Blood & Ink: Heretical Ideas

You’re undoubtedly familiar with the Archilochus quote: “We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training…”

He was a Spartan Commander. Of course it applies to the military, war, and emergency preparedness.

But what of heretical ideas?

Heretical: holding an opinion at odds with what is generally accepted.

What about those ideas that live just outside the Overton window? Those on the bleeding edge of social acceptability?

Many people—though certainly not all—hold far more heretical beliefs than you imagine.

Certain people have not, will not, and do not hold these beliefs. Going outside of sanctioned boundaries is so beyond their frame it’s inconceivable to them. For better and for worse, they’ve become known as NPCs, Sheeple, Matrix, etc.

Here’s the flip on the Archilochus quote:

The bigger the group, the more most people’s expressed opinions return to ‘acceptable discourse’.

Alone, in the safety of your mind and unexpressed thoughts, you and many others hold some heretical beliefs, or at minimum, some gnawing and serious questions about the way things are going.

Beyond this, lies the safe confines of the small friend group chat.

Everyone jokes about how raunchy and ridiculous group chats get. There’s a sociological reason: it is a safe, low-risk testing ground to ‘check the pulse’ of ideas. To learn what is ‘too far’ or ‘too soon’ or ‘too serious’ to joke about and question. Crossing the line here has very few repercussions, “Yo I was just joking bro, chill.”

Dinner parties, interest groups, and niche communities come next. “I know I’m reasonably safe here, all these people have self-selected to be here. They must share some similar values, beliefs, and ideas as me. But I won’t take the first step… let’s read the room first.”

This expands out into the public square, political discourse, and the vast expanse of the internet. At the slightest doubt, the smallest crack, people revert deeper and deeper into the established social narrative.

You don’t need the evolutionary argument for why this is the case.

You’ve heard it 1000 times. Social rejection may as well be a death sentence to ancient humans, so you avoid rocking the boat as much as possible.

But you abandon yourself. You abandon the genuine and not unreasonable questions you have. You lie. You erode your agency, truth, and honour.

Most tragically, you perpetuate the narrative in yourself and everyone else that “I must be the only one who thinks this.”

Millions of people feel isolated, alone, and insecure because not a single person has the spine to be a heretic. No one asks the uncomfortable question, says the edgy thing, or goes into a difficult conversation without getting triggered.

• It’s kind of weird that COVID ‘arose naturally’ in China about 3 blocks away from an Institute of Virology that was studying aggressive gain-of-function research in SARS-Cov-2 viruses, no?
• It is kind of strange that children can’t make permanent decisions for themselves like voting, or getting tattoos, and need their parents to sign off on things as simple as daylight school trips, but are given the total sovereignty to take puberty blockers and undergo irreversible castrations, mutilations, and surgeries, right?
• “Trust the Science” is perhaps the most anti-science statement that you can make, yeah? Isn’t the scientific enterprise about critique, hypothesis/antithesis, difficulty to disprove, etc.
• I know for a fact that the government has lied to me about A, B, and C in the past, that’s been proven. I know there are complicated pressures in scientific and academic institutions that warp studies and skew data. But on THIS issue, being used to justify increasingly totalitarian and absolutist control for the government, here and now, they are totally correct and questioning it is anti-human, right?
• Growing up, I was told that technological progress made everything more available, better quality, and cheaper to buy. But now I’m an adult and everything meaningful is getting more expensive and doesn’t last. I can’t afford the life my parents and grandparents had, despite my salary being 4x bigger nominally. This is just something I’m doing wrong, right?

Now, at the end of the day, you might just be wrong! You might have a question that has an easy answer with information you were missing.

But someone has to be the first to say the Emperor has no clothes.

Sometimes, the greatest act of courage is asking simple, obvious questions.

Sometimes, what humanity needs most is standing in your truth and saying this is not correct, I do not agree, even when it makes for some awkward dinner parties or gets a bit of pushback online.

It starts with you. Holding the line of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

But my God is it difficult. It is not easy to stand up in front of a faceless mob, and even harder to stand up in front of the faces of friends and family who you love and respect.

This is why the Warrior trains.

To build the muscle, the courage, and the soul force required. Because the most tragic outcome for humanity is not climate change devastation, not AI inhumane dictatorship, not nuclear war.

The most tragic outcome is that…

“…this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper." — T.S. Elliot

That the Truth remained unspoken, on the tip of the tongues of millions of people who all felt the same and said nothing. Slowly, quietly, consistently walking themselves to the edge of the cliff and right over it. No eye contact, no disagreements, not even a whisper.

This need not be our fate.

Muster your courage. Cultivate your spiritual and cognitive sovereignty. Then stand in it. Be willing to be wrong. Strong opinions, loosely held.

This is why we train.
EB