This is an article I have been dabbling with for years, but one I hoped never to have the cause to publish.  I would much sooner stick to gear reviews.  I am compelled, however, to put pen to paper (or at least temporarily inconvenience some electrons) to share this message.  It might not resonate with you, and that’s OK, this might just be my opinion, after all.

Trim weeds; grow thorns.

One summer when I was in high-school, I cut trails in the swampy woods next to my house.  The next spring, I found that my actions had offended nature, and everywhere I had cut trails, thorny vines and poison ivy had grown back.  This inspired my young mind with a profound realization and a cohesive vision of the order of nature. The sacred balance is always maintained, it might take time, but when you interfere with that balance, there are mechanisms in place to compensate.   These mechanisms are sometimes unpleasant.   If the offense is minor, it might be a mild response like the simple “keep out” signs of thorns and poison ivy.  If the offense is major, the response could be correspondingly severe like disease, starvation, or conflict.  These mechanisms are merely an “immune system” of sorts, a way of driving out an unfriendly invader.  Whether that invader is an introduced species that over-breeds its environment, or merely someone tampering with the local habitat, nature has a way of dealing with it and we are all subject to that universal law no matter who you believe is running the big show.

“Drive out nature with a pitchfork, nevertheless she will return” ~Horace.

Some people have the testicular diameter to believe they can overcome Nature, that they can cheat this natural law.  Nature can be temporarily overpowered by upping the game: burn everything, start spraying glyphosate, sterilize the soil…  such destructive actions may impair or delay the response; the “immune system,” if you will, but there will always be a backlash.

 “Dam my rivers and I’ll salt your crops;

Cut my trees and I’ll flood your plains.

Kill “pests’ and, by God, you’ll get a silent spring!

Go ahead—save every last baby’s life!

Ill starve the lot of them later,

When they can savor to the full

The exquisite Justice of truth’s retribution.

Wrench from my earth those exponential powers

No wobbling Willie should e’er be trusted with;

Do this and a million masks of envy shall create

A hell of blackmail and tribal wars

From which civilization will never recover.”

~Garret Hardin (Carrying Capacity)

Now let’s apply this philosophy to something else:  It doesn’t matter whether it’s religion, politics,  personal health, or society; the rules continue to hold true.   Atheism, Anarchism, Hand Sanitizer, Gun control, Vaccine Mandates… these are merely social, religious, or political interference with the balance of nature.  I’m not saying that technology is, in and of itself, evil or something we should abandon, but rather a tool to be used cautiously to restore the balance when necessary.  The universal law still applies:  tamper with the sacred balance, and that action will enable the circumstances for a nasty reflexive backlash.

Let’s take hand sanitizers, for example.   Something seemingly innocuous enough, but the human adaptive immune system requires constant pressures to keep it robust and active.   The delicate balance of microscopic flora and fauna on the skin provides natural protection from infections.   Hand Sanitizers kill not only pathogenic invaders, but also these naturally occurring, protective, symbiotic organisms.   The result is two-fold:  not only do we impair the immune process by destroying natural protective organisms, but we remove a pressure from our immune system that permits it to stagnate.  When we are thereafter exposed to a pathogen and can’t immediately sanitize,  our body is rendered defenseless, or at least dependent for its defense on a supplemental product, the supply of which is not always guaranteed.

Next example:  antibiotics.   While antibiotics are a life-saving gift, through over-use and abuse we have taught the bacteria to become tougher to kill and more dangerous.  Ask anyone who has ever suffered through MRSA or C-diff…  While antibiotics spared us from gangrene and staph, they also disturb the balance by killing off the natural protective bacteria, which sometimes permits the overgrowth of yeasts and fungi leading to equally problematic circumstances.  I’m not saying that antibiotics are a bad thing,  far from… but an excessive reliance on them, an abuse of the technology in the name of immense profits, has led us to a condition where our bodies are less able to naturally cope with the pathogens in our environment due to killing off natural immunities conferred at birth, while at the same time hardening an ever-present enemy against our limited arsenal of biological defensive weapons.   While the temporary use of antibiotics may be necessary for most of us at some point in our lives,  and for some conditions may be a long-term necessity,  over-reliance on these tools weakens our natural defenses,  promoting a condition of being defenseless should our supply of miracle drugs be interrupted.

“We The People of The United States…”

The anti-Constitution agenda is no different.  The United States Constitution is that code establishing the adaptive defense mechanism that is America’s political immune system.   Eliminate or restrict the Constitutionally-guaranteed rights of free speech, the right to peaceably assemble, the right to privacy, the right to bear arms, etc…  and we cripple America’s immune system, leaving her vulnerable to any un-American doctrine that drifts our way.  Don’t you think the power-hungry political types know this only too well?   Have exploited it since we first heard of a new virus originating in The Orient?  Who would have believed that the representatives of The People would espouse and enforce such severe authoritarian doctrines in America as we have recently witnessed?  That they would torture every documented guarantee of freedom, every limitation on government, into a restriction on the citizenry; destroy the traditions and institutions until the population is so demoralized that their only yardstick of right vs. wrong is what we are commanded on the nightly news?

