Peel back the layers of any absolutist philosophy and at the core you will find the same requirement, submission of all followers. There will also be the inevitability of the superiority of the absolutist philosophy with the complete subjugation of the world as an inevitability. The path to this absolute control of all the Earth may differ from one absolutist philosophy to the next, but they all claim the inevitability of their superiority. The two most familiar of these philosophies from the present or recent past are Communism and Nazism. Both philosophies called for their inevitable conquering of the entire world yet the means were actually as opposite as you can find. The Nazis saw their superiority would allow them to conquer the world through military might while the Communists believed that all they need do was wait as all other systems would eventually fail and come to recognize that the only workable solution was Communism. The Communists also believed in aiding the furtherance of their cause through military conquest or through infiltration and subversion of non-Communist countries.
Submission has actually been the rule of governance through the annals of history. The most common absolutist government is a monarchy with a king sitting as the infallible leader who demanded complete and total submission to their rules and edicts. The monarch might decorate their demands of submission by having a court consisting of landowners and select intellectuals but these people only held the power of agreement. Had any of the members of court opposed the absolute power and correctness of the King they would soon find out that non-submission was not only disallowed, but punished by forfeiture of one’s life. This form of absolute rule had varying names for the king which include Czar, Emperor, Pharaoh, Khan, or Caliph among others. The names may change but the intolerance of individualism remained as an absolute. All of these absolutist systems not only demand submission to their authority but also submission of the individual to forfeit their individuality and fit a defined mold for whatever position in the society or community one is assigned. In each instance there are those who having gained complete trust of the hierarchy and rulers who get assigned to the positions of enforcers of compliance, of submission by all the subjects. These were the Gestapo under the Nazis and the KGB in Soviet Russia.
Most of the people in the West do not understand the dehumanizing and irresistible force which is able to force the complete submission of entire populations. This is due to the revolutionary change which came with the Enlightenment which posited the idea that the individual was to be self-aware and thus had rights which even a sovereign had to recognize. When the revolutionary philosophies of the Enlightenment were reinforced with the ideals from Judeo-Christian ethics, the individual became the equivalent of a sovereign over the self. This concept slowly but steadily altered and changed the governance by placing limits upon the sovereigns while empowering even the most common of the citizenry to have a voice in their government. The most crucial of the events during this period of transformation was the founding of the United States of America with its unique Constitution and its defining document, the Declaration of Independence. These two documents went further than their influencing documents and political philosophies such as the Magna Carta and the writings of John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Thomas Hobbes in defining the nobility of the individual who was to be served by government which was to be designed to protect the individual from government oppression and from criminal intent. These documents plainly stated the only entity which was above the individual was to be the Creator and never the government. That was the theory.
Despite this lack of familiarity and seeming inability of many in the West to recognize absolutist influences and their requirement of submission of the individual, these situations remain the rule for the vast majority of the people living on Earth today. Even in the Western nations the governments have been steadily absorbing more and more powers and control over the individual which will inevitably lead to the demanded submission once they have stolen sufficient control that they feel they have attained irreversible and absolute power. This might be part of the explanation behind why numerous of those in politics who support an all-powerful central government ally themselves with other groups who have a history of absolutism and appear to call for submission of the people to the dictates from the government. This is an alliance that will be the bane of those who believe in the freedoms and rights of individualism. When the inevitable conflict ignites between those who follow the beliefs of freedom, individuality, and limited governance and the powers of absolutist power of governance, no matter what the basis for the rule, those who will be fighting for individual rights and freedoms will likely be at distinct disadvantage as they are likely to resist the conflict until it is overbearingly obvious that there exist no other alternative to prevent forced submission. It very well may be the love of peace and the seeming natural abhorrence to violence which may doom the powers of freedom, liberty and individualism to fall before the powers of absolutism and the consequential force into submission. This is the possibilities which fills too many of my nights of dreaming with nightmares.
Beyond the Cusp
Beyond the Cusp 