On Land and Sea: What Lawyers Do Not Want You to Know About the Law

There are so many laws out there, and the whole thing seems so complex. For this reason alone, 95% of us - including lawyers, government enforcers, and police - have never learned how the law really works. Instead, we leave it to those in authority to tell us what we are and aren't allowed to do.

Those who control things in our world do understand - and therefore create and enforce the law. Those of us who don't understand the law must either obey or accept our punishments when we disobey.

Only the guilty fear judgement, but you, like most people, probably are guilty. Your crime is willing ignorance.

No more.

The law is whatever the boss says it is

"Law" is a body of rules prescribed by a controlling authority. The rules may be physical rules such as "gravity" or "mathematics," or they may be biological rules such as "living beings must eat and eventually die." The rules can also be social rules such as laws that prescribe what colour of hat you must wear on Tuesdays. But whatever the rules are, they've been made up by someone who is an authority.

What determines who the boss is? An "authority" is the author of a writ. Whoever makes up the rules is the boss. Simple as that.

Two kinds of law: natural and contract law

You and I have been taught that "law" is pages and pages of words written on paper (and papyrus and clay tablets). But those kinds of laws are really just agreements made between human beings in order to exchange benefits.

The natural laws of the universe, such as gravity and aerodynamics, apply equally to everybody. We are also all equal to one another in our rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. The only way one of us can have less rights than another is by contract, which is an agreement to give up something in exchange for something else.

Any written law created by a human being has been made for exactly this reason: one human gives up one or more of her rights, and in exchange she gets a benefit. The boss is the one that gives the benefit in exchange for having power and control. The boss is the one who lets you live under his roof. By accepting this benefit from the boss, you have given up your right to use his house except in the ways that the boss says you can use it.

Every contract is by agreement between two human beings. This is one of the three requirements of a contract between two people: there has to be something of value exchanged, there have to be two human beings who agree to the contract, and there has to be full disclosure of the details of the contract. No tricking allowed.

Remember this, because it's your get-out-of-jail free card.

The Law of the Sea: contracts

These are some of the contracts that the people who own the government have put together and offered you:

Do you remember getting full disclosure of the details of the exchange in these contracts? Do you remember getting a benefit? Do you remember agreeing to these contracts?

Each of us as an individual woman or man has basic rights, bestowed upon us - and enforced - by whatever created the universe. You might say, your rights compose your jurisdiction - the jurisdiction of you. At the same time, the guy next to you is the boss of his jurisdiction. Any time you want to interact with your fellow man, each of you must open up the boundary between you, allow a flow of energy back and forth across the boundary, and then re-assert the boundary. This is what making a contract is all about: controlling the "flow" that passes between you and others.

When goods are in transition between owners, fenceposts and lines drawn in the dirt can't mark the claim to territory or stake one's own jurisdiction out. Because human beings can't assert plots of water as their own territory, the waters - the flow between people - cannot be governed or owned. Whoever is carrying a shipload of goods across international territory is in limbo where nobody has any land rights to assert, and so the sailor must make up his own set of rules of conduct for that situation.The flow between jurisdictions, as allowed by contracts between human beings, is represented as water. All contract law - complex sets of contracts between people for exchange of goods and services - is maritime law, or the law of the sea. It is no coincidence that the law of the sea uses many water-related words such as "cash flow," "currency," "liquidity," and "owner-ship."

Tribal human groups are typically about 70-100 people in size. Everyone knows everyone else intimately. There is no need, inside a tribe, for people to assert their territory and hoard resources. The tribe functions by sharing and gifting, and there is no need for complex trade contracts in order to prevent one person from ripping off another.

The law of the sea is the written law of civilization. All written laws, legislation, statutes, acts, and contract law are established in order to keep track of ownership and authority structures in larger human groups, which means anything more complex than the tribe. Maritime law is civil law, because civilization can only function by complex sets of contracts.

It includes any law relating to property claim including environmental, landlord and tenant, and succession. Civil law also includes anything to do with trade and profit, including commercial law, consumer law, all laws relating to travel off land such as shipping or air travel. The civil law covers anything that has to do with administration, class, status, slavery, bondage, and elitism... including canon (religious) law. All licensing, permitting, zoning, and taxation is authorized by civil law.

