It is a poor quality man who believes himself to be an island, who acts as if honor and empathy are ‘outdated’ and that self-aggrandizement and elevation of the ego is the way to get ahead.
It is also a poor quality man that celebrates these egomaniacs as someone to look up to, to aspire to become.
A simple test: How do these leaders treat people who are ‘beneath them’? Do these leaders demonstrate kindness, loyalty, honor, compassion or empathy?
It is neither rational nor reasonable to follow these ‘leaders’ off the cliff like lemmings.
Image: Francisco Goya, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.
What emerges from this egomaniacal drive is monsters, in the form of Frankenstein monster corporations and once-rare psychological maladies spreading through social media like a plague.
These monsters are cared for and fed by the complicity of small men who accept broken systems and broken leaders, and prop them up with their time and attention and money.
There is nothing obligating us to clap louder when an orange-haired egomaniac says something awful about people we don’t like, and there is little obligating us to support the broken systems created by vainglorious psychopaths:
"By allowing the existence of large bureaucratic systems under centralized control, whether corporate, governmental, or institutional, we unwittingly enter into a hideous conspiracy against ourselves, one in which we resolutely work to limit the growth of our minds and spirits.
The only conceivable answer is to break the power of these things, through grit, courage, indomitability and resolution if possible, through acts of personal sabotage and disloyalty if not."
– John Taylor Gatto’s ‘The Underground History of American Education’
The most revolutionary act isn’t political dissent, or battles in the public square over culture.
The most revolutionary act is maintaining a strong faith and/or ethics in a world that rewards and celebrates the opposite.
The most powerful revolution is always internal.
No one can destroy your core of moral and ethical decency, only you can do that to yourself.