This has taken several insidious forms over the years, one probably familiar to most readers sounds like:  “This isn’t the wild west, you don’t need to carry a gun to be safe anymore!”

“When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.

They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.

But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,

And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: ‘Stick to the Devil you know.'” ~Rudyard Kipling

Every time someone tells us we no longer “need” something that once was considered a key survival advantage, (a Constitutionally-guaranteed right, for example), they are implying that someone or something else can take care of that now for us if only we will hand over our weapons, our natural defenses, and burn that pinch of incense to Caesar.  How effective they will be at protecting us is irrelevant, what we must be sensitive to is their claim that that right or ability is now vestigial and unnecessary.   This elimination of rights, or the impression of mandates on individuals on the basis of societal “needs” always means elected or appointed officials will claim to be fixing some problem “for the greater good.”   It doesn’t matter that they probably had a hand in creating that problem, and typically their fix makes things worse, but they are going to save you.  By “you” of course, they mean their tax base and electorate, not “you” as an individual.   Their battle cry? Situational Morality,  to quote Garret Hardin again: “the morality of an act is a function of the state of the system at the time it is performed.”  Why not just say “we only followed orders“? Historically, that one brings such nostalgia.  Both statements are only rationalizations for the obstruction of liberty, the expansion of authoritarian power, and eventually the atrocities, mass graves and floods of refugees that inevitably result.

“If you don’t stand for something…”

You are probably familiar with the saying:  “If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.”   Interestingly, this quote has been traced to an article by Gordon A. Eadie, M.D., in the January 1945 issue of “Mental Hygiene” magazine, regarding the mental-health needs of industrial workers, with special reference to War Veterans:

“We are trying to show him not only what we are fighting against, but what we are fighting for.
So many of these boys have only a very hazy idea of the real issues of the war.
About all they see is “going back to the good old days.” This is a dangerous state.
If they don’t stand for something, they will fall for anything.”

I agree that the notion of being able to “go back to the good old days” is a dangerous state.  How many of our contemporaries are willing to sacrifice all for the promise of a return to “normal.”  This, despite being told quite plainly what the “new normal” is.  Like the man repeatedly punching himself in the nuts, when asked why he is doing it,  responds “it’s such a relief when I stop!”  We will not see the times we enjoyed before March 2020 again no matter what our pretend saviors promise us.   But I digress…

One example of a political doctrine that has this effect is that of the anarchist.  The poisonous flower of anarchy blooms only briefly, it can only exist temporarily, but that brief existence is all it needs.  It is a means to an end; a political immunodeficiency that destroys the host’s existing regime, which then makes way for the more malignant systems of Dictatorships, Socialism, Fascism…   To paraphrase another eminent apocalyptic author: When The Euphrates dries up,  it prepares the way for the Kings from the East.

I would assert also that in the philosophical realm that athiesm (or even the hollow, mechanistic observance of religious traditions without the ecstasy of faith) is much the same.  Many will disagree, but I have observed that without a spiritual “immune system,” a code of self-management based on the observance of rules revealed by a higher authority, people will accept any golden calf that is set before them.  That might manifest as the false prophets of science, big Pharma, or radical environmentalism.  It could appear as a controlling cult demanding total devotion, to the point of Suicide such as “Heaven’s Gate” or “Jonestown.”  Or it could be something even more malignant like Charlie Manson’s “Family” or any number of violent movements that demand obedience through the shedding of blood, and the justification of atrocities with shouts of “God wills it!” with a voice like a dragon in many languages.

Nature Abhors a Vacuum

Nature (creation, or the universe), abhors a vacuum.   Once you clear the land,  if you don’t tend the garden, you will reap thorns and poisons.   Perhaps this is an explanation (highly simplified) for why prisons are such fertile breeding grounds for extreme ideologies.  Many who find themselves in that condition are there for failure to have or follow a code.  Many who are there also become proselytes, and then proselytize to gain soldiers for causes such as gangs,  cartels, and yes; plenty of violent religious or quasi-religious ideologies.   The point is,  without the natural flora and fauna of a code that challenges our thoughts and conscience, our psychological, social, and spiritual “immune system,” we are open to virulent outside influence.

“When an unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none.

Then saith, ‘I will return into my house from whence I came out;’ and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and adorned. 

Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself,

and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first.”  ~Matthew 12:43-45

Defenseless

Remember that the body has an immune system, not because of beneficial microorganisms, but because of pathogens.  But don’t worry, “common sense restrictions” on your immune system are in process. Don’t fight that bacteria or virus naturally, you aren’t qualified, your doctor has a shot for that. We have hand sanitizer and soap, no one NEEDS an immune system anymore.  The government can take care of the environment, grow food, supply jobs… on and on and on it goes.

Nature however, ever vigilant, grants no individual a right to be defenseless; to jettison those gifts of self-preservation hard-won by our ancestors or granted to us by kindly providence.  What happens when the usurpers cut off the supply of hand sanitizer?  of vaccines?  of public services?    What will people willingly sacrifice then in concession to get back to “normal?”