Hermit Manifesto

There is no compromise with the Devil; either you win, or he does. Intellectuals resist this truth, with their instinctive fear of absolutes, while fanatics, in their contempt for ambiguity, snatch it up too eagerly. But the fact remains that watered poison and poisoned water are the same.

Groups – all of them, political, social, and religious – convince their members to put up with them, to ride along on their acts of unreason, violence, and injustice. Many of those individuals disagree with the acts in question, but defer to a collective morality they hope is greater and wiser than their own. But just one dissent, one shaking head, explodes the illusion of finality.

That's why power must kill every seeker to triumph. It's the logic of resistance: it takes thousands of repressors, striving constantly, to enforce uniformity, but just one of us, merely existing, to destroy it. Power crows, "We've won! Give up!", but those last words are telling: if you don't, it can't.

So oligarchies obsess over enemies, earned and invented, and the wicked wallow in witch hunts. Because no matter how large the majority, how positive the polls, leave one independent thought zapping between two ears, and dominion is denied.

Therefore, evil is collective; good individual. Never – never – surrender your autonomy to any group, movement, or leader.



(Photo courtesy of Juan Gatica and Wikimedia Commons.)