Just Say the Word
Sam Aurelius Milam III
I learned at an early age to do as I was told.  When I was told to go to school, I went to school.  When I was told to get a driver's license, I got a driver's license.  When I was told to get a Social Security number, I got a Social Security number.  When I was told to register for the draft, I registered for the draft.  Those things, and various others, all had the effect of placing me within the jurisdiction of the government but nobody warned me about that.  They just told me to do things and I did them.
By the time that I was in college, I was beginning to wonder about the validity of what I'd been taught.  In my first full-time job as an engineer, at the General Electric Company, I still tried to do as I was told but, increasingly, I began to perceive the incompetence¹ of the people who were exercising authority over me.  With growing experience, I gradually began to resist my conditioning.  It took me a long time but I slowly realized that doing as I was told might be a bad idea.  Eventually, although I wasn't very good at it, I began trying to say no.  One consequence was that, at a time when GE was sending excess work to subcontractors, I was laid off due to lack of work.  That isn't as contradictory as it seems because there wasn't much of my kind of work being done at GE.  After several years of experience, I didn't want to do any work that violated my growing understanding of the conflict between cooperation and integrity.²
Altogether, I spent about 19 years in school and about 15 years as an employee.  That's 34 years in the system, being brainwashed by the schools, the media, the courts, the cops, the military, the corporations, and society in general.  Before I could try to credibly resist my conditioning, I had to acknowledge some unpleasant facts.  That required a long process of study, discussion, and thought.  At one point, I came to a low and gloomy sense of despair.  I lamented to my father that I was going to have to give up everything in which I'd ever been taught to believe.  He said, "Son, you don't have to be a U.S. citizen in order to be an American."  It was the right comment at the right time.  It helped me to accept the sad conclusion that I'd been facing, the realization that most of the things in which I'd been taught to believe were lies.  Marriage licenses are a lie.  The driver's license is a lie.  Social Security is a lie.  Financial investments and the banks are lies.  Indeed, every bank is a den of thieves.  The stuff to which people refer as money is a lie.  Security is a lie.  In fact, there isn't any security, anywhere, ever.  Insurance is a lie.  The news programs and the newspapers are lies.  The schools are lies.  The police are a lie.  The things to which people refer as rights are lies.  The legislatures and the courts are lies.  The Congress is a lie.  The jurisdiction of the U.S. government is a lie.  Citizenship is a lie.  The U.S. constitution is a lie.  It wasn't possible for me to credibly resist my conditioning until I accepted the veracity of such ideas.
Learning the lies taught me some truths.  I learned that voluntary participation equals endorsement.  I learned that cooperation with illegitimate authority legitimizes the authority.  I learned that accepting authority as truth instead of accepting truth as authority is a big mistake.  I learned the difference between freedom and slavery, freedom and permission, rights and privileges, currency and money, sin and crime, God and religion, diversity and complexity, law and legislation, brainwashing and education, anarchy and chaos.  I learned that fighting evil with evil guarantees that evil will win.  I learned that working within the system is the same thing as working for the system.  I learned that compromising with a