I’ve hesitated to write much lately, mainly because there is just too much to write about. We’ve entered a new phase of the psychological plague that swept us up a year ago. While it does appear that a calm is settling in, and rationality returning, I have a deep unease that this resembles more an arrival at the windless, sunny center of a hurricane, rather than a complete emergence. A recent study estimates that one-third of small businesses will close permanently by August. The money printer is out of control, and we appear to be living out of the last days of a late-stage Republic. The dominant culture has become something so ugly, degraded, hollow, groupthink-driven, troglodytic, and self-righteous, that it appears unsalvageable. This cultural abyss is manufacturing a mass-mind that is not only incapable of independent thought, but is conditioned to viciously attack those who do hold heterodox opinions. Such a spiritual wasteland is a breeding ground for the worst character traits our species is capable of producing. The mass mind; the unrefined, intellectually and spiritually incurious, the base hedonist, the savage, calculating, amoral animal. Not everyone, not even most. I’ve also concluded that the majority of the human species is comprised of those who haven’t the character to form opinions or principles of their own, and exist adrift, allowing themselves to be pulled from this slogan to that, absently handing over their support and consent for various causes and creeds because there doesn’t exist within them the strength of character to object or resist. They don’t feel the concrete wall of contradiction that some do when confronted with bad ideas, or incarnations of evil.
These others possess something that I’ve come to internally refer to as the “instinct for liberty”. They may not be able to articulate it, or even know what to call it, but a small minority of people are possessed of a character trait that, unbeknownst to them, overrides all others. They see a sudden change of course in the direction of society, and every fiber of their being rebels against it. They have no choice but to oppose it. Whatever as-yet-understood force placed this instinct within us, I truly believe that the minority who do possess this instinct are the sole reason that the human race itself has achieved whatever modicum of progress since we climbed down from the trees and began wielding clubs against our would-be predators. Those who possess the instinct for liberty appear to be in almost total physical, intellectual, and spiritual rebellion against any movement back toward the jungle, toward primitivism, toward our animal origins. They sense where certain paths lead, and their very genetic makeup takes up arms against it. It’s the only way to describe the way that not only I felt over the past year, but the way I’ve seen others act. People who have never before wasted a breath on politics suddenly threw themselves fully-armed into the fray, swinging their weapons with full force. This happened everywhere, and to me it was even more shocking than seeing the masses submit to masks, lockdowns, and the COVID cult.
Shortly after spring break 2020, the serious talk of “lockdown” made me acutely aware that civilization itself could end very shortly. I feared that a total economic shutdown of more than a week or two would push our world past the point of no return. We would descend back into the sub-animal savagery that makes up the majority of our history as a species. I’m a little surprised that it didn’t happen, but I chalk it up to the fact that probably under one thousand people worldwide suddenly and virulently opposed the wild stampede toward a self-inflicted apocalypse. Those few people inspired millions, and the brakes were applied, and we averted total disaster. We were saved by this instinct that sits like a silent protector within the hearts of nameless individuals scattered across the globe. They’ve always existed, just as the destroyers have always existed. And they’ll rarely get credit or acclaim. They’ll fade back to their normal lives, and even they won’t realize the part they played in saving their own species from a self-inflicted extinction.
