Category: Reflections

Ungovernment: Mirroring the Presupposition that the Governed Are Evil

Chris Khatsch1 Comment

Since governments presuppose that humans are (or have the capacity to do) evil,1 the governed must reciprocate by presupposing all government forms to possess dystopian potentialities. The governed must take this position because those who govern are also human, therefore deserving of the same presupposition. However, even if the government is not run by humans, the governed individual’s position must remain the same. All governments, especially the ones that are run by non-humans (i.e., artificial intelligence), are control, control-optimization, control-maximization systems. All governments have (hidden) utopian tendencies, which are, of course, sublimations of dystopian drives.

Governments, by (their artificial) nature, work to increase order. More externally imposed order means less freedom for the individual, and Absolute Order equals zero freedom. When the needle moves towards Absolute Order, roboticization of humans takes place; when the needle moves towards Absolute Chaos, animalization of humans takes place. In the former, man is treated as a machine; in the latter, as an animal. Both are forms of dehumanization. The good government, therefore, is the one which is able to hold the needle right in the middle; however, governments, being what they are, are built to pull the needle towards Absolute Order. That is why we need something we’ll call ungovernment (for now), which is an institution (or a yet undefined thing) whose role is to remove unnecessary control and restore agency, responsibility, and decision-making to individuals. [Note: the ungovernment is nested within the government like anti-production is nested within production in Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus.]

Similar to systems of order (or negentropy) like governments, we need systems of chaos (or entropy) like ungovernments. We can imagine these two systems running simultaneously in every city (or country) against one another, keeping the balance between order (a safe unfreedom) and chaos (an unsafe freedom). Unfortunately, no such thing as ungovernment exists yet; therefore, when order (crosses the red line and) becomes unfreedom, the governed must rebel even if life has become more comfortable under the tyranny of utopian dreams.

The governed, of course, need the government for society to exist, but they also always need a failsafe: they must retain the capability to rebel against and overthrow any government when its governing methods (or results) become unbearable, unbearably comfortable, or simply unacceptable. [How can we forget the opening sentence of Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man? “A comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in advanced industrial civilization, a token of technical progress.”] Whatever the system, there must be a failsafe, some prospect of (manually initiated) anarchy; otherwise, humanity is doomed.

The ideal government must, in theory, be invincible — at least, aim to be invincible — against law breakers and enemies, yet it must remain vulnerable to the will to freedom of its people. To repeat: The government must have the power to protect its citizens from each other and from others AND provide space for freedom, i.e., chaos. To repeat again: Even though the government is preferably seen (and, in ideal scenarios, even is) invincible against its enemies, it is crucial for it to have that Achilles’ heel: It must be vulnerable to the will to freedom of its citizens. Otherwise, it is an evil government.

All that has been said so far requires an impossible balancing act. It’s an eternal game of tug of war. On one side, we have the government; on the other side, we have the governed (or the ungovernment). If any of the sides loses or gives up pulling on the rope, the game of civilization ends.

Today’s governments will not openly admit that their systems presuppose men are evil, that you, the governed citizen, are evil. At the same time, however, any reasonable person understands that governments cannot operate effectively without taking this reality into consideration. Governments need to presuppose that humans are (or have the capacity to do) evil. To have order, the problematic human nature (codes of entropy) needs to be contained by laws (codes of negentropy); otherwise, there will be chaos. Governments are primarily there, therefore, to bring the (potentially chaotic) freedom in man under control and impede entropy. But even if this is, in general, a good thing, the governed must always keep an eye on the government… because as soon as the governed individuals stop pulling on the rope, as soon as they let the government do what it does best, they will find illusory peace and comfort but gradually (and surely) lose their freedom.

[1] Let us quickly confirm that a majority of political thinkers align on the idea that men carry the seed of ruin in them, that they are wicked when left unchecked.

That is our first step: to prove that, according to governments, man is a body of potential evil deeds (who, if governed properly, can be turned into a productive machine). We can do this swiftly by quoting a few influential political thinkers I happen have on my desk right now (who, in turn, have summarized the views of the greats who came before them).

In The Concept of the Political, Carl Schmitt writes:

What remains is the remarkable and, for many, certainly disquieting diagnosis that all genuine political theories presuppose man to be evil, i.e., by no means an unproblematic but a dangerous and dynamic being. This can be easily documented in the works of every specific political thinker.

In Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli writes:

As all those who write about civic matters show and as all history proves by a multitude of examples, whoever organizes a state and establishes its laws must assume that all men are wicked and will act wickedly whenever they have the chance to do so.

And without getting carried away, and to have a little fun, we can also quote the great pessimist Arthur Schopenhauer. In his collection of essays called On Human Nature: Essays in Ethics and Politics, we read:

Man is at bottom a savage, horrible beast. We know it, if only in the business of taming and restraining him which we call civilization. Hence it is that we are terrified if now and then his nature breaks out. Wherever and whenever the locks and chains of law and order fall off and give place to anarchy, he shows himself for what he is.

Of course, these aren’t the only quotes found. One can easily quote from Hobbes’s Leviathan, too, where without a common power to keep people “in awe” every man is at war with every man.

That should be enough. But since we’re already here, we can also take a moment to go back further in time and see what Plato had to say in The Republic. In Book II, Glaucon tells the story Gyges to show Socrates that “all men who practice justice do so against their will, of necessity, but not as good.” In the story, Gyges, who was a shepherd, finds a ring that could turn him invisible whenever he wanted. Since, as Glaucon argued, “no man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked,” Gyges goes and slays the king and takes over the kingdom. Glaucon then adds, “If you could imagine anyone obtaining this power of becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what was another’s, he would be thought by the lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot.”

Long story short, the idea that man is wicked when left unchecked is as old as civilization.

This piece was first published on my Substack on April 17, 2026.

Unstructured Reflections on Boredom: A Blurry Definition of Boredom

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In Part Two of Human, All Too Human, Nietzsche writes: “The proverb, ‘The Hungarian is far too lazy to feel bored,’ gives food for thought. Only the highest and most active animals are capable of being bored. The boredom of God on the seventh day of Creation would be a subject for a great poet.”1 Nietzsche isn’t talking about simple boredom here, which Peter Toohey, who has written one of the most boring books on boredom, defines as “a social emotion of mild disgust produced by a temporarily unavoidable and predictable circumstance.”2 What Nietzsche is talking about is existential boredom, which Toohey cannot fathom.3 (Existential) (but also situational) boredom isn’t laziness, but an excess of energy yearning to be spent elsewhere. It crawls out of your spirit’s deepest and darkest cave when one kind of energy is exhausted and another kind begins to stir. It comes to inform you that something unwelcome is gnawing at your being, chomping on your vitality, eating your time. But only the truly blessed are blessed with the curse of boredom. To be bored by something means that the reciprocity between you and the object has been severed: you no longer have anything worthy to give it, it has nothing worthy to give you, and your attention to it is now forced rather than voluntary. (The bored man is the prisoner of the now that he needs to escape from. The present situation is unwanted, unpleasant, intolerable, et cetera. Note: The “present situation” can be a two-hour workshop and it can also be a whole lifetime.) Boredom is your spirit’s way of transcending the current situation. It is a striving toward a higher or more meaningful mode of being. It is not emptiness but unspent possibility, the tension between what is and what could be, potentialities activated (but pending), a body without organs… When boredom crawls out of your spirit’s cave, it does not know what it wants. All it knows is that it does not want what it has right now. Eventually, it finds a new direction (or an object it desires), and so it crawls towards it. Boredom is a transitional state. It is a movement or, rather, an initiator of movement… But note: Simply moving from one activity to another does not solve boredom. One can pay attention and still be bored. One can be entertained and still be bored. Entertainment is often merely a stimulation without inner engagement or meaning; therefore, not a solution to boredom, but an escape from it. The movement must be from the boring activity to a meaningful activity. “Boredom,” Lars Svendsen writes, “is not a question of work or freedom but of meaning.”4 Boredom, therefore, is a good thing, as Nietzsche implies, and it can be the fertile ground for something meaningful…

Notes and References

[1] Naturally, I do not mean to offend Hungarians. I do not even know where the stereotype comes from. I’m only quoting Nietzsche here. (Nietzsche, Friedrich. Human, All Too Human. Wordsworth Editions Limited, 2014.)

[2] Toohey, Peter. Boredom, A Lively History. Yale University Press, 2012.

[3] A quote from Peter Toohey’s Boredom: “Might not this existential form of boredom, this philosophical or even religious sickness, be best characterized as depression?”

