If you have the power to hit people over the head whenever you want, you donΓ’β¬β’t have to trouble yourself too much figuring out what they think is going on, and therefore, generally speaking, you donΓ’β¬β’t. Hence the sure-fire way to simplify social arrangements, to ignore the incredibly complex play of perspectives, passions, insights, desires, and mutual understandings that human life is really made of, is to make a rule and threaten to attack anyone who breaks it. This is why violence has always been the favored recourse of the stupid: it is the one form of stupidity to which it is almost impossible to come up with an intelligent response. It is also of course the basis of the state.
β David Graeber
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