I believe you are correct, actually. Fortunately, it does not apply in my case, which is why I did not waste time and effort explaining the fundamentals of law to everyone I talked to.
If you look it up, "legal" is distinct from "law" in a very important way. "Law" concerns what is lawful, and what is not. "Legal" refers to something having the form and appearance of law, without necessarily having the substance of law. And it usually doesn't. The recent emphasis on what is "legal" and "illegal" was brought to us by attorneys living outside the law. "Legality" is an irrelevant, but now generally-observed, wallpaper that has been placed over the actual "law" of the united States. Modern lawbooks have been increasingly blurring the definitions between the two words, as the distinction is obscured through modern practice with an agenda behind it. ("Legality" is also refered to as "color of law"; that which appears to be based in law, but which is not.) Various sites on the internet are devoted to studying this distinction, such as here, Sui Juris, FamGuardian, and of course the old Frog Farm archives at etext.org. Articles such as this one and this one can explain the legal/lawful distinction in more depth. I also have a blog on the subject myself. But it is neither directly relevant nor applicable, and it is not my job to attempt to educate everyone I meet about the complex web of fraud and treason to which they contribute. It is not left to me to attempt to change everyones' mind. It is simply left to me to manage as best I can under spurious and inclement conditions created by people adhering to something baseless which purports to be real and authoritative.
Be well,
- Satori
This is a very well-thought-out response, and I appreciate it, Watermonkey. I can see how you would be suspicious, and that would be valid. Thanks for taking the time to explain it to me. When you're right, you're right.
First off, I appreciate you offering a constructive solution. Explaining the specifics of my situation will invariably tend towards explaining side-points like common misconceptions of law or politics or ethics, and while at one point I attempted to do that because it's noble, it not only isn't my job to fix the world, it also consists of me contributing something of value to others while getting nothing of value back on my own part. Which is a lot of why I'm in this situation, I think, and would like to avoid continuing to make choices that martyr myself in my efforts to improve the lives of others. If contributing to the problems of others to increase my own quality of life is absurd, the reverse is also true. Left with a choice between the two I'll sacrifice on my own part as best I can, because it's the only thing that's mine to sacrifice. But I try to avoid either option whenever possible, because they're both stupid.
This has become such a large problem to me, as my original post probably demonstrates, that I'm likely to be rather defensive about situations like that. I'll try to avoid it. But living in a world where essentially everyone else perpetuates the problems I'm facing - and the ones they're facing as well - being just about the only one who refuses to perpetuate them myself, and feeling like I have to justify my credibility because acting without moral integrity has become commonplace, strikes me as an unfair and unrealistic expectation. A large part of the situation in the States today is that everyone has become used to a lack of accountability, and used to having government intrusion into their private lives. Their private lives are just that: private. So to expect someone to open their private life to scrutiny out of a demand to justify oneself as valid or not to strangers comes across as pretty skewed.
But I'll come down off my high horse here, and share a few things with you. I'm now thirty. I've had to work under the table for years (well, "chose" it to avoid taking part in unconscionable and treasonous government activities). It's been very tough, and often I haven't been able to keep a roof over my head. You'd be amazed at how far you can go with a laptop (earned through a direct work exchange at a computer store cleaning and dusting). There've been a lot of concessions, but I think it's the only fair choice that's within my power to make. So I bite the bullet, and do what's right even though it costs me personally. At the moment I'm staying with a friend (well, more than a friend, actually). It's a shaky situation that could dissolve at any time. And I have a team of cavities that will kill me if left unchecked. We've tried getting jewelry cheap on eBay and selling it at auctions (to raise money for a couple of internet startups that will actually provide something of value to people), only to find that the seller never checked that his "Black Diamond and White Gold Ring", for example, was actually electroplated metal and glass. This has been the norm with sellers so far. We've tried putting out flyers to service people's computers, only to get a bunch of calls asking for immediate, free tech support. I can't get into specifics on the internet, but we're living in a rent-free situation at the moment. There's nothing to save or cut down on. Fortunately I've just discovered online posts for programming jobs today, so with a few weeks of cramming I should be able to do coding online, and hopefully that will cover it - whatever my living situation at that point. It's obvious in retrospect, but then most things are. The really obvious suggestions I've already considered. I'm on the waiting list with a lab for medical experimentation. I've even created a web-site, pinkslab.com, to transform the problem into its own solution, giving it a humorous spin and inviting users to join in the fun, then compiling the best submissions into a book.
The bottom line is that if I contribute to the problem, I'm only making it worse on everyone. It's just like those people who buy a bunch of domain names and hold them for ransom for thousands of dollars. I encountered that when I attempted to establish a couple of websites that could easily change the world like eBay and Craigslist do, with a totally new idea. Someone had bought up the domain name, wanted over a thousand dollars for it, and even if we got a business loan for the money I still couldn't buy it. I would be paying ransom that would go directly towards buying up other domains and holding them for ransom. I'd be paying to get out of my problem by passing it on to many, many others. That kind of reasoning appears to make sense to most people (although I firmly believe that nobody could be that stupid except on purpose), but it's exactly what's creating the problems that I and everyone else encounter in the world. If nobody did it, everyone's life would be awesome. Maybe I just have higher standards. But I firmly believe that the choices most people make are just a socially-accepted form of Evil. It doesn't take someone with a high IQ or the ten years of research into law that I have to see that. All it takes is the conscience we were all born with, and most people refuse to heed it. So here we are, with the world in the state it's in.
I hope this better explains where I'm coming from. Thanks for taking the time to talk it out with me.
Be well,
Notice from jlhaslip:
Merged postings per the readme
