It's Heretics Who Save the World - October 1, 2024:

The people who have kept the world from a slide into darkness and pulled it forward have nearly always been heretics of one form or another.

I'm using "heretic" beyond a religious context, but that shouldn't be unusual, after all, it's the punisher who makes the heretic. Without punishers, heretics would be no more than people with different ideas. And in our time, the punishers are seldom religious.

Trace almost any productive development back to its source, and you are likely to find an originator who was anything but obedient and conforming. I know, because I've done it.

Let me give you an example. Greek philosophy traces back through the names people know (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle) to earlier philosophers (Pythagoras, etc.), then to still earlier philosophers, finally ending with Thales in the 7th century BC. But Thales wasn't really Greek. Rather, he was a Phoenician, minimally half-Phoenician… and the Phoenicians were Semitic traders. They were clearly not respectable types to the Greeks. Plato wrote (in his Laws) that they had developed skills in trickery rather than wisdom.

The point here is that heresy – thinking differently – is the starting point for progress. Obedience, on the other hand, renders humans inert, leaving the heretics to do most the heavy lifting. And, truth be told, obedience also leaves the heretics to do most of the really fun things.

Who Said That?

Let me give you two quotes, and afterward I'll tell you who said them. Here's the first, supporting the contention of our title:

The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists, who are dedicated to justice, peace, and brotherhood. The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific, and religious freedom have always been nonconformists. In any cause that concerns the progress of mankind, put your faith in the nonconformist!

And here's the second, explaining how heresy is often a badge of honor:

I think all the heretics I have known have been virtuous men.

They have the virtue of fortitude, or they could not venture to own their heresy; and they cannot afford to be deficient in any of the other virtues, as that would give advantage to their many enemies; and they have not, like orthodox sinners, such a number of friends to excuse or justify them.

Do not, however, mistake me. It is not to my good friend's heresy that I impute his honesty. On the contrary, 'tis his honesty that has brought upon him the character of a heretic.

The first quote comes from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his book Strength to Love. The second quote comes from Benjamin Franklin, in a letter he wrote to Benjamin Vaughan, October 24, 1788.

Surprised?

People who pay attention, you see, tend to notice these things. And here's another, from author Leonard Woolf, talking about the years in which he and his friends were in the heretic camp:

We were not part of a negative movement of destruction against the past: We were out to construct something new; we were in the van of builders of a new society which should be free, rational, civilized, pursuing truth and beauty. It was all tremendously exhilarating.

And such things are exhilarating! The obedient are cut-off from that level of passion: By obeying, they bypass their own will. To obey is to short-cut your inner processes… the processes that make you truly alive.

To whatever extent we engage in simple obedience, we are that much less alive.

What Heretics Have and the Obedient Don't

Those who merely follow the flow, whether they be doctors or ditch-diggers, live by rules and slogans that are provided to them by others. And with that type of fuel, they can't develop much internal horsepower.

The heretic, on the other hand, survives by forming and possessing a clear, self-generated, and compelling vision of human progress. And this is the thing that moves humanity forward. The Bible was ever so right in saying that "with no vision, the people perish," and it is the heretic that keeps compelling visions alive.

One last quote, from Frederick Hayek (from Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics). This is what heretics do, but the obedient do not:

We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage. What we lack is a liberal utopia… a truly liberal radicalism which does not spare the susceptibilities of the mighty…

This is what the heretics of our time are developing and what the world desperately needs us to develop, whether it knows it or not.

**

Paul Rosenberg

freemansperspective.com

Why We'll Win - October 1, 2024:

A free, post-scarcity world will not be prevented by archaic systems scratching and clawing to retain their domination. We will evolve freely, unburdened by an unfortunate past. This will happen, and today I'm going to tell you why.

But more than that, I want you to understand that we deserve to win, and that the future – the world of our children, grandchildren, and so on – very much needs us to win. Our culture (of golden-ruled decentralization) stands for, and supports in action, the things that allow life to thrive upon Earth.

Let me make this point very clear:

We believe in the Golden Rule… as in actually believe in it, all the time. Our culture takes it seriously and acts like it's the only healthy way to live.

The easiest and most cowardly way of life is to follow the crowd. What makes the world better, on the other hand, is to live by what's right. Making unpopular choices – building a private, digital economy, homeschooling your children, ignoring brain-locked regulators, pursuing unapproved cures, holding to your conscience even when it's forbidden – these things require strength of character, and these actions are presently changing the world.

Regardless of our occasional stupidities and errors, our way of life clearly deserves to succeed.

How We'll Win

"To change something," said Buckminster Fuller, "build a new model and make the old obsolete." And we've been building a new model considerably more than we may realize.

A new model is precisely how the personal computer came to be and how the Internet came to be. Regardless that computers and the Internet have been recaptured by the ruling establishment, the model remains and subsequently spawned both encryption and Bitcoin, technologies that are ephemeral and a lot harder to conquer.

Moreover, the cryptosphere is growing tremendously. When I started pursuing such things back in the 1990s, there were very few of us, and far between. Now I run into crypto advocates in grocery stores, not to mention in general business circles.

There are tens of thousands of people working to develop, improve, and spread cryptocurrencies every day, often at their own expense and despite considerable uncertainty. They do this because they believe they're building a better world.

And they are.

Homeschooling makes another fine example. When I started my involvement, parents had recently been arrested for homeschooling in the US. We had to get busy supporting a legal defense fund. Now there are many millions of homeschooled kids in the US alone, and everyone knows that homeschooling produces excellent results.

We'll win by doing these things, followed by others like them. Little by little, step by step, planting seed after seed, we're moving toward our goal faster than we've appreciated.

Once human action of these types account for enough of our activities, it'll be almost unstoppable, and the legacy system will begin shrinking. We can expect screaming, threats, and even bloodshed from the obsolete system, but over time it will give up its operations piece by piece.

This isn't to say that our new systems will be immaculate, but they'll be far less bad than the Bronze Age relics that currently dominate mankind.

And if Not…

If, for whatever reason, we fail to continue what we've begun, our new civilization still wins in the end. For one thing, human evolution continues. We are notably better than we were a few thousand years ago – qualitatively better – and we'll be still better in the future, (endless streams of doom porn be damned).

More immediately than that, however, the next cycling of rulership will finish the job for us. Civilizations always cycle. They will almost certainly continue doing so, until violence-backed hierarchy ends. When the next cycle comes along, it will do so in a rich technological environment, because technology does not cycle. Rather, it accretes… it builds up.

So, once the present hierarchies break up and vanish for a few hundred years, tech will be free to come out and play. We'll be free to reorganize in innovative new ways. Things simply will not be rebuilt according to the same old model. That's how history works.

But while it's nice to know that the insanity will pass one way or another, I think all of us would like it to be sooner rather than later. For our own sakes and certainly for those of our children, time is important. And so we need to believe in what we're doing and to do it with vigor.

"The fashion of the present world," says the Bible, "is passing away." Let's help it along.

**

Paul Rosenberg
freemansperspective.com