We live in a dark time. Every one of us can feel it.
It feels like the “Ante-Armageddon Age”, a time just before the fall of humanity. We seem to be standing at a crossroads, with several possible futures stretching out before us.
There is one future in which the Technocracy takes control and enslaves mankind. There is another in which the United States pushes too hard, and World War III1 ends in the radioactive wastelands of a civilization destroyed by its own weapons. There is another possible future in which humanity becomes freer and more prosperous than ever before.
Anything is possible, right?
Right now, inflation is turning lifetimes of savings into increasingly meaningless numbers. Our government often treats us like criminals waiting to cross a line that it not only created, but surrounded with cameras so it could watch for the moment we stepped over it.
The future looks dark and that darkness seems to be creeping in from every direction.
We are constantly told that the darkness is the fault of our fellow citizens and neighbors. People who, despite agreeing on many of the basic things we want, happen to have slightly different ideas about how to get there.
Think about what most of us actually want.
We want to be free to do what we believe is right. We want to support our families, live in safety, raise our children in a secure environment, and leave the world and the lives of the people around us, better because we were here.
Someone once described these aspirations as the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The most important word in that sentence may be pursuit. There are no guarantees. Happiness isn’t promised. Success isn’t promised. But we are given the freedom to pursue them. To try, to fail, to learn, and to try again. I believe we all understand that instinctively.
Perhaps the worst part of living through this dark time is that we have been so thoroughly misled, manipulated, and bombarded with conflicting messages that we have lost sight of who we are.
We are riddled with self-doubt. The programming we absorb through television and media, combined with the way many of the people entrusted with supporting, serving, and representing us treat us, has caused us to forget our own worth.
So allow me to remind you, just a little, of who you are.
You were not simply born into this time. You were born for it.
That same Creator who gave you your inalienable rights placed you here, in this particular moment, for a reason.
You have been given what you need to help make this world into what you believe it should be.
You are not a victim of these times. You are only a victim of your own self-doubt.
If you want to remember who you are, remember these things:
You are not your past. You are the person who learned from it.
You are not your previous failures. You are the person who learned what doesn’t work.
You are not your previous successes. You are the person who learned what does work.
And ultimately, who you are is who you become in the face of darkness.
That’s it.
That’s who you are.
In the face of darkness, some people will become cowards. Some will become corrupted. Some will become heroes, ordinary people living through extraordinary times who did what they could, with what they had, to make the world a better place.
So, how does someone become part of that last category?
There are many answers, but I’ve come up with a few ideas that might help.
1. No One Is Fearless
Fear is an important emotion. It exists for a reason. Fear can keep us alive.
It only becomes a problem when we surrender ourselves to it. When we allow fear to make our decisions for us.
Feel the fear. Acknowledge it. Then let it wash over and through you. Notice it as it passes.
Only then, when it has passed, decide what to do. Do not let fear make the decision for you.
2. No One Is Born Unequal
We are all born equal. Not into equal circumstances, with equal resources, or equal opportunities, but equally human.
No one is inherently more important than anyone else.
There is no superior subspecies of humanity that has the natural right to rule over another.
We may have different talents, different circumstances, different beliefs, and different responsibilities, but beneath all of those differences lie the same fundamental human strengths and weaknesses. Accept that.
3. No One Deserves Injustice
We are born with a sense of fairness.
We can suppress it. We can rationalize around it. We can convince ourselves that injustice is acceptable when it benefits us, but we shouldn’t.
Treat other people as you wish to be treated.
It isn’t a complicated philosophy. And yet, if enough people actually practiced it, it would go a long way toward making the world a better place.
4. No One Should Ever Be Silenced
If we want to discover real solutions to our problems, we must be willing to explore every possibility, even the ones that make us uncomfortable.
Nearly every great idea humanity has ever come up with, began as an idea that someone else thought was strange, foolish, impossible, or simply wrong.
Progress requires people willing to challenge conventional wisdom.
If we silence every voice that disagrees with the group, we eliminate the possibility of discovering something new.
If we’d silenced every voice, we’d probably still be living in caves, trying to figure out how to keep the cold and darkness outside.
You don’t have to agree with someone to allow them to speak.
5. No One Is Elite
See #2.
No one is inherently more human than anyone else.
No one is born with a greater claim to the lives, liberty, labor, or dignity of other people.
Titles, wealth, power, education, fame, and position may give someone influence.
They do not make that person more human or a better human.
Are these five principles sufficient to solve all of our problems?
Of course not.
They’re merely suggestions about where we might begin.
Almost forgot one. Well, it’s at least something that you should try to keep in mind,
6. You were made for these times.
You know what you want.
When you strip away all the noise, what you want probably isn’t all that different from what I want.
We want to live.
We want to be free.
We want to love and protect the people who matter to us.
We want the opportunity to build something better.
There are many ways to get there. We don’t have to agree on every step. All that matters is that we keep moving toward a better place.
So, don’t surrender to the darkness.
Don’t let fear make your decisions.
Don’t let you or anyone else convince you that you’re powerless.
Don’t let disagreement turn your neighbors into enemies.
I am a dude playing a dude pretending to be a dude who is actually a real dude.
I am a serious f@cking cowboy, pretending not to be a cowboy in cowboy country.
How's that for messed up.
Just don't make me ride a horse or smash a shovel on a cow's head.
I can see where you are trying to go, here. I don’t know your story. Maybe you have come through much darkness to arrive at the optimistic place expressed in your piece.
I have not experienced much real darkness in my life. But I can honestly say that one of the things I want is to track down, disempower, and publicly shame every instigator, accomplice, and all whose ballots have helped to put us on the road to an amoral autocracy.
Some would call this a desire for vengeance, which only some in the U.S would claim to want. I call it a desire for justice, which almost all of us claim to want. But the justice we all want turns out to lead in wildly different directions. So I cannot agree that we all want the same things, and I have no idea whether or how those differences will be reconciled. But I am certain that, at best, it will involve a long, long, struggle full of unpleasant and expensive contention. Yeah, that angers me. It was all so unnecessary.