True Story: From Mini-Dictator to Anarchist

When I was seventeen, a psychologist once told me that I was doomed to become my father. What he didn’t yet realize was that I had already become like my dad at six or seven years of age and that this was one of the biggest problems I had to resolve at the time. My dad was a dictator, charged with religious zeal, who ruled over the family with an iron fist. Despite my fear of him, it didn’t take long for me to follow his example and thus my childhood was set to become quite interesting, to say the least.

The 12-Year Sentence Begins

Growing up in a small town on the Canadian prairies can be pretty damn boring at times. Nevertheless, we humans are nothing if not good at conjuring drama to fill the gaps. I was a good example of this, a curious kid that loved to learn and explore even though my environment was full of people that preferred to sleepwalk in a fluffy haze of comfortable ignorance. Knowledge was never enough though. I craved understanding. With help from my mom, I was reading my first books at age 3 and by the time I entered Kindergarten, I was far beyond my peers in terms of scholastic ability. That didn’t change as time rolled by and so the stage was clearly set for me to wander down that lonely path of self-reliant individualism. I enjoyed many of the individual activities at school, especially the artistic ones. Group assignments, on the other hand, were a curse for me because they meant that I had to carry others on my back if I wanted to still score high. I considered my abilities to be my only assets and other people to be liabilities. The times I trusted others to pull their own weight, they usually let me down and so I preferred to retain responsibility for my own outcomes. After a while, I came to thoroughly resent being chained to teammates. I tolerated the inconveniences of such forced collectivism for two reasons: First, I had no choice in the matter, and second, my teammates often showered me with appreciation for leading them to victory and I admittedly enjoyed that. My disdain wasn’t only for deadweight partners though. I also lived in fear of my parents and their violent punishments so in addition to resenting deadweight partners, I had also learned to resent authority figures. In the absence of adult control, I assumed a clear leadership role whenever possible. I trusted only myself and that confidence proved to be infectious because most of my peers quickly came to trust me too. I guess these could have been the seeds of libertarianism.

Power Tools

My cockiness quickly landed me in the crosshairs of schoolyard bullies. As one of the smaller kids, I was an easy target. I don’t think it was a conscious calculation but I sensibly befriended the biggest guy at school, a gentle German giant, on the very first day. We genuinely got along quite well but in retrospect, I can’t help but wonder if I was subconsciously recruiting a henchman. Before long, I was organically gathering followers who longed to be rid of the bullies as much as I did. We all just wanted to be free to live and play in peace. My dad told me to just stand up to them by myself but I was smart enough to know that taking his advice could only end badly for me. I’d have to think a little bigger.

In grade one, the bullying got worse and our frustrations were building… Then I saw the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies. All the ingredients were there. The heroes use violence to achieve their freedom just as the villains use it to rule them. Besides just employing force, the villains always put on a good show as well. They were spectacular and overwhelming military organizations under the absolute rule of grand autocrats. I was just as impressed by Indie and the Rebel Alliance as I was by the Galactic Empire and the Nazis. So much power carefully organized under the direction of just one man! Sure, these particular leaders were evil, but what if they hadn’t been? After their victory, wouldn’t the rebels in Star Wars establish a new order of their own just as the empire before them had done? What if Indiana or a Jedi were in charge of their worlds in place of Adolph Hitler or Emperor Palpatine? These elaborate displays of military might appealed directly to my fear of oppression and the thirst for power that came from it. I became progressively more enamored by governments, weapons, and everything related to them. I learned the names of all the countries in the Atlas and the designs of all their flags. I got to know the names of fighter jets, stealth bombers, warships, submarines, and tanks. I learned the designs and significance of various military uniforms, medals, and insignia. Today, I look back on this a shudder but at the time, it was seen by my parents and teachers as both a healthy embrace of patriotism and a new-found respect for authority. They didn’t realize that my interest was in the tools of domination, not for the rulers who wield them. I was raising plenty of red flags but nobody seemed to notice.

