By Ken Bartle
Guest Writer for Wake Up World
Suppose that the word ‘person’ (by definition) has been misconstrued in meaning. Suppose that in our society, a ‘person’ is a LEGAL ENTITY, a thing, an artificial construct and not a ‘living being’. Suppose that you are blissfully ignorant of this deception, and truly believe that you are a “person”.
What if your government considers a ‘person’ to be a corporate entity? And what if, without your knowledge or consent, you are legally responsible for a corporate entity that bears your name? And as a consequence you are bound by rules and laws that were meant to govern commerce, not people?
What ill consequences might arise from your ignorance? And who might benefit from this misunderstanding? Let”s look.
So what is a person? Is a “person” a ‘thing’, is it a legal entity, or is it a ‘living being’? That needs to be clear.
This article pursues the concept of the ‘person’ and exposes our system of ‘identification’ as a most damnable and contemptuous crime.
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“I’m that person”
Imagine you arrive at the front desk of your local government office and you’re asked if you have any personal ID. “Yes, no problem” you say, as you flash your photo ID card or passport saying, “I’m the person”.
Suppose a ‘person’ is actually a LEGAL ENTITY. Haven’t you just and agreed to act on behalf of that ‘artificial person’ in your capacity as a ‘living being’? Haven’t you have just agreed to continue the deception? And since you consented to this monstrous deception, would it shock you that corporatised ‘governments’ use that consent to treat you as a LEGAL ENTITY, an artificial ‘person’, in all that it does and in every court in the country? Does it shock you that ‘government’ demands every self-serving compliance it can get away with? That it owns your drivers licence, your passport, your birth certificate, your kids, your education, their education, your health, your property title, your car?
And how would you feel to learn that every time you use the word ‘person’, you endorse a criminally deceptive legal perversion that underpins the most heinous crime in human history; the theft of your life, your identity, your freedom, and that of your family and friends?
What is a “person”?
Oxford Dictionary defines ‘identification’ as:
“a means of proving a person’s identity, especially in the form of official papers”. [emphasis added]
Google provides a multitude of answers to the question – “original meaning of person?” My trusty Mac summed all of them succinctly.
ORIGIN Middle English: from Old French ‘persone’, from Latin persona, “actor’s mask, character in a play’, later ‘human being’.”
Let’s go right back to its Latin origins – persona, actor’s mask, character in a play. The word ‘person’ denotes a mask, a presumed character, a concealment of sorts, something under the covers that only deliberate inquiry may reveal.
So what might the word ‘person’ be hiding?
Let’s start by defining the legal meaning of the word ‘person’. There are two persons identified in law: these are “natural-person” and “artificial-person”.
Natural persons
Let’s try to define “Natural person”. Several definitions emerge from Google:
- a human being, naturally born, versus a legally generated juridical person.
- ‘natural person’ refers to a human being as opposed to a legally-created entity, like a Corporation, Limited Liability Company, General Partnership, Limited Partnership, etc.
- A natural person is any human being, with legal capacity commencing from the time of birth.
- A living, breathing human being, as opposed to a legal entity such as a corporation.
- A living human being. Legal systems can attach rights and duties to natural persons without their express consent.
All resources agree on “human being”, but there seems far too much divergence of opinion to clearly define ‘natural person’. Qualifiers and dis-qualifiers abound; none are definitive.
Further research brought the website natural-person.ca into focus, particularly because it offers some words of caution.
- Two key words that are re-defined in almost every Statute are the words “person” and “individual”. There are only two “persons” in law, a human being, and everything else: a natural-person is a legal entity for the human-being. An artificial-person is a legal entity that is not a human being.
Did you spot it?
In almost every Statute”, there are two types of “persons”, and both are legal entities; one for the living being, and one not a living being. But did you notice it does not say that a ‘natural-person’ is legally “OF” the living being, but is an entity “FOR” the living being? Is it logical that if the “natural-person” is a ‘legal entity’ FOR a living human, then “natural-person” has no humanity to it. (E.g. a door FOR a shed is a door; it cannot also be a shed.)
