You Are Stronger Than You Know. And There Is Hope!

Scream in defiance of the wind…no matter how hard it blows. #FreedomMusicFriday

Tuesday’s article turns out to be the most highly trafficked of all of my posts to date. Obviously putting the word “Trump” in the title (something I almost never do) contributed to the interest. But it’s more that that…

The title, and the article it represents, rings alarm bells. And, for better or worse, human beings are wired to focus on bad news. There’s good evolutionary reason for this: threat assessment is essential to survival.

• What a beautiful field of grass, waving in the wind. (I wonder if there is a deadly snake in there.)

• Listen to the serene sounds of the forest. (Wait…what was that noise?)

• Such a gorgeous blue sky! (I’d better keep my eyes open for flying dinosaurs that might swoop down and take my baby.)

Okay, so I might’ve been smoking the anachronic for that last one, but you get the gist. We key in on danger, threats, and bad news because our biology tells us to. Because our amygdala cannot be easily ignored.

Some of us even have difficulty fully embracing the joy of the moment because we are waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s annoying, but it’s also perfectly natural.

The article also rang alarm bells because it represents a very real possibility. Thus, it is also totally legitimate that it attracted tons of interest.

That being said, I have experienced a general sense of disappointment that the doom-and-gloomier a piece is, the more likely it is to get tons of views. Not always, but often enough, the more scary or outrageous the topic, the more interest it attracts. Doom porn is almost as popular as porn porn.

But it gets worse. The comments on Tuesday’s post reflected a lot of outright despair and hopelessness about the near future. A lot of what I am hearing sounds like Bill Paxton’s character, Pvt. Hudson, from the second Aliens movie. We’re in some pretty sh*t now. Game over, man! Game over!

I understand where this sentiment comes from. I understand that I contributed to it with the subject of that article. But for the love of crumbcake, you need to stop with the total despair. Nothing is ever hopeless. EVER.

Yes, at one level of analysis, we’re up against a left wing that has gone a super-extra-special kind of crazy. And the historical record suggests that that never ends well.

Yes, at another level of analysis, there are higher powers, far beyond the left-right paradigm, who may have truly sinister plans for us all.

But here is something to remember: As a part of his groundbreaking work, Friedrich Hayek identified a basic, inescapable fact: centrally planned economies cannot work properly because central planners suffer from what he called the “knowledge problem.” They simply cannot know enough to plan an economy. The aggregate sum-total of all individuals’ knowledge is far beyond anything they can muster in any legislative chamber or smoky back room.

Now expand that concept to the notion of a global elite trying to control all eight billion of us. Yes, they have a lot of power. Yes, they are trying hard to implement their plans, and they have met with quite a bit of success so far. And yes, plenty of those eight billion will cower, comply, concede, or cheerlead whatever they do to us.

But they still suffer from a large-scale variant of the knowledge problem.

Any global-level “conspiracy” of “elites” face a daunting task. Worldwide, we outnumber them by thousands to one. Each person not only has his own knowledge, but his own will. I know they have ways of messing with people’s wills, but they cannot do it to all of us. They cannot control every square inch of land. And unless they shut down the internet entirely (which would spark its own backlash), they cannot control every bit of information.

They cannot control everything. They cannot know everything. They cannot control everyone. The first step in liberation is to stop believing that they are omnipotent.

Totalitarianism is very strong until people realize that it is a house of cards. At that point, a single breath will do it.

But you have to keep breathing. And hopeful air tastes much better than despair.

Remember—thought patterns become more and more ingrained, to the point where they are difficult to escape. If you keep believing things are hopeless, then you will eventually lose all hope and dwell in misery and fear.

That is, of course, your choice, but I would also like you to consider that, among our species, emotions are contagious. Your hopelessness will spread to others. And hopeless people do not fight or resist. They fold. Is that what you want—to make our doom a fait accompli by sapping everyone’s will to fight?

I know things are weird. I know the air is pulsing with danger and doubt. But you must stay strong. To that end, I am going to leave you with a song I ran into yesterday that seems apropos for today’s #FreedomMusicFriday.

No analysis of the lyrics needed. I think you will get it just fine.

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I am only able to do this with your support. Fortunately, the cost of a cup of coffee once in a while is all it takes!

PS: A while back, I needed an appropriate image for an article, so I gave Dall-E the prompt: “A beautiful warrior queen stands atop a cliff, sword aloft, screaming in defiance of the wind.” It gave me this rather stunning image:

Different people need different things in order to bolster their mood and generate hope. For me—and I know for many of you—this person’s defiance in the face of all obstacles is just the right vibe.

PPS: Of course, there are times despair comes from a different source that the craziness of the world, such as the feelings recently described by lovely personWendy Elizabeth Williams. And may I just say how proud I am at the outpouring of support she received here on Substack!

PPPS: I did a “warrior king” version just now, just for the heck of it. Not bad.

Scream in defiance of the wind, no matter how hard it blows!