Just ‘Cause

By the beginning of grade two, I was ready to raise my army. It started small with a tight-knit clique of five or six of us bundled up in our jackets and ski pants in the snow. If we were to organize a rebellion and confront our juvenile tormentors, we would need a base of operations. We tossed around some ideas and I took them to the drawing board to emerge later with a design for our new rebel base. We found a perfect location, hidden just out of sight from where the supervision teachers patrolled. The cold and the snow discouraged them from venturing far from the main doors so we had a certain number of blind spots within which to work in secret. We dug deep trenches into the snow and built up walls around them. I experimented with design elements and materials and in the end, we had built what I can even now call one hell of a snow fort. I used a spray bottle of water to build up layers of ice on the exterior as a protective shell and we stockpiled heaps of snowballs for the battles ahead. As construction progressed, word got around our numbers grew. Kids saw what we were doing and wanted to join. Within a couple of months, I had half the schoolyard organized under my command. I had assumed the rank of General, my hulking henchman got to be Colonel, and the rest of my inner circle held the next highest ranks beneath us. Everyone else held ranks beneath them and mostly just assisted by helping with structural maintenance. Ten, twenty, thirty; My little army grew by the day. They kept the trenches and tunnels clear and the armory stocked. They guarded my throne room and reported all of their daily progress to me. I appointed the girl upon whom I had a crush to the role of Doctor and her job was mainly to keep tabs on morale in the ranks and bring their concerns to my attention. Everything went smoothly as they systematically expanded my snowy domain. They dug me a network of hidden passages through the snow so that we could get around without drawing the eyes of the school faculty. To keep the chain of command clear in everyone’s mind, I made chevron rank insignia out of cardboard for us all to wear on our shoulders. Everyone felt pretty important when wearing them around the grounds and by that point, even the densest of teachers should have been taking a good hard look at all this… but still, they weren’t.

Regime Change

The bullies eventually took notice of what we were doing and decided to strike first. There were only a couple of them that really concerned us and its they that fired the first shots. They came to the school in the evening and thoroughly destroyed a large section of our beloved base. We arrived the next morning and quickly organized a counter-attack. We scurried through our trenches and emerged to surround the enemy. We unleashed a storm of snowballs and they lashed out in defense. It was thirty-to-three so the assault was over quickly enough. It was the first time they had ever been challenged by anyone at school and they had just been defeated for all to see. I led my troops back to base victorious, high on adrenaline, and just a little drunk on power.

Our celebratory mood faded away soon enough. Summer was coming and our base began to shrink in the sunlight. Rather than letting it wither away into a puddle of mud, we gathered together and destroyed it in a demolition ritual that let everyone accept the loss with pride. We all felt a sense of purpose and accomplishment and when the snow melted we stuck together and could finally enjoy roaming the playground freely any without harassment. But just as with any other revolutionary force in history, we had no intention of disbanding now that the job was done. Of course, someone had to protect the fragile new land from falling back into its former state of being. We kept our ranks and settled-in to enjoy our new positions of power on the playground. It was good to be king.

As if the students marching around in formation with chevrons fastened to their shoulders wasn’t enough to raise eyebrows, I finally pushed the envelope far enough to raise the concern of a teacher one day in class. She had tasked us with designing a shield and coat of arms. Mine featured a great big swastika in the center. The teacher was a friend of my parents so she didn’t hesitate to phone them straight away. At home that evening, my dad felt obliged to explain why the Nazis were so hated and feared. He told me what he himself had been taught about the holocaust and when I asked about why anyone would do such a thing, he just said that they were evil and then he mentioned something about the devil or some such nonsense. So naturally, at the end of the day, I complied without actually learning anything. Of course, this only addressed one small symptom. Both my parents and teacher failed to look beyond that to determine what motivating factors were at the root of my behavior.

When school let out for the summer, we all wondered what would become of us in the fall. In the back of my mind, I knew that because the bullies were no longer a threat, we no longer had a common foe to keep us united. Even though its original purpose had been fulfilled, I wasn’t ready to let my new order fall apart. To keep the troops together, we would need one of two things; Either a new project or a new enemy… or both.