Whatever happened to the “breathing”? What happened to all that flesh and blood?
Well, according to your LEGAL status, flesh and blood doesn’t exist. The definition of the phrase “natural-person” does not include the living being’s “Life characteristics”; those ‘life’ elements which prove life is present, have been disqualified. A “natural-person” is something constructed to serve a human being, and so must be some ‘thing’ other than human. It does not live. This “natural-person” is dependent for all its actions upon a living, breathing human being.
Does this surprise you? And would it surprise you to know you were not supposed to notice this distinction… like it is masked in legality and deceit?
Person or human?
Let’s examine this idea.
There are only two “persons” in law, a human being, and everything else. Sounds simple enough. What’s to explain further?
Every human being is considered by the legal system to be a “person”. You are a member of the (legal) “person” club, and as an unknowing member of that club, a “natural-person” entity has been created for you. It hides under the mask of “person” and, deceptively, shares your name. And if you accept your ‘membership’ by flashing your ID card, you are accepting and confirming that you are an artificial person.
Artificial persons
The word ‘artificial’ means made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally, typically as a copy of something natural. So an ‘artificial person’ is seemingly a man made copy – but of what?
An artificial person is a legal entity that is not a human being, but for certain legal purposes is considered by virtue of statute to be a natural person.
Is your understanding complete yet, or is the wolf still circling?
Government created an artificial thing that is non-human, a Legal Entity, and labelled it an ‘artificial person’. Government statutes also create a ‘natural person’ entity, which enables the ‘living being’ to act for the ‘artificial person’ – and be bound by rules applicable only to ‘artificial persons’.
So what does this mean?
Most people will accept that there is something about “government” that doesn’t feel right; that our current social structure doesn’t really benefit us, or our ailing environment. In a world of beauty and abundance, we work unreasonably long hours in concrete cities, foregoing our own desires, to barely scrape by. Why? To fit into a system of controls that existed long before each of us was born.
But think about it. If “the system” doesn’t benefit you, who does it ultimately benefit? It must work to someone’s advantage. It’s just not you!
And now we’re starting to understand how this all came to pass.
Government is not stupid. It recognised that a real, live human-being was an indispensable factor in activating this legal entity, to give it “life” and activity…. i.e. to open envelopes, vote to uphold government, write letters, pay on demand, get the kids vaccinated, attend court, apply for a license, pay registration fees, pay the extortion fee (fine) for parking longer than 60 minutes — all so that government could make money from your existence. Which it inevitably does.
Surprised? Don’t be. Government is a corporation after all!
But how many people really know and understand that what we consider “government’ is not real government, that it only masquerades as such? They’ve hidden this fact well, and for a very long time.
So what else have governments hidden? You’ve guessed haven’t you? Persons.
Government recognised that it needed to mask this ‘person’ scam and keep it from public view. Otherwise, who would play along? Without your agreement (albeit by deceit) to play along, to represent the LEGAL ENTITY, government knows it cannot exercise control over your being. Government knows that it cannot legitimately exercise authority over living beings, as it is itself the creation of living beings. In the natural hierarchy, human trumps institution every day of the week.
So, to facilitate its system of control, government went back to Latin…. and presto! There was the word persona – a mask. The word fitted its purpose to perfection! And by misconstruing its meaning in common usage, living breathing human beings unknowingly accept the obligations imposed by law on the Legal entities created in our names.
The definition of ‘person’ now makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? An ‘actor’s mask’, a ‘character in a play’. And what better mask than to have a “Natural Person” act as a bridge to the LEGAL ENTITY – the “artificial person”? Better yet, why not put the ‘natural person’ (an entity created “for” the living being) in the same court (pun intended) with the non-living ‘artificial’ person, so that Lawyers can put more knots in the corporate noose that today has us all hanging by our necks?
By skilfully using the word “person” for both entities, government has hidden the mask right under your nose. We have been led to believe that a “person” is a human being – full stop. So we accept the legal ownership of the “person” LEGAL ENTITY (created by government) and in the process forego our basic human rights to the will of government.