Even criminal law is a form of civil law because it is a written, pre-established set of agreements as to exactly how specific types of crimes will be punished in that particular society. For example, a first offence for drunk driving is, in Canada, a reason to lose your drivers' license and pay a big fine according to the civil law. In Saudi Arabia, however, driving drunk is punishable by firing squad.

Civilization: you are cordially invited to my party

Civilization means large populations organized into agriculture-based, pyramid-structured hierarchies with class stratification, management and administration, and division of labour. A civilization is like a big party where the rules for getting along (as well as the punishments for breaking the rules) are written on a big list. 

The law, by definition, is whatever whoever owns the ship where the party is being held says is the law. By being at someone else's cruiseship party, eating their hors-d'oeuvres, and telling their servants what to do, you're agreeing to the rules made by the boss of that cruiseship, whatever the rules may be. You're also agreeing to the associated punishments for violation of the rules. It doesn't matter whether you've read the rules or not (most of us haven't). It doesn't even matter if you're capable of reading.

Here's where our ignorance gets us. We've been led to believe that, in a democracy, we are the owners of the ship. Anything we don't like about the party or the punishments, is our problem to deal with. So we sign petitions. We go to protest marches. We vote for the party that is more likely to do good things. And we attempt to educate one another. Because we're all in this together, right?

Wrong.

You and I do not own the cruise ship. You and I only believe we own it. We believe that the "owner" of the ship is society, and that we are part of society ...because there's nowhere else to go.

What we are led to believe about this cruise ship we call "society" and "government" and "the law" - what we call "jurisdiction" - is that it is a geographical area. But it is not. The ship is not a geographical area. You can be on or off the ship without moving one inch from where you are currently standing.

The ship is a made-up construct, a legal fiction. It's just another contract, created by a bunch of people who were giving up a right in exchange for a benefit, who had full disclosure of the details of the contract, and who willingly signed on.

Society does not mean "people in a geographical area." It refers to jurisdiction, not geography. Jurisdiction means, literally, "truth-speak." It means authority established in a contract. This distinction between jurisdiction and geography is extremely important because, without physically going anywhere, you can get off whatever cruise ship you realize you don't want to be on. You can leave the party if you want... and the rules of the ship do not apply to you if you are not on the ship. This is what is meant by "consent to be governed."

Unless you understand the law in a way that 95% of us do not, I doubt that you're the owner of the cruise ship you're on. You don't make rules of the party. When you vote, you're electing the head servants who then go about enforcing the ship's rules (if the owners of the ship are okay with that decision - if not, they'll topple your head servant and put a dictator in in his place). When you want to make a change, you have to petition, which means to pray for some favour, privilege, or allowance to whoever actually is the boss. When you want to get any benefit from this authority, whoever owns the cruise ship, you have to submit to that authority. What you have to submit is an application, which means to make a formal petition for the granting of some favour, privilege, or allowance. 

In order to get benefits from society, you have to beg. You have to acknowledge that someone else is the boss of you, and then beg to be allowed to live under their roof. So, who exactly is the boss of your society?

In civil law, a society is a law society. Here in Canada, there are fourteen law societies. In the U.S.A. and England, law societies are called "bar associations." Each is a separate jurisdiction, meaning it is a separate cruise ship. All legislation, acts, statutes, civil law, maritime law, admiralty law, canon (religious) law, even criminal law is made up by law societies as the terms of the contract for governing their own cruise ship parties. 

The owner of the cruise ship that you've probably sailed on for your whole life is whoever owns your government. (Probably Rockefellers, Morgans, Rothschilds, Desmaraises ...just google it)

So. What's outside the ship, then? Lawlessness?

Not at all.

The Law of the Land: natural law

Natural law makes us all equal. There are no bosses in natural law, because no amount of begging, praying, and submission to the creator of gravity, mathematics, or your rights will change those laws. (If you think that your prayers will cause God to suspend gravity for your sake, you need to get over yourself, sweetie)

Natural law is common to all people, to all species, and, in fact, to all physical things of any kind. This law is central to every form of spirituality (even atheism and humanism), because natural law is truth. It's reality. 