Mein Kraft

The next fall, we all returned to resume our rule in the third grade. I lost no time in putting everyone to work. I brought a little gardening shovel to school and showed everyone that beneath the surface of the ground, there existed vast deposits of clay that could be extracted and crafted into objects. Sure, it was stupid, but hey, we were seven. I explained that if we extracted and stockpiled enough clay, we could fashion all kinds of things and sell them to make money. Apparently I had a bit of the entrepreneurship bug even back then. In only a few days we had dug a huge hole in the playground, big enough for ten kids to jump into. The school faculty was not happy about that and they shut us down right away. The groundskeeper filled-in our mine and we were once again left without a project. We returned to our “peacekeeping duties” and just when things started to get boring, one of my scouts came to me with a tip. He had supposedly learned of a gang of sixth-graders and claimed to have witnessed them using marijuana! gasp As an avid reader of Hardy Boys mysteries, I put on a good show of knowing just how to go about addressing this blight upon our land. We killed a month or so by investigating these elder hoodlums and ultimately exposing their illicit activities. Again, I look back and shudder.

Fortunately, another project opportunity presented itself before we could move on to ruin any more harmless herbalists. The school’s roof was undergoing repairs and winter was again setting in. These two conditions combined to produce an interesting phenomenon. Bits of molten tar would occasionally fly from the roof and freeze into black, glassy crystals. These could then be found buried in the snow banks around the school so I quickly convinced my eager minions that they were worth collecting and we set about doing just that. Half of us built a new base, grander than the one from the previous year, while the rest excavated the deep snow for frozen tar, which became our most treasured commodity. The new base included a treasury next to my throne room and it was soon filled with shiny black tokens of insanity. Of course, I knew that the excavation project could only continue for as long as there remained tar yet to be found. I would eventually have to introduce a plot twist to keep people engaged beyond that point. Fortunately, such a twist presented itself before I had to do anything myself. Just as tar was becoming very hard to find, some of our stockpile vanished. It was quickly discovered that a small group of detractors had broken away to form a rival group and they had taken some of our treasure to their own base on the other side of the school. Obviously, this meant war.

Tar Wars

The months to follow were largely made up of strategy meetings, sabotage plots, and sporadic snowball sieges. I was very careful throughout that winter to sustain the war for the sake of social cohesion within my ranks. We nearly crushed the opposition on several occasions but I always found a reason to withdraw and allow them to recover. This continued until springtime when we had to ritualistically demolish our base just as we had the year before. Before we did, however, we tore our opponents’ snow fort apart first and buried its defenders in an avalanche of snowballs for one last hurrah.

Springtime brought about a decline in conflict as most everyone turned their attention back to more civilized means of diversion. The absence of snow forts, trenches, tunnels, and hills meant that we were much more exposed to adult supervision. This meant that we were much less able to wage war against any foe that might present himself so we toned things down and eased into the summer with minimal drama.

Lonely Ranger

The cycle of continued for a couple more years. Summers were spent playing sports and video games, riding bikes, and enjoying the great outdoors but in winter, we were eager to return to our snowy war zone. I read The Art of War and explained the principals to my friends for application in the field. I think the school groundskeeper liked to watch our battles because he used his tractor and loader to make the most perfect hills for us to fight over. By the time the winter of grade six came to an end, we all somehow knew that it was the end of an era. We were growing up and recess games were becoming a thing of the past. The kids who had once followed me into fantasy and fed my delusions of grandeur were now finding purpose elsewhere for themselves and had no use for the daydreams I wrote for them. They didn’t need to vanquish villains or conquer territory. They played sports and chased girls instead and, once in high school, settled into a comfortable routine of school during the week and drunken debauchery over the weekend. These later years are the ones wherein I poured through the library, explored the internet, wrote poetry, and began to study business with the intent of one day becoming an entrepreneur. These times are covered more in my earlier article entitled I, Tin Man but suffice to say, I had to accept the uncomfortable fact that I simply didn’t fit in with the primitive simpletons that populated my hometown. I thoroughly embraced the rugged individual persona and continued to delay gratification in the pursuit of a better life later on down the road. From those first experiences of carrying my kindergarten friends over the finish line to the present day, I never doubted that my sacrifices would pay off in the end. I expected my path to unravel in very much the way that it has, for the most part. There has been only one major exception; Something I definitely didn’t expect.

