Speaking Truth To The Powers That Be
It's a well known fact that as human beings evolved from lone actors to communal beings the rules that worked when you were hunting alone got you exiled when you were hunting as a community.
The ethos that helped you survive alone in the jungle wouldn't fit in well with the communal structure.
And I think that's because when you hunt alone, you reign supreme in your world. You're subject to no other power but yourself.
This fabric of reality starts to break when it's subjected to a communal structure where you yield your autonomy to a central unifying power. It might be a leader, a law ... or something divine like we see in the religious institutions.
And that process of surrendering of one's will to something greater, something that unifies everybody that comes under its authority and thereby forming a community, can be a double edged sword.
On one hand, it comes with all the benefits that communities bring... heck, it's easier to survive in a tribe than being a lone ranger in some wilderness somewhere. That's great!
But when you choose to survive in a tribe, you also bring yourself under the rules of the tribe. And as such, any violation of the code comes with due punishment by those that enforce the tribe's code.
And for a good reason, these laws exist for the best. They weren't made out of the whim by some guy that fancied for things to be a certain way.
For the most part, these laws, evolved as humans continued to interact with each other... as a way to organize humans in pursuit of a similar goal. If everyone was doing their own thing then communities wouldn't exist.
The law was meant to organize us under a similar umbrella on route to this shared goal.
But this very same law that was indeed pure, made with the holiest of intentions, fell in the hands of men with greedy hearts. Men who yearned for power. Men who could do everything to ensure their seat in the places of power.
Men who's entire ethos was not oriented towards service but only towards what they could get.
In the hands of such men, the law is itself pure, the code that united the tribe, became a tool to enforce the will of the powers that be.
They beholden to no man, they too are above the law... and they bend it and manipulate it to fit the darkest of their intentions.
And many righteous men, who refused to be subject to such crooks, were labeled as rebellious men. And in their generations were seen as the outcasts. The people who won't fit in the community.
Not because the community is inherently bad, but because the values the community once stood for, have been misinterpreted by a few men. Said men ruled with an iron fist. And any objection was met with undeniable violence.
This kept the masses in check.
But there were those few, they called them the outcasts, who knowing the risks... stood on what was objectively truth and spoke truth to the powers that were.
These men, had no swords, no guns... but the kings, queens and emperors perceived them to be of greater threat than the rebels that had guns.
I believe it's because, a man who refuses to submit to an undeniably strong corrupt power faces the risk of having his flesh crushed and yet his spirit will continue to live on forever.
This spirit is like a fire... and once it spreads among other men, that's what brings revolutions about.
That's the spirit that turns a ship that was sailing north to sail south INSTANTLY. That spirit can't be crushed. Once the flames start spreading, they can't be extinguished.
And that's the spirit the powers that be seek to crush when truth is spoken to them.
Because, as much as we all choose our way, whether we're alone in the forest, or in a community... the thing that's greater than our individual ways is the objective truth that sits above all our ways and by which all our ways constitute.
That's the truth that transcends human interpretations of right and wrong... which by the way, are often wrong.
The Spirit of that Truth can't be crushed. And the roads of history are smeared with the blood of men that have died for this Truth. Men whose flames continue to burn in our hearts to this day.
Because true freedom isn't in seeking to preserve one's way of life, but it's in choosing to not submit to anything that violates the Truth.