Libertarians who go round saying “the state doesn’t exist, it’s a hallucination” as if this is clever need to reconsider their position. On this basis, Oxford University is a hallucination, your family is a hallucination, “you” are a hallucination....
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You can’t uninvent social institutions anymore than you can uninvent TV. Because people can see TVs and aircraft they don’t say, “It’s just a human invention, we can do without it.” They can’t see social inventions, and so they assume we can dispense with them at will.
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When Nietzsche said that the state was a lie (or similar), he was not saying that it doesn’t exist or is a hallucination. I think his point was more nuanced than that. He knew that the social lie is necessary to allow human social organisation. And that truth is veil upon veil.
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We can play with these social lies, but you can’t dispense with the lies. Simply relying on the lie of “you” is no more sensible than the lie of the state.
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End of conversation
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