Independence

In today’s world, fear is to be feared. The Information Age seems to have rescinded the hopes of a smarter, more independent population. Man now relies on a proportionately smaller and smaller number of people to decipher this complex world. Unfortunately, once humans stop translating the world themselves, they are doomed to tread in darkness. And that darkness is considered safety, in most cases. No German during the Third Reich spoke against the renewed prosperity Hitler conjured nor did scientists for centuries relinquish Ptolemy’s claim that the world was flat. To speak against the grain that feeds you or holds up your platform is to admit there is greater incentive in finding truth than living in lies. Therefore, the idea of safety must be warped from depending on someone else to depending on oneself. Only by this can we handle ecological and economic problems in a rational manner. Only by this can we see that man is capable of so much more than the scholars paint him.

Only by this can we find that home is not darkness, but the light within each and every human being.

Americans are more concerned than ever with wealth disparity, particularly those who get paid a hefty sum to write papers on the very matter. Why it is a reality is beside the point – to most readers. Those who are true seekers doubt everything the scholars put forth. True seekers seek for themselves and do not gorge their eyes and ears with “one size fits all” ideas. To suggest that humans are too weak in both body and spirit to cope with the problems they face unveils a great fallacy that has continually plagued humanity. The people of Rome started as a bunch of misfits; men with no place in Tuscany or in the Greek provinces to the South-East. Through grim determination and unwavering motive, they became the centerpiece of the Mediterranean. Yet to what end? To a screeching, tumbling decline into darkness when room was made for bread and circuses rather than Cicero and Aurelius. Corruption does not happen overnight, but it is a slow, rotting disease. Roman republicanism is the medicinal treatment; however, the emperors had no problem convincing their former citizens that the term “subject” is more fitting for an inferior population. Being at peace with our own intellect is home. Those who claim greater knowledge and greater prestige cannot and will not see others as equals, but pawns that can be used for devious tasks. Granted man is not inherently evil, that does not restrain him from being capable of the worst atrocities imaginable. Thus, our existence is to be selfish, so that we all may succeed.