Natural law includes the laws of thermodynamics, which govern the flow of energy from one physical form to another - the physical basis of everything in the Universe. The laws of thermodynamics create ongoing physical evolution of the universe, constant change, patterns of gravity, expansion, action-reaction, and the flow of time.

Natural law includes the Law of Life, which governs the flow of energy from one biological form to another in the food chain. The law of life creates biodiversity and abundance, cooperation and adaptation to change. 

Natural law includes the common law, which governs the interaction of human beings with one another. In the common law, if you harm someone else, you'll get your ass kicked sooner or later, because you are a social animal and you cannot live very well at all without the cooperation of your fellow people. The common law governs cooperation, interaction, and assertion of our rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.

The laws of thermodynamics govern the Law of Life and the Law of Life governs the common law. This is just how reality works. You can't have any biodiversity when there is no physical energy in the form of water, heat, sunlight. You can't have cooperation of your fellow people if there are no people because there's no food.

In a similar way, the common law completely overrides contract law. The law of the land supercedes the law of the sea. You cannot make a contract to agree to give up your rights if you don't have those rights in the first place.

In religious terms, the law of the land means surrendering to what God says to do. Spiritual non-religious people see this law as living with surrender to the metaphysical laws of joy, love, abundance and well-being. In all cases, the result is the same, because the author of the law of the land is whoever authored all the physical, biological, and social laws of the Universe. The only boss in the law of the land is the Creator, whatever you believe that to be.

The Book of Genesis describes the law of the land as rules of conduct for staying alive and being healthy. There's description of the elegant design that structures the entire biosphere as a connected set of ecological niches and interrelations between living things of different kinds, as well as natural laws for treating each other properly. The Book of Genesis describes humanity's ecological purpose as the gardeners of the landscape on the grandest scale, while other species occupy smaller niches such as one river system (salmon), one river (beavers), or one rock (lichen). 

Natural law, which makes us all equals because it applies to each of us exactly the same way, always trumps legislated (man-made) law. All civil law must obey the common law because, as was observed by one jurist in the case of Robin v. Hardaway, 1 Jefferson 109; 1 Am Jur 2d 14:

"A legislature must not obstruct our obedience to Him from whose punishments they cannot protect us."

No matter how much you revere the royals and think they're better than you, they're not allowed to prevent you from obeying, say, the law of gravity. Or from defending your personal rights.

The law of the land is live and let live.

Just as the Law of Life keeps the living community together through sharing economies and many other natural strategies between and among species, the common law keeps the peace between humans within our social groups. We, the landscapers of Earth, came into existence together with the law of the land.

In the common law, we must never attempt to harm another. This means we must keep the peace, never start a conflict with someone else. We have to treat others as though they are ourselves. We have to do our best to be good people. 

But, if someone else starts a conflict, we have to assert our rights with whatever level of force is necessary. If someone tries to kill you, you must defend yourself even if it requires you killing the other. If someone steals what belongs to you, you must steal it back or put a bigger lock on your door. If someone tries to defraud you in a contract, you must immediately end the contract. That's the common law.

If you don't obey this law, then you're depriving someone of their rights or you are agreeing to allow someone else depriving you of your rights. 

The common law is whatever natural strategy has arisen in a place to keep the local human community together. And, when the local human community's population began to surge beyond the tribal group size through the use of agricultural technology (instead of horticulture and hunter-gatherer technology) ...that strategy began to involve contracts. The civil law came into being within the common law. As civilizations became more complex, the contracts became more complex. The rest, as they say, is history.

It's important to know that just because 95% of the planet is civilized and hanging out at a big honkin' cruise ship party called "global civilization," it doesn't mean the common law ever went away. We've been brainwashed to believe that natural law doesn't apply anymore, but it applies just as much as ever. Just because we can fly in airplanes and live uninformed lifestyles of excess and extortion does not mean that the laws of thermodynamics or ecology - or the common law - have disappeared. It only means we're about to suffer some nasty consequences.