Black’s Law Fictionary Dictionary (9th Ed.) says this about “Artificial Persons”:
Artificial person. (17c) An entity, such as a corporation, created by law and given certain legal rights and duties of a human being; a being, real or imaginary, who for the purpose of legal reasoning is treated more or less as a human being …. – Also termed fictitious person; juristic person; juridical person; legal person; moral person. Cf. LEGAL ENTITY
Persons, persons, persons! Read it again. Pause on every phrase. Let every one sink in.
Is your ‘person’ a “legal entity” that bleeds you of every life characteristic you possess, a lifeless entity that will be treated as “more or less” human? And if ‘persons’ are “given certain legal rights and duties”, then do ‘persons’ also have unalienable rights – rights that do not depend on government granting or withdrawing them? You would have to think not, surely.
Personally speaking….
Wikipedia asserts that the purpose of identification (ID) is to “verify aspects of a person’s personal identity”, and there aren’t many who would disagree with that definition. Now consider….
When a person, who does not understand what ‘person’ actually means, hands over their personal ID to another person, they give up their persona and becomes the ‘person’ behind the mask. They assume the role of the LEGAL ENTITY ‘person’, a mask they believe is their real human person.
Use of the word ‘person’ on a daily basis is almost impossible to escape. It is so ingrained into our language, our conversations, even our news reports.
For example, “two witnesses reported a young person departing at high speed”.
Witness definition? A person who sees an event, typically a crime or accident, take place.
Another example, “many were horribly shocked, some bystanders needing psychological counselling”.
Bystander definition? A person who is present at an event or incident but does not take part.
Another example, “the defendant appeared in court in person”.
The labels and roles we are attributed in our society all invariably point back to the word ‘person’ which, as we know, is a LEGAL ENTITY.
Collectively speaking….
‘People’ is a collective word. ‘Persons’ is also a collective word. So what is the difference?
According to OxfordDictionaries.com:
The words people and persons can both be used as the plural of person, but they are not used in exactly the same way.
People is by far the more common of the two words and is used in most ordinary contexts: a group of people : there were only about ten people : several thousand people have been rehoused.
Persons, on the other hand, tends now to be restricted to official or formal contexts, as in : this vehicle is authorized to carry twenty persons : no persons admitted without a pass.
Did you catch that one? Observe that “a group of people”, “about 10 people”, “several thousand people” describes living, flesh-and-blood human beings.
‘Persons’, conversely, is a quantity of individuals to be ruled, to be restricted, to be governed, to be “authorized”, to be (or not to be) “admitted without a pass”.
As the linguistic context switched from ‘people’ to ‘persons’, so too the social context switched from ‘not ruled’ to ‘ruled’.
Personalism
Twists and turns permeate the topic of the ‘person’, as all the above indicates. if you really want to get to the bottom of a ‘person’ (excuse the pun – I did not mean to be personal!) a thorough and comprehensive article entitled ‘Personalism’, from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 1 is essential (but not easy) reading.
The term ‘person’ comes from the Latin persona, whose origins are traceable to Greek drama, where the ????????, or mask, became identified with the role an actor would assume in a given production. Such usage is carried over today in the word “persona,” referring to characters in fictional literature or drama, or second identities which people adopt for behavior in given social contexts.
Its introduction into the mainstream of intellectual parlance, however, came with theological discourse during the patristic period, notably the attempts to clarify or define central truths of the Christian faith. These discussions focused primarily on two doctrines: the Trinity (three “persons” in one God) and the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity (the “hypostatic” union of two natures – divine and human – in one “person”).
Notice the bold portions. Are you seeing a trend here? Throughout the patristic period, the word ‘person’ was cultivated to denote separation, or multiple identities.
In a later paragraph it is described as an:
… elusive concept which in some respects wholly inverts the original connotations of exteriority in the early meanings of “mask” and “role”: person comes rather to denote the innermost spiritual and most authentic kernel of the unique individual.
Observe how the (innermost spiritual) persona is seen to be an element within the ‘person’, as though separate from the individual; as though the persona has an assumed (greater) importance.
