by Jason Stotts
Our world today is permeated by nihilism. It is a black cloak of faith, irrationality and death that is encompassing our world and slowly extinguishing the noble spark of the human spirit. Unfortunately, it cannot be destroyed: there is no way to destroy a nothing. But just as light drives away the shadows, so too can reason rid of us this mindlessness by replacing its vacuousness with true human values.
Consequently, I think that it is time for Objectivists to mobilize, I think we are seeing the final twilight before the coming darkness and soon it will be too late to bring about a change. There is a point, which I think is rapidly approaching, where the tide will be overwhelming and we’ll have to go to ground; where stagnation will overcome achievement and retrogression will begin.
Our economy is already bad and getting worse with every new law. Our schools are teaching religion covertly, our universities are being overrun with an unprecedented resurgence of religion. The intelligent man has always been a minority, but now we seem to be a hunted minority.
I am less concerned with the world’s end – than I am with its beginning. When will it begin? When will we have the world we desire? A world of freedom, of the light of reason, of the glory of man?
We need to mobilize and recreate the world in our ideal, we need to wipe away the scourge of mysticism and erect temples of reason. I think we’re in a great position now with Objectivist organizations like the ARI and various groups around the country. But we need to make ourselves known, even in everyday situations. We need, as a movement, media attention, something high-profile, like suing the government for unconstitutional practices, or something else sensational: perhaps refusing to pay taxes and accept jail time all over the country in protest. Look at the civil rights movement: they risked their life and got the change they needed rolling. Are we too afraid to risk even our comfort?
I’m tired of waiting to live in the world I want, I’m tired of having to suffer through an irrational world. The rage builds inside me for its destruction, the passion mounts for the world of my dreams: the world I can live in, the world I can love in, the world that celebrates life. It’d be so easy to incite the right kind of person into action, why don’t we? Why don’t we mobilize them? There is no one else to do it.
Even if we only pass the flame on to one more person, think of how quickly the conflagration will spread!
Talk to people who respect you, they’ll listen to you. It wouldn’t take much effort to pass the flame to them, to harden them to what needs to be done, not for “society”, but for each of our individual lives.
Imagine living the rest of your life knowing that the radiant world around you is the one you helped to create, that it was by your deed and will that the history of the world changed. The time will never be right – we must make it right. It’s not like the southerners wanted to give rights to blacks; the blacks demanded them. The world will not change for us; we must change it. The change has to take place like this; there is no other way for it to happen.
The worst thing we have to lose is our lives and to live knowing that you upheld your ideals in a valiant struggle to reclaim, that yours was the courage it took to change the world, that yours was the integrity of a total dedication, that it was your will alone that was what was needed to create your dream – how can we not fight for this? Are our lives worth as much if we don’t, even if we lose them?
The author Terry Goodkind said that “Your life is yours, rise up and live it!” Isn’t it high time we did so? The philosopher Ayn Rand said: “Those who fight for the future live in it today”. Wouldn’t you rather live in the world of your dreams than the world that stifles them?
I’d rather fall in a radiant descent into the daybreak of man than live to witness its final sunset.
Don’t waver on your moral ideals, saying it’s a pleasant dream, but this is the real world. It is precisely because this is the real world that we need our dreams. Ours is the way of life and of right, let us never take up the cause of our enemies against ourselves.
Something inside me has broken today and I know that I will never be the same. The issue is too poignant now. I can see my life in the harsh glare of truth and I cannot allow the shadows of doubt and fear to once again touch my soul. I must either turn my back on my ideals or wallow in hypocrisy. Yet, I cannot permit myself the latter, as long as I wish to live.
Do you feel it in your own soul? The fire? The fear? The burgeoning sense of expectation, the distant vision of the world as it should be and will be? Why shouldn’t we be the ones to usher it in? Why shouldn’t we take the world upon our shoulders and hold it aloft, letting the warm glow of the sun of reason burn away the shadows of humanity’s dark past? The golden rays of truth will dissolve the black quagmire of faith.
You know the issue as clearly as I do; you understand what our continued inaction entails: the slow death of our souls, spark by irreplaceable spark. Now is the time for us to rise to our feet and proclaim our pride in being men!
My soul burns with the passion of a thousand suns, my soul aches with the pain of a rational mind living in an irrational world, my soul shrinks from the compromise of a world created on half-truths and fear. It is fear that has created our world, the fear of independent thought, the fear of independent judgment, the fear of standing on your own judgment and the fear of falling should you make a mistake. Should we trade the ability to stand as men for the safety of crawling on our bellies? Should I flee instead of fight? Should I let my values wither in the face of no more than my fear of my own independence? Should I shackle myself to my weakness?
Every day that passes is one more day we lose of our precious lives. But every person we convince is one step closer to the world of our dreams. It’s that easy, one person at a time.
We can achieve the world of our dreams.