COMMENTARY
By Edgar Shockley
Government, as I see it, is chaos imposed on society. Government, in conjunction with media and those segments of society that benefit from its continued presence, works to divide, control, suppress and rule us.

The recent government shutdown is a perfect example of how this works: The media is focusing on what has shut down and exaggerating partisan differences between Republicans and Democrats, all the while ignoring the fact that the essential functions of government that will continue include such things as military operations, tax collection and the NSA surveillance program.

A government, by which I mean something that people generally have to accept whether they agreed to it or not, is a threat to humanity.

While people still debate the cause of wars, genocide and oppression, the fact of the matter is that all of these horrors involve government. Without government, you cannot mobilize for mass war, mass extermination or mass repression.

Furthermore, government makes us lazy. If you listen to the media, or to people who work in government or on behalf of a political party, you’d think the only way to improve society was to act through government.

The great social movements in our history – the abolitionists, the women’s suffrage movement and the civil rights movement of the 1960s – were all organized outside of government, and all were focused on removing some kind of inequality that a government had encouraged and institutionalized.

I want to suggest a world where we do things differently. Instead of relying on government to extend rights to minorities, we just need to recognize the inherent value of all people.

Instead of waiting for government programs to alleviate poverty, we should organize ourselves and fight poverty in our own communities.

Instead of looking for government to impose certain lifestyles or moral decisions, we should do our best to lead by example. Everything a government does, with the exception of warfare, can be done by people with proper organization and cooperation.

The shutdown is not permanent; it will be over before too long and the federal government will go back to normal. But while it’s shut down, take a moment to look at the world around you. It continues, and will continue, without government.

READ how student react to the federal government shut down.