Dignity
Keep reading Personalism, and after describing the Eastern, European and American influences and histories of “personalism”, the real message begins to emerge….
Dignity refers to the inherent value of the person, as a “someone” and not merely “something,” and this confers an absoluteness not found in other beings.
Don’t run away yet – there’s a tiger lurking here. Consider this….
If dignity is the inherent value of the person, then self-respect, pride, self-esteem and self-worth are human attributes that transform “something” into “someone”. The “absoluteness of those attributes are not found in other beings”. Join the dots and human dignity is what makes a person, agreed?
But what are these “other beings” that do not have dignity and do not therefore qualify as persons? Are they animals? Let’s look further.
In stressing the uniqueness of persons vis-à -vis all other entities, personalists influenced by Thomism (Thomas Aquinas) designate the essential dividing line of reality as that which separates personal and non-personal being.
Now we’re getting closer! Does a “non-personal being” suggest an artificial-person?
Here classical-realist personalists reject the Hobbesian (Thomas Hobbes) notion of dignity as the price set on an individual by the commonwealth, and ally themselves rather with Kant (Emanuel Kant) in his assertion that dignity is inherent and sets itself beyond all price. (Emphasis mine)
Apparently there’s division in the ranks. It seems that (notional) “dignity” was once considered the “price set on an individual by the commonwealth”, but German philosopher Immanuel Kant (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) asserted that dignity is beyond all price, because it is inherent.
Sounds like Kant knew his stuff! Is there a change in tone here, as first seems to be the case? Or did Kant realize that if you want to disguise a non-living being as a living being you’d damn well better give both dignity or you’ve blown your cover?
The mask
Continuing from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Swiss theologian Hans Urs presented the following viewpoint:
Von Balthasar, for example, wrote: “Few words have as many layers of meaning as person. On the surface it means just any human being, any countable individual. Its deeper senses, however, point to the individual’s uniqueness which cannot be interchanged and therefore cannot be counted.” In this deeper sense persons cannot, properly speaking, be counted, because a single person is not merely one in a series…. and thus exchangeable for any other.
Von Balthasar goes on to say: “If one distinguishes between ‘individual’ and ‘person’ (and we should for the sake of clarity), then a special dignity is ascribed to the person, which the individual as such does not possess…. We will speak of a ‘person’… when considering the uniqueness, the incomparability and therefore irreplaceability of the individual. (Emphasis mine)
But it seems Kantian psychology won the day.
In an article entitled “Causality Versus Duty”, novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand wrote….
If “genius” denotes extraordinary ability, then Kant may be called a genius in his capacity to sense, play on and perpetuate human fears, irrationalities and, above all, ignorance. His influence rests not on philosophical but on psychological factors.
Further demonstrating her point, Rand also wrote….
Kant originated the technique required to sell irrational notions to the men of a skeptical, cynical age who have formally rejected mysticism without grasping the rudiments of rationality.
The technique is as follows: if you want to propagate an outrageously evil idea (based on traditionally accepted doctrines), your conclusion must be brazenly clear, but your proof unintelligible. Your proof must be so tangled a mess that it will paralyze a reader’s critical faculty – a mess of evasions, equivocations, obfuscations, circumlocutions, non sequiturs, endless sentences leading nowhere, irrelevant side issues, clauses, sub-clauses and subsub-clauses, a meticulously lengthy proving of the obvious, and big chunks of the arbitrary thrown in as self-evident, erudite references to sciences, to pseudo-sciences, to the never-to-be-sciences, to the untraceable and the unprovable – all of it resting on a zero: the absence of definitions.
What greater evil?
Let’s examine Rand’s reference to “propagating an outrageously evil idea”. Which of the following would be the greater evil?
1. To propagate an outrageously evil idea? Or….
2. To give an existing evil idea the face of acceptability so thoroughly and uniformly that no one would ever recognise its evil nature or purpose?
How would you achieve what question 2 proposes? How would you whitewash an evil idea thoroughly?
