Notes From Gordon 250130: Living The Inconsequential Life

ATTENTION SPAN NOTICE
Reading time: 576 words @ 238 wpm = 2 minutes, 25 seconds

TONE: Troubling. Existentially awkward. Hey, don’t shoot me. I’m just the author.

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Living The Inconsequential Life

Is it possible to live an inconsequential life? Isn't every life valuable? How could any human life be of no consequence?

You are alive today because countless individuals lived, loved and died before you. Each passed on their genes to you. To suggest that their lives might have been inconsequential would be to deny your very existence.

And what a gift. To be alive! To participate in the great river of humanity. To be a part of the future.

So perhaps by inconsequential I mean something else entirely. Yes, I do. I am referring to the impact of your life on future civilization.

No doubt you are a good person. You perform valuable work and are loved and respected by many.

And then one day you're gone. Poof, as if you were never here. Another drop in the great river of humanity.

And so I ask, Dear Reader, what will you have left behind as your gift to the future?

May I suggest freedom? For without freedom, there is nothing. To quote the immortal Thomas Paine:

"Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing."

Throughout 5,500 years of recorded human history, thugs of various descriptions—chieftains, emperors, monarchs, dictators and today, presidents—have wielded the heavy hand of government to deny freedom to those over whom they ruled.

Government can put you in a cage for refusal to pay taxes. Your compliance? Involuntary. This was equally true of peasant farmers living under Egyptian pharaohs.

Government can seize your residence for failure to pay property (land rental) tax. Your compliance? Involuntary. This was true of peasant sharecroppers in medieval times which today we call the Dark Ages.

Government can conscript you to be sent to foreign lands to serve a globalist elite who foment wars to advance their agendas. Your compliance? Involuntary. This was equally true in ancient Rome.

Can you think of any sane individual who when given the alternative of freedom, would willingly choose to be a slave—to be coerced into a condition of involuntary servitude?

The easiest way to deal with this dilemma is simply to ignore it; to appease your lords and masters. Fund their schemes with your tribute taxes. Enable their wars of plunder. Send your children to serve as spear catchers in their militaries.

I like to think of voluntary servitude as “Liberty Lite.” One-third less thrilling! Then there’s this from the father of the American Revolution.

“If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” — Samuel Adams, speech to Second Continental Congress on August 1, 1776.

Indeed, the chains of servitude seem to set lightly upon many today.

So what will it be? A nice 401k, retirement travel, a bit of DNA left behind?

Or a consequential life?