All peoples produce a Common Man. He is the archetype of his people and it is his nature to have a limited view of things. For the Common Man things have always been and will always be as he has ever known them. This is neither bad nor good, nor a life sentence. The Common Man may make himself the Uncommon Man, or perhaps at least a little less common, if he wishes. If his view by nature is limited, then what views he does hold are of supreme importance because his power, or the collective power of all Common Men, like the ox, is immense. When the Common Man walks, he pulls the plow. When he is agitated, the earth trembles. When he is furious, he flattens mountains and will even bring them down on himself. Because of his limited outlook and immense power, the Common Man can become an immensely useful tool for those whom he chooses to trust. If he follows nobility, then he makes of himself a tool for the good. If he follows the self-serving or wrongheaded then he becomes a tool for all manner of evil, even though the Common Man’s intentions may good. If this is true, then how can the Common Man be innoculated against being persuaded to follow the demogogue, and thus do that which in hindsight will be seen to have injured his own interests or the interests of his people, or even of civilisation itself? That inoculation will come from his worldview, that is, his core beliefs, the foundational myths his people embrace, and his limited understanding of his own history. It will also come from the culture in which he exists and which produced within him particular notions and inclinations. If his core beliefs are based more or less on truth, wisdom, and the good, then the demagogue will have a harder time deceiving him. If the Common Man is inclined to the martial and disinclined to suffer fools, the demagogue will think twice before trying. I posit that what the Common Man must be made to understand here in 2021, 245 years after the founding of this nation he so loves, is that he was born into a world of Leftist propaganda as were his grandparents, and that he is bringing up his children in the same. Generation by generation we have been accepting ideas or a view of things that would have been antithetical to our grandparents, just as they had come to accept things that would have been antithetical to our great-great grandparents. The common man must be mindful of the influences in his life. Too many of the information feeds he ingests are producing within him a view of things that are simply self-destructive. He must come to recognise that what sounds like a sweet voice is actually that of Wormtongue, or a Siren Song that for generations now has lulled the Common Man into complacency, persuaded him that up is down, and made of him a tool to ruin his own posterity. This piece was previously published on Look Away on Sept. 30, 2021.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorMark Atkins has six wee bairns who are all seventh-generation Henry County, Tennessee, and all from the same doe. It is the people of Henry County that he most wants to reach but writes to Southerners generally. He is without credentials but rather dares to speak by the same authority as the little boy who cried 'The king has no clothes!' His core belief and starting point is that like everything, we humans have a nature, it is not so hard to understand, and to pretend that it is other than it is, is to jump off a cliff. Which is what we Americans have in fact done. Archives
October 2023
|