We have it in our power to begin the world again
Most of us have a voice in our brain that begins chittering almost immediately when we commit to a long-desired goal, plan, task, lifestyle, etc. The voice sounds calm and rational, like a lawyer or psychiatrist, and explains either the high probability for miserable failure, a safe path to alternative-yet-lesser goals, or gives us a complex plan that leads us in one big circle back to square one, wasting precious years. The volume of the voice, I believe is in inverse proportion to the level of self-esteem one has, as is how often we give that voice the time of day. But I think we all do it. Steve Pressfield dubbed this “voice” Resistance in his book, The War of Art. We sit down to commit to a project, a goal, some long-desired yet put-off task, and the voice immediately echoes in our brain, asking us rhetorically who we think we are for attempting such a goal. It tells us our self-worth, not an accurate estimation, but one we fear, deep down, is true. While Pressfield’s book is the most astounding ass-kicker of a self-help book I’ve ever read, one that anyone with any goal in life at all should read, it’s not the piece of writing this post will be about.
No, the most important essay you’ll read today on such a topic is Albert Jay Nock’s, Snoring as a Fine Art, which can be read here in the compilation of his writings with the same title. I should say beforehand that the concept is a slight variation on the aforementioned, in the sense that Nock is here is talking about how much attention we pay to another voice within us, not even a voice really, but a feeling, what most people I think mean when they say ‘listen to your gut’, as opposed to the ceaseless chatter of the dry lawyer telling you that you won’t be able to achieve what you aim for.
Nock begins his essay with an account of Napoleon’s humiliating defeat and retreat from Russia at the hands of Russian general Kutusov. What’s strange about the ordeal is that Kutusov could have crushed Napoleon at every point, but didn’t. Yet he predicted Napoleon’s every move until he was driven out of Russia entirely with not a drop of Russian blood spilled. Yet Kutusov allegedly slept through most military meetings, and preferred courting women decades younger than discussing the finer points of military strategy. Nock’s point is that he subconsciously heeded an inner voice to the exclusion of all others, including the supposed experts around him. He did what he wanted, guided by an inner “feeling”:
“Kutusov seems to have been one of those peculiarly and
mysteriously gifted persons of whom one can say only, as
we so often do say in our common speech, that they “had
something.” Such people appear in history all the way from
Balaam the son of Beor down to contemporary examples
which I shall presently cite; there are more of them, perhaps,
than one would think. They “have something,” but nobody
knows what it is or how they got it; and investigation of it
is always distinctly unrewarding. In the late J. A. Mitchell’s
story called Amos Judd—one of those sweet and unpretentious
little narratives of the last century which I suppose no
one nowadays could be hired to read—Deacon White says,
“There’s something between Amos and the Almighty that
the rest of us ain’t into”; and that is about as far as scientific
inquiry into these matters has ever carried us, or probably
ever will…
…I wish to remark that the gift (I call it a gift
only for convenience, to save words) which we are discussing
is not only dissociated from intellect, but also from conventional
morals. Certain Old Testament characters who
unquestionably had it, and on occasion let it put itself to
good use, were nevertheless what by our conventional ethical
standards we would call pretty tough citizens; our old
friend Balaam, for instance, and Elisha. It has been said, and
I believe it is accepted in some quarters—of course there is
no knowing—that Joan of Arc was not in all respects a
model of sound peasant character; but granting it be so, she
still most conspicuously “had the goods.””
T.E. Lawrence, the only historical figure I’ve ever had an incomprehensible obsession with, is another that comes to mind. Why did a 5’5″, 100-lb, 27-year old military intelligence officer suddenly decide to disregard his official duties in order to lead a band of Arabs across a previously-thought un-crossable section of desert to capture a military outpost, leading to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire? More importantly, what did Arab Kind Feisal and the rest of the Arabs see in Lawrence that commanded such allegiance? The evidence points to someone who suddenly and whole-heartedly abandoned the ‘voice of reason’ and listened to his ‘gut’, or his ‘heart’ and led a goddamned revolt against an Empire and actually won. I think once we give in the ‘gut’, we almost have no choice but to obey. It’s an engine within us all, waiting for the moment when we realize it exists. We have only then to get the hell out of its way. It brings to mind the supposed Thoreau quote, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation, and die with the song still inside them.”
Which brings me to another topic. It has been a decade since the December 16th, $6.3-million money bomb for the Ron Paul campaign, the largest single amount donated to a politician in a single day. A decade. It seems simultaneously shorter and longer than that: “has it really been just ten years?”/”seems like yesterday!” In reality it feels like a lifetime ago. An alternate timeline. The five years from 2007 to 2012 now feel almost mythical, a blur of religious passion that erupted like a volcano. That volcano is now dormant. Or dead. I prefer to believe the former. Mainly because I remember the eruption, I saw it seared on the faces of those who turned wholeheartedly to that inner voice, and gave themselves to the goal of liberty in our lifetime. It failed in the short run, but a cataclysmic event of that magnitude doesn’t just die. Are you there? Did a decade extinguish that fire, or merely temper it? I know you, I remember you. A single decade didn’t kill that voice that compelled you to go to war for our uncompromising vision. The disciples of liberty may be scattered to the four winds, but they’re not dead. They believed, you believed, that “we have it in our power to begin the world again”, a Tom Paine quote thrown around a lot in those days. You’re still there, I know you still believe it.
Witnessing firsthand the Ron Paul Revolution, playing a minuscule part in it, yet standing right next to a political wildfire that threatened to burn down the established order and cleanse the country for the rise of liberty, I saw what was possible when a collection of nobodies armed with the inner voice is pitted against a legion of dead souls in suits who work for a King’s gold.
The philosophy of liberty, for me, can only be described as a mind-quake, or a religious awakening. From Ayn Rand, to Mises, Rothbard, Hayek, Spencer, Nock, Mencken, to Ron Paul, I was unknowingly embarking on a five-year politico-philosophical hegira. To bring this full circle, and give the post a semblance of coherence, I believe this is due to my attempt to listen to something other than the ‘voice of reason’ or conventional wisdom, but my heart. I also believe that my attention to that peaked three years ago, and I know those around me have witnessed my unconscious abandonment to that voice. It’s time for a return.
Well. That descended into something surprisingly personal.
“Fiery the Angels rose, and as they rose deep thunder roll’d, burning with the fires of Orc.”-William Blake
Pro Libertate Patriae.