There are no prizes for the correct answer; you’d dispel the notion that the idea was evil in the first place; make it acceptable, normalise it, gloss it over, change the words so it means something different, even remove the words entirely. And, because this must be done thoroughly and uniformly, you’d hit the most receptive nerves possible through the most common resources at your disposal.
Scrubbing scripture
For clues, let’s look back through history, before the times of the many philosophers mentioned in the Stamford University article, specifically to the Wycliffe Bible (1380) (by LAMP POST Inc. 2008)
1. James 2 v9:
But if ye taken persones, ye worchen synne, and ben repreued of the lawe, as trespasseris.
2. Romans 2 v11
For acceptioun of persones is not anentis God.
3. Acts 10 v34
And Petre openyde his mouth, and seide, In trewthe Y haue foundun, that God is no acceptor of persones;
Now this was written is in 1380. There was no TV and no internet in those days. No emails, faxes or even Gestetner duplicating machines. “WTF is a typewriter..” it might be asked, “much less a Biro?”
But there were philosophers, the practice of which examines the fundamental aspects of the nature of existence, to provide man with a comprehensive view of life that serves as a base and frame of reference for all his actions, mental or physical, psychological or existential.
Even without a detailed language translation, it is very clear from the 1380 biblical quotations above that ‘persons’ was not an acceptable idea to God, to say least. “God is no acceptor of persones” and “acceptioun of persones” is “synne”.
Philosopher’s disagreed. Immanuel Kant, and others proceeding him, decided that “persones” should be granted dignity, even at the expense of individuals – of living human beings.
Surely that conflicts with the scriptures quoted above! Did these dudes turn the tables, psychologically and philosophically? Did they give an existing evil idea the face of acceptability so thoroughly and uniformly that no one would ever recognise its outrageously evil nature or purpose?
Let’s look at more evidence….
Let’s take the exact same references as above – this time from the (King James Bible) KJB printed by Hodder & Stoughton for the International Bible Society NIV © edition 1995.
1. James 2 v9:
But if you show favouritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as law breakers.
2. Romans 2 v11
For God does not show favouritism.
3. Acts 10 v34
Then Peter began to speak: “I now realise how true it is that God does not show favouritism…”
Now Compare the 1380 quotations with their 1995 equivalents. Three times the word ‘person’ has been removed. Three times the word ‘favouritism’ has been substituted.
Let’s explore this idea further….
First, God declares ‘persons’ to be sinners and unacceptable; adopting a ‘person’, or ‘a presumed character’, it is an act of ‘concealment’.
625 years later, God apparently has second thoughts. ‘Favoritism’ is now the sin, and ‘persons’ are now unclassifiable, equally acceptable with all others, and absolved from sin. The evil of ‘persons’ that God first warned of has, miraculously, completely vanished. Now your life, your ‘dignity’, your “inherent value” that defines you as a “someone and not merely something”, all means naught — because “God does not show favouritism”.
How clever is that? And how morally and criminally reprehensible?
Today, despite what God may have said in the past, ‘artificial persons’ are considered completely acceptable because favouritism is the new sin. So too are natural-persons, juristic persons, juridical persons, legal persons, moral persons and even LEGAL ENTITIES.
So…. who are you?
When you interact with government and the law, will you be treated as an ‘artificial person’, a ‘natural person’, or your real living breathing self?
Do you do governments’ bidding? Do you comply with their every statute and law? DO you suffer every rule and regulation? Agree to every financial impediment and our constant state of debt? Accept every act of corporate back-scratching and profitable environmental irresponsibility? And bow to a state of tyranny and militaristic terror?
How many millions of us listen up, sit up, pay up and shut up…. then teach our children that government is for their personal protection and benefit?
Why do we religiously believe we must carry a small card to validate our existence, when offering that ID constitutes nothing more than agreeing (with government) that you will act as some “thing” you are not?
Why do thousands cry tears of blood every week when stripped of their ID or driver’s licence, when that card has really belonged to, and defined, an ‘artificial person’ from day one?
Have you been beguiled to believe the ‘artificial person’, which government so cleverly masked in word play, is you?