When the lights go off and the cruiseship runs out of fuel, rich and poor will be equal once again. But the rich do not want to poor to know that.

The (human) boss doesn't want you to know about the common law

Genesis in the Old Testament described natural law in terms of the ecological aspects of humanity's place in the world, because this cultural story originates in the mythology of pre-civilized Semitic tribal cultures. John in the New Testament, however, addressed the crisis of slavery to civil law when the people had become utterly confused as to which laws were those ordained by God and which were just made up by the elites to control people. As a consequence of a few thousand years of this kind of civilized "progress," the once-fertile area of the Garden of Eden had become a deforested, overgrazed, and topsoil-depleted desert.

John, in the New Testament, begins with calling the law of the land "the Word." As we know, the word is that written by the authority. The boss. In the big picture, we're talking about the creator of the universe, over whom there is no other authority. The Word - the law of the land - is both with God and God.

The Book of John (which describes Jesus' ministry and miracles and is believed by some to have actually been written in Pesher code by Jesus himself) describes the healing and equalizing application of common law during intense civil upheaval when two cruiseships - Roman and Jewish - were competing for the same berth in the port. Each of Jesus' miracles demonstrated an example of how the civil law always gives way to the common law, because the common law (being natural law) is authored by God Him- or Herself. Jesus demonstrated this by applying the common law to make equals of everyone, including whores, criminals, castouts, disabled people ...and rich men.  For example, the water-into-wine miracle allowed Gentiles and unclean, lame, or other lower-class "citizens" to receive the full initiation of baptism and thereby receive the full light of Divine beneficence. Raising a man "from the dead" was an example of Jesus going right over the civil lawmakers' heads by bringing Lazarus back into the community and reestablishing his rights after Lazarus had been excommunicated under civil law.

The elites in that day, just as today, received their power only from within their law society. The Jewish lawmakers (scribes and Pharisees, those mortals who wrote Leviticus for the benefit of the rich) didn't have a civil law that allowed them to put a man to death for snubbing them. So the elites of the Jews got the help of the elites of the Romans, and Jesus' mission work was finally ended.

To this day, those who own the cruise ships are much more in league with one another than they are with us, the other 99% of the people.

You, too, can step back onto the land

As you now know, all civil law is contractual and therefore depends on your agreement in order for you to be bound by it. What we end up with is three possible legal statuses for human beings living in a civilized world: bondsman, freeman, or slave.

A bondsman is someone who willingly signs a contract to give up his rights in some clearly-defined way in order to get a clearly-defined payment. This might be something like accepting a two-year contract to complete a certain service during that time period in exchange for a certain amount of pay. Once the contract's clearly-defined terms are finished, the contract is over and done with and there is no more attachment.

A freeman is someone who chooses not to enter into contracts and holds all of his or her rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. The freeman operates only in common law, bound only to keep the peace and to never harm another or allow another to be harmed if she can reasonably prevent it.

The slave, however, is the one who is permanently bound and kept inferior to a human boss, essentially having no rights because she is unable to assert those rights. In the most physical sense, this is simply by brute force: do as I say or I will harm or kill you. But nowadays, it is much more often because of ignorance. If you do not assert your rights because you have no idea that you have those rights, then you are a slave just as much as the man who has a chain around his ankle and a gun to his head.

But now you're not ignorant. Now you know that you have rights and you alone are responsible for asserting them. You can choose to pay to a bank an amount of money ("mortgage") that you yourself created out of thin air by your signature, but you can't say that you have no other legal choice. You can choose to sign a petition begging for your natural rights to privacy, but you can't say that you don't have the right to your privacy no matter what the government decides. You can choose to let a civil servant be the boss of you, but you can't whine later about how they treat you because, in a common-law jurisdiction, governance is by consent only.  

That's right. You don't have to get a driver's license. You just have to make sure you travel in such a way as not to harm anyone. You don't have to get a fishing license. You just have to make sure you don't destroy the fishery so that nobody else can get a meal from it. You don't have to pay income taxes. You just have to make sure you don't commit fraud by accepting a benefit in an income tax contract. You don't have to get a building permit to put a house on your land. Just make sure that you are the owner of the land and that you haven't contracted that right away by allowing your land to be zoned by a municipality.