Apples and Orchards

Fortunately, I was able to heal from my early childhood trauma and climb out of the insanity that I experienced earlier on in life. I left my original environment behind and set off to seek greener pastures while staying focused on personal development. I had some key psychological barriers to overcome in those first few years on my own but fortunately, I saw a clear improvement in my quality of life as a direct result of sorting through all the baggage. The biggest leap forward was when I dumped superstition and committed to objective reality. I really knew for sure that I’d be okay in 2007 when I was introduced to Ron Paul because it was through him that I started to learn about libertarianism and the Non-aggression Axiom. A couple years later, I took a keen interest in philosophy and objective morality. I developed a much better understanding of myself, my past, and the values that were determining my future. I looked at everything a little differently from then on. I consciously broke a few of my harmful behavioral patterns and approached life much more rationally and intentionally. I progressed towards my dreams much more efficiently and before long, I found myself in South America, where I live today, at the helm of a project that truly inspires and fulfills me. When I first began the Fort Galt project, I did so with the assumption that I would be juggling most of its dynamic components myself but only a few weeks after starting, the plot took a major twist that threw my assumptions right out the window. Circumstances beyond my control threatened the project and I was facing a very difficult situation. At this critical time, a couple of friends stepped forward and offered to join me in an effort to save and continue the project together. Even though I had long since been conditioned to balk at the idea of collaborating with others on important projects, I didn’t feel any aversion at all this time. Something was different… my new partners weren’t stunted rednecks; They were bright, enthusiastic, and experienced with a lot of value to bring to the table. Luke and Lourdes Crowley have been a blessing not only to the project but to me too because they’ve demonstrated that collaboration can actually be a pretty great thing after all. Their son, Dylan, and friend, Patrick White, have also been outstanding assets to the team and there has never been a time since joining up with them that I haven’t appreciated their involvement… which is very strange for me.

Because of all the forced interactions in my childhood, I developed a desperate longing for independence, freedom, and solitude. Only much later in life did I learn that individualism doesn’t have to be lonely. Self-reliance doesn’t have to doom you to alienation. We can be strong and independent while still voluntarily participating in communities of our choosing. Technology is opening the world up before us and is making it easier than ever to seek out and find the people with whom we are truly compatible. Even if those people live on the other side of the planet, you can still meet them online and develop relationships with them that fulfill you more than those that might otherwise be available to you in the flesh.

I guess the point of all this is that yes, you do indeed need to love yourself first and act in your own rational self-interest above all else. In no way does this mean that you need to wall yourself off from the rest of humanity though. Once you’re safely in control of your own life, the best thing you can do to reach your dreams is find a team of other people in pursuit of the same dream. The only thing better than a great adventure is a great adventure in the company of a family of fellow travelers that you have chosen to share it with.

A good team is so much more than the sum of its parts. Each contributor can potentially amplify your power by an order of magnitude. In contrast to how I viewed partners as a child, I have recently come to appreciate just how liberating good ones can be. They free you up to focus on the parts of the project that you truly love while the parts you don’t are handled by someone who does! They can transform your misery into their joy and the end result is a better product for everyone. This is the magic of the free market on a personal level. It’s free association and the division of labor. It’s everyday anarchy in action. It’s finding a tribe and realizing that you’re not doomed to stand alone forever. If you haven’t yet, you owe it to yourself to give it a shot. You can probably do an impressive thing or two by yourself but if you truly want to make an impact in the world, you’ll need someone to ground you when you dream and inspire you when you’re weighed down. As an individual, you’ll always leave some aspect of your business unattended. With the right team, you won’t. It’s even more of a difference than that between apples and oranges… It’s apples and orchards.

-Gabriel Scheare
www.fortgalt.com