A
Former Lawyer's Brief Memoir
Remember, I’m countin’ on you to keep
me out of jail, Harry remarked to me one
morning.
I responded smugly. You are
smart, Harry, to understand how useful a lawyer can be these days.
Well, I’m lucky to have you lookin’ out for me, he said. Then he
surprised me with these words.
I had to step back. It
took years to get it through my head the law serves to lay before the
criminal mind reliable theories to facilitate the business of
thieving. It is for convenience of the thief that laws are written,
to make it feasible to practice corruption. Rules are the framework
on which to weave a web of deceit. Regulations are the backdrop
against which legal authority can be acquired to harm one’s fellows
with a claim of right. And lawyers
who write the rules break them best. Lawyers by definition partially
administer injustice. I am glad to have one.
Last year, the local
University won a football championship and it was a widely celebrated
affair. But I ask you…tell me…how do you suppose the
administration of this large, crowded school went about the process
of assembling players and coaches who could bring about such a mirage
of superiority? How was it made to appear that this bunch of boys
belong somehow uniquely to this University and deserve to be called
“Champions”?
What, in Heaven’s name, is the point? Is it to train the kids to
manipulate rules as a way of life? Or, more to hypnotize the public
into blind submission to a football system that produces economic
wealth? Of course, it is both. And, where did the play
go, I wonder? Can its football team really be proud of such a
University?
The inherent evil in any
system of laws is the ten thousand
systems concealed
within every system that man
creates.
For instance, it has been
applauded that a group of people in North America in 1776 desired to
form an honest government of officials that would be answerable to
those they serve, but look at the multitude
of concealments that have come
to light since the day that ideal
took shape. Who claims now an
honest government in America?
Looked at closely, Americans had been pretending to serve King George who it was
pretended was ordained by God Almighty to rule a
false Britannia. With the stroke
of a pen an imaginary leader told the Americans to believe they will
now pretend to be free people. Pretense! How can anybody be so
foolish as to believe a people who pretend to be free by creating a
system of government with power to
raise armies and to tax and to
make laws to control them
are free? How does that amount to freedom? There
is but a simple and obvious reason people agree to this: lack
of trust in themselves. The
poor people believe if they were to be free they would be scoundrels,
or worse, failures.
There is a popular saying,
With freedom comes
responsibility. It is used by
those who are given the responsibility to control the behavior of
people who are supposed to be free, for example, school room teachers
and judges. Have you considered
the responsibility you owe to yourself? What if you knew that
responsibility,
the one you owe to you, is innately natural like the sweetness of an
apple? What if you knew human
nature to be good? If it were not so nobody would even consider the
sound of freedom.
And it
may have been innocent enough when mommy and daddy decided to begin a
family as they had been instructed to
do but millions of books
have written
of the tragic consequences that have
befallen
the offspring of such a union and twisted
them into unhappy adults. Looks
suspiciously the same, no?
Contrived as a system of
government to control behavior it contains its own thousand clowns of
evil. The ideal of fidelity creates infidelity. Laws facilitate
deceit. Either you are a good person or you are not. Are you not
even interested to know which?
Every system thought up
is immediately
corrupt. There is no preventing it. See how the system is not less
corrupt when this fact is exposed but ever more so. It seems
publicity of how some scoundrels were caught holding the bag acts to
encourage others to try their luck. Or maybe the cynicism that
results from the impression that
everybody is doing it provokes
more of it.
Fact is everybody is
doing it. Fact is, every
player needs his lawyer. Every
husband and every wife needs a lawyer. One
for each should come with the ceremony.
It’s
a sad thing to accept. Do you not see any hope? I asked. Harry put
it this way.
It's
up to each individual to choose, in his own time, to leave all
systems behind. It is possible. I
do not claim it is easy. Notice this is not a call to revolution.
Quite the contrary, it is a call to cease all attempts to be free for
all such attempts are
idealistic systems
with the nasty consequences we have already. It is a call to discover
you are free. Nothing else is
suggested.
To know oneself. Self
examination which leads to the
funny brilliant recognition that as I am I am leads
to an individual's own declaration of independence. The only one
without
hidden agendas. When
laws and the
crimes they define become
irrelevant jails empty out on
their own accord and peace
prevails in the land. In the abyss
each one who declares it to be so
is his
own authority, takes naked
responsibility for his own truth, risks the moment, and shoos his own
flies, calls his own dog, keeps his own counsel, accepts his own
fate, blows his own whistle, draws his own conclusions, fights his
own battles, sweeps his own side of the street, makes up his own
mind, faces his own challenges,
finds his own strength, stands on his own feet, answers his own
question, has nobody to blame, and lives before he dies.
I
quit.
