OK, I know. That heading is just calculated to provoke certain people. But truly the dead can speak to us from the past of things in the present, as I will now prove.
Freedom, liberty and the need to preserve our ability to think for ourselves (and be self - destructively wrong if we choose) against the dark forces of authoritarianism are a regular theme of this blog. But I'm not famous, not even in the shallow way of modern celebrity, so why should people listen to me?
Perhaps nobel laureate and susperstar author John Steinbeck who died forty years ago will command more attention. Read what he has to say on the subject.
JOHN STEINBECK
"Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man (and woman). Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man. And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammerblows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.
And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is the one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost."
- John Steinbeck, East of Eden
Well Steinbeck wrote those words around sixty years ago but how relevant they are to what is happening in our industrialised nations right now. From government, religions, business and academic community alike we come under increasing pressure to conform, to not question authority, to lay aside our ability to think for ourselves. Liberalism and the notions of personal liberty, civil rights and free speech are under attack.
In an earlier post I highlighted the dangers of social engineering and the threat of happy pills and modified gense poses.
It is time we all took up our pitchforks and cudgels and marched on the citadels of authority, like the revolting peasants of old would. We can't all be righ, its a lie. We can't all be successful, its a lie. We can all be slaves to debt and the system, they don't tell you that. It is time to retake our individual freedom.
When the dead start speaking its time to stand up and take notice.
Not convinced? Read the book,
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
or if you fancy an even more radically life changing experience...
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck