Satori

The Emporer of Anti-Idiots relates his own satori:

[I was once] "young, dumb and full of nothing but “how I wish the world would be more like [insert utopian daydream here]…” he was pulled in by a combination of knowing zilch about how the real world actually works and a deep, abiding desire for a world in which nobody wanted for anything and everybody lived in peace. Naive as all heck, but certainly something that we’d all like to see, no? We’d like to see it, but we also know that it’s just not human nature and we’ve seen the horrible results whenever regimes have tried to make humans fit their mold rather than working with reality.

So I grew up, learned about history and the world in general and realized that no, Virginia, it doesn’t really work the way you’d like it to work. I may rail, rant and rave against the laws of gravity, but I can’t make stuff fall upwards no matter how hard I wish for it and no matter how many rules and regulations I pass. Not only would any such attempt be guaranteed to fail, it would most likely lead to the exact opposite of what I was aiming for, as even the most casual of studies of socialist regimes will prove.

Human beings have free will and coercion will only lead to rebellion. It doesn’t matter where you believe Free Will came from, it just is, in much the same way that water is and a successful socialist economy isn’t.

Once you realize this fundamental fact, that the world is the way it is and that the forces governing it and human actions cannot and will not be denied, you start wondering how to work with the system rather than wasting your time railing against the darkness and digging mass graves for dissenters.

That’s when you realize that you’re not a leftist anymore."