To take a clear and objective look at the tapestry of social phenomena comprising the human condition, it is immediately discernible that custom and habit are often more dominant social forces than are reason and plain logic.

Thus, the widespread acceptance of the doctrine of the “Divine Right of Kings” continued unabated from generation to generation, until finally, a relatively small group of free-thinking individuals was able to apply reason to the prevailing customs, and to express their findings in such a way as to appeal to the better senses of the masses. Similar evolutions can be found throughout human history: Societies pass on a set of superstitions and prejudices from one generation to the next, until finally a small but irate group is able to expose the fallacies to a sufficient extent as to permanently alter the prevailing social paradigm.

Very early on in the history of civilization, the land was sparsely populated, and broken up into hundreds of thousands of tribes and villages, each developing their own unique set of mores and traditions. Inter-tribal trade was a scarce phenomenon at first; individual tribes and families were, for the most part, self-sufficient — each consumed mainly only that which they themselves produced.

Then, as now, there were only three general ways in which humans could derive sustenance: Self-sufficiency (manually producing everything which one consumes or uses), trade (peaceful and voluntary production and exchange), or plunder (violent conquest and confiscation).

Scarcity, the great and omnipresent problem that is inherent in earthly existence, has always driven the less scrupulous among us to violent remedies. But in the earliest days of human history, men were less sophisticated, and the available avenues for expropriation were very limited. The best that early man could conceive of, was to form roaming bands of warlords, and to set about pillaging their conquered victims. At first this method was very primitive in its execution; the potential plunder was always limited by whatever the village being victimized had on hand to be confiscated. Although it was common practice for the band of pillagers to spare a few of their victims to be kept as slaves, the typical M.O. was kept to the simple three-step formula of Murder, Loot, and Move On.

However, as time passed, the more sophisticated bands of warlords started to come to a realization: that it might be better if, instead of stubbornly adhering to the tried-and-true three-step formula, they altered it a bit, by replacing the initial phase of “murder all but a few slaves-for-the-road,” with “murder only those who protect the village,” and then replacing the final phase of “move on to the next victims” with “stay and live off the labor of the villagers-turned-serfs.”

To the delight of the nomad warlords, the new formula proved successful beyond their wildest dreams. They moved in on their marks, immediately dispatched with only those who dared put up a fight, declared themselves sovereign rulers of all persons and property within the territory (with the chief warlord as the villages new “King,” and the territory being divided up amongst all the members of the band). The spared villagers were then left to tend to and cultivate the land, with the fruits of their labor expropriated by whichever warlord held “sovereignty” over the particular piece of land they were cultivating. The serfs were allowed to keep of their produce only what was essential for a bare subsistence.

In very short order, nearly every village and tribe throughout modern-day Europe and Asia found themselves with a new “King” (or “Emperor,” etc.) and a ruling class of warlords as their new “sovereign government” being violently imposed upon them.

But human beings are quite socially resourceful, capable of such psychological phenomena as cognitive dissonance, and mass self-delusion. Because life as a serf can be such an overbearing strain on the ego and psyche, people began to adapt by creating social myths and narratives to reconcile their situation with the basic and natural human tendency to derive happiness from existence. Thus, they began to associate themselves with their oppressors; by projecting greatness onto their “King,” they could then convince themselves that they were not merely slaves being dominated by violent thugs, but instead that they were the happy subjects of a great and wise ruler who had been appointed by God Himself. Ensuing generations would reason on top of this, that the subjugation they endured was actually a good and necessary social benefit, because the King and his lieutenants scrupulously caused law and order to reign among their subjects, and also kept them safe from the barbarian hordes roaming beyond the village (!)

The produce of their labor that were forced to give up to the King and their men was no longer theft at swordpoint; it was taxation, which every able-bodied villager had a social duty to contribute to.

Thus, our roaming bands of violent thugs and warlords became what we now know of as the State, and their ill-gotten booty became the venerable social institution known of as taxation.

After so many generations of the social phenomena of habit and custom working on the human psyche, people could conceive of no other way of getting on than by being dominated by a State; it was a common sentiment that it pleased God for every village and city to be ruled over by a King.

As is common knowledge, humans easily become drunk with power. It is very rare indeed that a state is ever content with the territory it rules over at any given time. Their tendency is almost universally to expand; and usually that means violent conquest of new territories, which generally are already under the subjugation of another set of state rulers. This, of course, means war; and war always means murder — as someone must necessarily be the aggressor, and aggressively taking the life of another human being can never be honestly construed as anything else but murder.

But since habit and custom have transformed the state from a band of violent thugs to a benevolent and necessary social institution, state rulers have long been able to indoctrinate their subjects to the very opposite of reality; to wit, people are led to believe that war is defined by the state fighting on behalf of the people, instead of the reality that war is the people fighting on behalf of the state.

In the late 17th Century, small groups of individuals began to finally grasp strands of reason through the giant smokescreen of state-created sophistry, and the mass delusion and self-deception of the public held in place by generations of habit and custom; eventually the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings was finally repudiated. Though the period we now refer to as The Enlightenment introduced to the social consciousness for the first time the concept of individual rights and the intrinsic equality of each and every human being, the proverbial Emperor was still able to escape without anyone noticing his complete lack of clothing.

For all John Locke, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson's bold and unprecedented breakthroughs in philosophy, they still were unable to think far enough outside the box to take the implications of their doctrine to their logical conclusion: that the state, as such, is an inherently immoral and socially-destructive institution. That any institution that finds it necessary to resort to violent expropriation to sustain itself, is inherently unfit to survive at all. That mankind need not resort to monopoly and parasitism to establish courts of common law and collective defense. And that, despite the sophistry and interested clamoring from those who stand to benefit, taxation is and always will be organized theft on a grand scale, and aggressive warfare is and always will be mass murder.

Hopefully, the next generation that is able to produce a critical mass of free-thinking individuals, will be able to finally see the Emperor for what he really is: completely and utterly naked.