[4] Svendsen, Lars. A Philosophy of Boredom. Reaktion Books, 2011.

Temple of Bacchus in Baalbek, Lebanon

Unstructured Reflections on Love: Libido Transfer

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Libido transfer. — To a certain extent, when someone is totally in love, (the essence of) the loved one replaces the self of the lover. We come across this in Sigmund Freud’s An Outline of Psychoanalysis, where the libido of the lover is transferred onto the object, which is the beloved. For the sake of simplification, here, let us assume that the lover in our story is (as is so traditionally) a he, and the loved one is a she. When a man falls madly in love with a woman, something in him changes. His friends notice this first and say things like, “He’s become a different man,” or in sadder scenarios, “He’s not one of the boys anymore.” They don’t understand the transformation their friend is going through because they haven’t been struck by love yet themselves. According to the lover’s psyche, the beloved is no longer a separate individual; reversely, he no longer represents himself alone. The representations (or the qualities) of her self are merged with his, and his actions now represent the synthesis of his self and hers. Love makes him an extension of the person he loves. Then it goes further than that. It is not enough that their souls are entangled and have formed a Gordian Knot, but instead of prioritizing his needs and desires, he now starts prioritizing hers. (Symmetrically, if the relationship is a mutualistic symbiosis, she also becomes an extension of him — after becoming more like her, he sees her in the mirror, and vice versa.) At this point, when the man has become possessed by love, his self’s independence begins to diminish. The invisible love leash chokes him when the distance (as well as the time) between him and his beloved expands. He feels incomplete, even guilty, when separated from her. He gives up his freedom, changes his habits to match his partner’s, and sacrifices whatever he must to preserve the fetters of love. And it’s not only his behavior that changes; he starts to see things from his beloved’s lens. He interprets and experiences life differently by identifying with her needs, desires, wants, ideologies, beliefs, culture, traditions, and emotions. He says, “If she’s happy, I’m happy,” or (in jest), “Happy wife, happy life.” [A test: How do you know if you are the lover or the beloved in a certain set of circumstances? If the actions of the other aim to please you, then you are the beloved. If it’s the other way around, you are the lover.] [I must add a note here: Although the lover-beloved balance between two individuals in a relationship isn’t always in equilibrium, we must remember that love isn’t a one-way relationship. In a healthy romantic relationship, there ought to be scenarios in which you are the lover and scenarios in which you are the beloved, (unconsciously) switching roles with your partner as you go. You’ll need to take turns because you cannot be both the lover and the beloved simultaneously. You can play one role at a time.] The lover must be brave, ready to take big risks. He needs that Kierkegaardian leap of faith. He needs to close his eyes and jump. To love is a courageous act. One must be ready to do crazy things for love. He must surrender to it. Unlike popular belief, a healthy romantic relationship has nothing to do with the preservation of physical or mental health. A healthy romantic relationship is a spiritual relationship that may sometimes include sacrifices such as the surrender of mental or physical health. Nonetheless, the altruistic lover who lets go of his ego altogether is not a real lover; he is a symbiote with an ego mimicking the beloved’s ego. The altruistic lover is the beloved’s machine that generates recognition and satisfaction. The opposite of the altruistic lover, the narcissistic lover, is also not a real lover; he is a parasitic symbiote. He only loves lovers, not beloveds. Those who resist libido transfer suppress (and prevent the development of) true love. They are not ready for true love simply because they are not ready to sacrifice themselves on its altar. They will not be remembered as great lovers… It is no surprise that many individuals resist transferring libido to a loved one. (Their number, in fact, far exceeds those who truly love.) They fear potential heartbreak, they lack trust in people, and they don’t want to lose themselves and their freedom. (Withholding libido transfer is the safer option for those who want to keep the self unblemished.) But when these individuals simulate acts of love by repeating what they read in books and what they see in movies, they’re not loving, they’re only playing the role of the lover. They’re playing it safe and are not really invested in the relationship. They are only showing love but not genuinely loving. Unknowingly, they are pretending to love. They don’t know that those who want to remain who they are cannot love absolutely. When the time of sacrifice comes, they’ll ask, “Why would I live for someone else when I can live for myself?” They’ll ask, “Why would anyone want to lose their self, their Ich, their ego?” While some sacrifice themselves for love, they sacrifice love for themselves. What they don’t get is this: when you love, you don’t lose yourself; you become more than yourself.