SUS AF

To Marybird... when she's twelve.

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

Albert Camus

I’ve always been fascinated by society, culture, popular opinion and how it tends to manipulate the personal liberty of individuals.  I’m admittedly quite suspect of it all – what they promote, endorse or collectively hold up as good, valuable or important to people and what they collectively dismiss.  I don’t believe that popular opinion is reliable or a thing to live by in pursuit of a meaningful life.  I don’t trust that such movements have my best interests at heart whether they present themselves in a community, church, government or through social media.  In the end, I tend to see most of it is self-serving and possessing an underlying need to feed itself rather than to aide individual maturation.

Will I hear them?  Sure.  Listening to everything, in my estimation, is important.  How else can we know what the enemies of truth and freedom are doing?  But I am talking about more than just fact-checking.  I’m instead describing active observances whereby we take as much information into contextual account as possible and stand it up against principles of personal liberty, maturity and authentic living and then depending on what we discover, supporting that which is not a lie.  

Contrarianism is more my way.  Spitting in the wind of what is accepted, swimming upstream, going against the grain and questioning everything – including what is popular or promoted as cool, or hip or “of God.”  This is not to suggest anyone adopt rebellion for rebellions sake.  That phoniness is offered-up at almost every turn by movements and cultures looking to make both a name and a buck, right?  I’m talking about stepping back and just considering what the current heroes of modernity represent and trying to really hear what they are actually suggesting we become, embrace and honor.  

What is the overall message or theme pouring in from almost every conceivable source of social media, from our entertainment industries like film and music and from off the street?  To rebel, right?  To “stand my ground,” to “not do what they tell me,” to “fight for my rights,” and to do so as “a woman,” a “person of color,” an unidentifiable gender, a gay, a Christian, a Republican, Democrat or atheist.  Everyone is clamoring for their respective rights while all the while ignoring the shifting sands beneath their feet of clay.

Ironic as this may sound, I actually wrote this book as a means to proffer and promote even more rebellion.  But it’s what I see as the truest form of rebellion which is the wholesale turning from what is accepted, popular, hip and promoted, and through sound reasoning embracing those things that actually enhance genuine personal individual liberty.   In other words, looking at the life that every single individual has been given by God (Yes, I’ve said it, by God) I seek to discover what principles are in place that actually enhance and promote well-being in that life, and pursuing such, while abandoning what remains to those who want to force their will and ways on others.

So, rebellion for rebellion’s sake (which is the basis of most modern music, film and mass protests) is as empty as obedience for obedience’s sake (which is the basis in most modern religions, corporations  and governments).  Neither approach ought be embraced without taking all that they suggest and evaluating their messages through reason, reality, and perhaps most arduous, through principles of eternity.

That is what this book is about – teaching individuals to actually rebel in the purest sense of the word – from a position of reason and for the sole purpose of discovering what is best for them and their lives based in reality and not romance, self-indulgence, or from having been manipulated by Man. 

Going in, I have zero interest in decrying anything based on my personal tastes or opinions.  In fact, I readily embrace anyone and everyone’s right to live as they see fit and fully understand that there is art, and music, and lifestyles that exist that are very different from mine (or from my views on what is good) and I readily assent to them having as much value as what I see as sound.  But I openly admit that I do seek to absolutely ridicule and reduce to rubble any and all manipulations made through the lies of popular opinion, group-think, and the hollow obfuscations flowing from our so-called heroes of modernity that lend to bondage and suffering of unsuspecting souls rather than liberty, true personal growth and eternal meaningfulness.  Along the way I hope to encourage every reader to think, to assess and to challenge all the products, lifestyles and ideals that are constantly promoted in and through social media and its influencers (and that includes mine) with the aim of liberating oneself from errant strongholds applied to them through ideology, lifestyle, religion or a product.

I want to thank the people, alive and dead, who have come before me and on whose shoulders I stand.  In no particular order (except the last five being first and primary in my life) they include:

• Leo Tolstoy 
• Martin Heidegger
• Herman Hesse
• Thomas Sowell
• Rollo May
• The Anabaptist’s
• Arthur Schopenhauer
• Marcus Aurelius
• Jordan Peterson
• Soren Kierkegaard
• Aldous Huxley
• Eric Fromm
• Albert Camus
• Thomas Gilovich
• Eric Hoffer
• Matt Walsh
• Bernard Schweitzer
• Carl Jung
• Fyodor Dostoevsky
• David Hume
• Ben Shapiro
• Richard Wright
• Jean Paul Sartre
• Theodore Dreyer
• Joan of Arc
• My sons in Law
• The (4) G-kids
• My (5) Girls
• My Lord, Yeshua
• My God, YAHAVA