is used to coerce people to do what they don’t want to do, then whatever they do loses meaning. No one has a moral right to impose any arbitrary thing on anyone. Take drugs, for example. No one and no majority have the right to arbitrarily decide what plants to make illegal. Take education. No one has any right to arbitrarily decide what curricula, by whom, and for how long they are to be force-taught. No one has the right to arbitrarily decide how much of your voluntarily earned pay you owe them to spend how they decide, and how much you supposedly owe to the supposedly “poor and needy.” Coercion is most uncivilised. What you gain from it is unearned and undeserved. You feel like a fraud as your **impostor syndrome** sets in: What you have by force depends on people’s circumstantial weakness as compared to you… until circumstances change. What you have relies on the external opportunity of a strength disparity, not your worth. If it were your worth, then people would voluntarily be giving you what you earned from them, and no threat would be needed. And for the deliberate straw men out there, defensive or reciprocal violence is not coercion. **You can’t coerce someone** ***not*** **to kill you**. It is insane to think that. Conquest is not strength. Conquest is weakness. Conquest is flipping the boardgame because you can’t win fair and square. Conquest is the weak-willed exploiting circumstantial external advantages to subdue by force, not to win via grace on an even playing field. The rapist is weak and pathetic because he never earns the carnal pleasure he takes. The lover, on the other hand, receives the pleasure and the intimacy of making love, because it is voluntary - it is earned, and therefore, deserved. And therefore, truly satisfying. **Conquest is the same as rape**: forcefully taking resources and exploiting people because you are too dumb, or lazy, or useless to win them over in mutual exchange of value. Yet we still run our societies with nothing but the threat of violence of the state… and we have the gall to call this a civilisation? **What good is Empire when its people are conquered by force and not won over by their own will?** Thank you for reading. I appreciate your time. Kindly like, comment, share, or subscribe for free. Or not. It’s all the same.