You do not have to enter into any contract that you don't want to enter into. If you are willing to forgo benefits, you do not have to consent to any form of civil law. Each of us - if we are not ignorant - has recourse in the common law, the law of the land. Anyone can become a freeman-on-the-land at any time he chooses, just by understanding and asserting his rights.

You may accept or decline civil law contract offers as it suits you. Now that you understand the difference between the law of the land and the law of the sea, nobody is the boss of you unless you let them be the boss of you.

But if nobody paid their taxes or followed the rules, society would fall apart ...Right?

Yes and no.

Yes, the law societies and the elites that own them would fall apart. Their power would topple almost immediately if they stopped receiving 80% of the fruits of our labour. Just like Rome fell apart when a critical minority started following (Christian) freeman ways. 

No, the people would not all start pillaging and looting, we would not starve, and everyone wouldn't die of cancer. Only the people who refuse to follow the law of the land (do not harm another) would fall apart. And the common law allows us to deal with people like that because, in the common law, while we must never initiate conflict, we can assert our rights with whatever level of force is necessary.

Besides, the civil law, if we would only understand how it works, is made for the benefit of all of us. It's only because of our ignorance that so many of us have been tricked into trying to live impossibly difficult lives, giving away 80% of our wages to taxation and civil fees just so we can have the "benefit" of being "allowed" to have a roof over our heads, put food in our mouths, travel, and give ourselves medical attention if we need it. Without an unbelievably rich upper class that profits from our ignorance, there would be more leisure time, more abundance, and much more opportunity for the rest of us.

This is what the American Declaration of Independence and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, for example, provide for. These contracts were set up to create government systems that give us benefits such as administering common property like roads, electrical lines, public health. But we have the choice of which of these benefits to receive or not receive. You can pay for tap water, but you don't have to pay for the "privilege" of having someone else dictate whether or not you can have a vegetable garden.  You can pay for electricity, but you don't have to pay for the "privilege" of having government agents snoop through your e-mail. You can pay for gasoline, but you don't have to pay for the "privilege" of earning money at your job.

When we don't assert our rights, we don't have any. Without knowing the structure of the law, we are slaves.

The truth is that no time are we obligated to follow the civil law - the rules of the cruise ship party - unless we either willingly board the ship where the party is being held. Most of our sufferings in life result from the payments that we don't want to make to honour our side of contract agreements that we didn't willingly enter. But once you realize that you didn't have to enter that contract and you are under no obligation to enter into any contract from this day forward, you are free. You're a freeman-on-the-land.

It's just a matter of understanding. Nothing else.

There's a story we start learning very early in life about how "It might not be perfect, but it's a damn sight better than the alternative!" and then we never experience what that alternative is. Hobbes and other historical ship servants have assured us that the alternative life is "nasty, brutish, and short," but few of us have ever had enough courage to check this out for ourselves. Those who have, have discovered that the alternative is an affluent way of life.

The alternative to living in civilization is to live in the Garden of Eden.

You do not ever have to be at someone else's cruise ship party if you don't want to. You certainly don't have to beg for the privilege of being there and subjecting yourself to the rules of someone else's ship. You always have the option of just staying on the dry land and being your true self or finding the exit and lowering the lifeboat off the ship or just jumping off and swimming for shore. Nor are you prevented, after leaving a ship or deciding not to get on it, from entering into contracts later on. And, because jurisdiction isn't physical space, you have the option, if you want, to be on several different ships at once.

There you have it. That's the how the law works and the difference between the law of the land and the law of the sea. You might have felt for a long time that "currency" and "liquidity" are the most important things you can get in order to make your living. But now you know that you have the choice of just planting seeds in the soil right on the land, defending the peace (and the peas), and simplifying your life dramatically. Nobody can take that right away from you. Overcome the illusion that you are a legal fiction in someone else's jurisdiction, and you get all your common law rights back.

You're welcome.