Where the Spirit Comes to Die

A Letter to the Slaves in Bondage Who Think That They Are Free, and to Those Who Feel the Ponderous Weight of Their Shackles

As a child I was blessed to get to grow up in the relatively quiet and rural setting of West Kitsap County, Washington, and I've been blessed to have spent most of my life there. Never having lived in a real city, I always thought there was a bustle about the little town of Silverdale; and though I had crossed over the Sound to Seattle a number of times, I never really understood the important difference between the two. I didn't really want to leave my lifelong home, but the circumstances of last year required that I relocate myself to King County: not into the limits of Seattle - God be thanked - but nevertheless, into the heart of the City. At that time, I don't think I realized all that it would mean.
Once, I looked out of my window and I saw trees and a garden below. I heard the songs of sundry and diverse birds. I used to open the door and think how I hated the smell of hog manure wafting on the breeze, but now, what would I not give to have it back? Today, I look out of my window and I see a Dollar Tree and a 7-11. I hear the roar of sundry and diverse engines. I open the door and smell the rank and stale foetors of several hundred old apartments and a thousand uncleanly neighbours. It was only making this comparison that has allowed me the clarity to answer the question that has been puzzling me for so long a time, in a clause, "Why do so many people in so many big cities around the nation hate the very idea of Deity and gravitate toward the far left, and conversely, why do so many people in so many rural areas around the nation love their God and gravitate toward the far right?" And now I know. This place, the City, is where spirits come to die. What spirit, after all, is able to admire a Creator who seldom sees the creation?
This is not to place myself among the far right, just because I came from beyond the City. Did you think that? No indeed, for I perceive an inherent danger in political consistency. For unshakable political consistency, like absolute loyalty to any party or cause, leaves no room for careful consideration of circumstances, judicious deliberation, or even thoughtful introspection. It is in this frame of reference that people fall into blind obedience to the leaders of their political tribe. That is not to say either that all things must be relative, for certainly, without stark lines of morality, how do we even define who we are?
I've been thinking a lot about the subject of worldviews, how they develop, and how they may be broken from during the years building up to the creation of this new tribe and this work of paradigm busting, which I liken to pushing against the tide. After all of this pondering, I write these words in heaviness, because I know that few eyes will ever see them, and of those who see them, fewer still will read them, and of those who read them, precious few may agree, and if any agree, who will be left with the inward fortitude to abandon their friends on the field of political battle? Nevertheless, I still hold to hope, or I would surely not be attempting a work so seemingly foolhardy, and so far from the familiar comfort of mine own bailiwick.
What has given me a hope that we can, on a widespread societal level, break away from the snare which has entangled the world? It is the evidence that there are still voluntaryists and anarchists among us. It is bumping into groups like Freedom Force International and the Republic for the United States. It is witnessing the success (although far from completed) which the Ubuntu movement has had. Most of all it is my personal belief that one day Jesus shall return to the earth and set all things in order. But until that day comes I am left with the mission that is put, by the birth of natural conscience, upon the hearts of all men of all faiths: to do what one might to resist the forces of evil. And to that end, this is mine encouragement to you, good Reader, to come out from the field of fierce battle to which you've been led.
To wit, unless you have already found the upper road, you now stand on the battlefield of Contrived Ideologies. Whether it is the Left or the Right, the North or the South, the East or the West, the Axis or the Ally, the Catholic or the Saracen, it is all the same manufactured duality, or "contradiction of opposites" popularized by Hegel and expanded upon by Marx. It is the divide and conquer stratagem that has been operated upon us since time immemorial. It is the tactic that was used during the Cold War era to cause nations around the world to turn and devour themselves inwardly so that the seats of their governments could speedily be filled with Communist leaders. It is the deliberately induced madness that drives neighbours and brothers to slay each other. And you may have noticed that the spirit of this artificial revolution is back in our neighbourhood again.
Therefore, neighbour, I am calling you away. Come, let us reason together, if perchance you will reconsider the beliefs that you have faithfully held for the masters of your reality since you were only a tender young product of the machine.
Therefore, friend, you who have already transcended the great game of bread, circus, and war, let us become co-labourers in the field, and draw off as many as we might of those whom the enemy is seeking to destroy. For they have come to the place where the spirit comes to die.