Do you understand the criminality of stripping you of your ‘life characteristics’, or the inverted morality involved in such a scheme?
Are you a flesh-and-blood, thinking, living being? Or an ‘artificial person’ that your ID endorses every time you present it?
Your consent
Where, on any ID card you have ever seen it stated, written or encoded that you are a living being, to the exclusion of all others?
You haven’t. And do you see why not? If others are not expressly excluded then legal entities, natural and artificial persons, can also be identified in the same way.
As a card-carrying ‘person’, you are considered no different to a ‘natural’ or ‘artificial person’. You have the same rights as a corporation. Every time you offer up your ID card, you grant government your consent to this arrangement. Every time you open an envelope addressed to someone that you think is you, but is really the ‘person’ that shares your name, you grant government your consent to be that ‘person’- and to be treated accordingly.
Goodbye inalienable rights, hello dictates of government!
Your consent to be treated as a ‘person’ is all Government wants from you. And, by these methods and many more, you submit to all their statutes, laws, thievery and corruption – all because you have been taught that your ID is really you.
What does your ‘official’ ID card actually prove? It’s not proof of your true identity that government wants. What they want from you is your agreement to act as the ‘person’ they created.
Remember the phrase “Consent of the Governed”? Is its real meaning clearer now?
You hold the key
Despite all the lies, masks, obfuscations, falsifications, artificialities, political constructs and bloody-minded corruption (revealed over centuries), what still remains untainted and unblemished? What stands head and shoulders above all else – simple, pure, honest and without reproach?
You. The fact that you live.
Some feel incompetent to run their own lives, yet feel supremely competent to run the lives of others. Government are incompetent dependents on one hand, yet belligerently skilful manipulators on the other.
By nature, government is dependent. Your life, every breath that you take, is the life force on which they depend. Your life is their power, the only power they have. They give you an ID, as though you never had life before they granted it. They made a ‘natural person’ entity in your name, which ensures you interact appropriately with the legal and economic systems they have created around you. By exercising whatever force they consider necessary, they use this entity to strip you bare of the very life force they depend on.
But that entity is not you. It is a mask, and its name admits that fact.
Reclaiming you “ID”
Get a life? NO! You have it already.
Take back your life force. Grasp hold of those characteristics that clearly and unmistakably prove you are a unique expression of your creator. Take charge of those “life characteristics” as a breathing, flesh and blood human being. Identify those characteristics. Claim them. They belong to you.
Forget the “Birth Certificate” BS. That’s one of their masking filters, a document used by government to create the ‘natural person’. A Birth Certificate only proves that “thing” of theirs got “birthed”. But that thing is NOT you! You were “born”.
Man is an indivisible entity of matter and consciousness, and that each human being has the sovereign right to their own life and to that which is required to sustain it. It is now time to correct the injustice of Corporate government. Their days are numbered…. In peaceful defiance, we will stop consenting to act on behalf of these false entities, created by government for its own benefit.
© Ken Bartle Jan 2014
References:
1 Williams, Thomas D. and Bengtsson, Jan Olof, “Personalism“, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)
About the author:
A 30 year pioneer of ‘solar house’ design in Australia, Ken has worked alongside Australia’s top architects, researched planned housing development in the United States and authored 4 professional publications. He has amassed 16 state, national and international awards, and delivered a paper to the World Renewable Energy Congress in 2007.
Exposure to building contracts and Land Planning regulations gave him a firm grasp of legal documentation, so when his son Scott first embarked on his expose of corrupt government in Australia, the pieces quickly fell into place for Ken. Aided by over 35 years study of Objectivist philosophy, the practical and moral nature of our corrupted ‘government’ system soon became clear.
When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it. ~ Frederick Bastiat 1850
Ken believes man is an indivisible entity of matter and consciousness, absent of limits, and that each human being has the sovereign right to their own life and that which is required to sustain it. And today, grounded in both legal and philosophical understandings, Ken’s work is to help correct the injustice and remove the limitations of corporate government.
Learn more at AbsentLimits.net
This article edited by Andy Whiteley for Wake Up World.
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