Fortify Your Position

Albus :

Draco, You Are No Assassin.

Draco :

How do you know What I Am? 

I've done things that would shock you.

Albus : 

Oh, like cursing Katie Bell 

and hoping that in return 

she would bear a cursed necklace to me?

Like replacing a bottle of mead 

with one lace with poison. 

Forgive me, Draco, 

I cannot help feel these actions are so weak that 

Your... heart can't really have been in.

“I believe that the good that people do, small though it may appear, has more to do with the good that manifests broadly in The World than people think, and I believe the same about Evil. 

We are each more responsible for The State of The world than we believe, or would feel comfortable believing. Without careful attention, culture itself tilts toward corruption. Tyranny grows slowly, and asks us to retreat in comparatively tiny steps. 

But each retreat increases the possibility of the next retreat. Each betrayal of conscience, each act of silence (despite the resentment we feel when silenced), and each rationalization weakens resistance and increases the probability of the next restrictive move forward. 

This is particularly the case when those pushing forward delight in the power they have now acquired—and such people are always to be found. 

Better to stand forward, awake, when the costs are relatively low—and, perhaps, when the potential rewards have not yet vanished. 

Better to stand forward before the ability to do so has been irretrievably compromised. 

Unfortunately, people often act in spite of their conscience—even if they know it—and hell tends to arrive step by step, one betrayal after another. And it should be remembered that it is rare for people to stand up against what they know to be wrong even when the consequences for doing so are comparatively slight. 

And this is something to deeply consider, if you are concerned with leading a moral and careful life: if you do not object when the transgressions against your conscience are minor, why presume that you will not willfully participate when the transgressions get truly out of hand? 

Part of moving Beyond Order is knowing when you have such a reason. 

Part of moving Beyond Order is understanding that your conscience has a primary claim on your action, which supersedes your conventional social duty. 

If you decide to stand up and refuse a command, if you do something of which others disapprove but you firmly believe to be correct, you must be in a position to trust yourself. 

This means that you must have attempted to live an honest, meaningful, productive life (of precisely the sort that might characterize someone else you would tend to trust). 

If you have acted honorably, so that you are a trustworthy person, it will be your decision to refuse to comply or to act in a manner contrary to public expectation that will help society itself maintain its footing. By doing so you can be part of the force of truth that brings corruption and tyranny to a halt. The sovereign individual, awake and attending to his or her conscience, is the force that prevents the group, as the necessary structure guiding normative social relations, from becoming blind and deadly. 

I do not want to end this section on a falsely optimistic note. I know from further correspondence with my client that she shifted her employment from one large organization to another several times in the years that followed. In one case, she found a good position, where it was possible to engage in productive, sensible, meaningful work. However, although successful there, she was laid off during a corporate reorganization, and has since found the other companies she has worked for as thoroughly possessed by the current linguistic and identity-politics fads as her original place of employment. Some dragons are everywhere, and they are not easy to defeat. 

But her attempts to fight back—her work debunking pseudoscientific theories; her work as a journalist—helped buttress her against depression and bolster her self-regard. 

 

Fortify Your Position

 When culture disintegrates — because it refuses to be aware of its own pathology; because the visionary hero is absent — it descends into the chaos that underlies everything. Under such conditions, the individual can dive voluntarily as deeply as he or she dares into the depths and rediscover the eternal principles renewing vision and life. The alternative is despair, corruption, and nihilism — thoughtless subjugation to the false words of totalitarian utopianism and life as a miserable, lying, and resentful slave. 

If you wish instead to be engaged in a great enterprise — even if you regard yourself as a mere cog—you are required not to do things you hate. 

You must fortify your position, regardless of its meanness and littleness, confront the organizational mendacity undermining your spirit, face the chaos that ensues, rescue your near-dead father from the depths, and live a genuine and truthful life. Otherwise, nature hides her face, society stultifies, and you remain a marionette, with your strings pulled by demonic forces operating behind the scenes—and one more thing: it is your fault. No one is destined in the deterministic sense to remain a puppet. We are not helpless. Even in the rubble of the most broken-down lives, useful weapons might still be found. Likewise, even the giant most formidable in appearance may not be as omnipotent as it proclaims or appears. Allow for the possibility that you may be able to fight back; that you may be able to resist and maintain your soul—and perhaps even your job. (But a better job may also beckon if you can tolerate the idea of the transformation.) If you are willing to conceptualize yourself as someone who could—and, perhaps more importantly, should—stand fast, you may begin to perceive the weapons at your disposal. If what you are doing is causing you to lash out at others impulsively; if what you are doing is destroying your motivation to move forward; if your actions and inactions are making you contemptuous of yourself and, worse, of the world; if the manner in which you conduct your life is making it difficult for you to wake happily in the morning; if you are plagued by a deep sense of self-betrayal—perhaps you are choosing to ignore that still small voice, inclined as you may be to consider it something only attended to by the weak and naive. 

If you are at work, and called upon to do what makes you contemptuous of yourself — weak and ashamed, likely to lash out at those you love, unwilling to perform productively, and sick of your life—it is possible that it is time to meditate, consider, strategize, and place yourself in a position where you are capable of Saying "No."* 

Perhaps you will garner additional respect from the people you are opposing on moral grounds, even though you may still pay a high price for your actions. Perhaps they will even come to rethink their stance—if not now, with time (as their own consciences might be plaguing them in that same still small manner).