Surrender: The Fallacy of Zeitgeist

“Where now are the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the harp on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the deadwood burning,
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?”

            -King Theoden

                Where is the horn that was blowing? Find me my purpose, in the face of the superfluous. Tell me to look for it, in the howling dark of indifference. Ask me to answer the call, in the hearing of its hollow voice. Beg me to speak for the dead. Where is the horn that was blowing?

                Too many today are faced with this question. It is a question of zeitgeist, one which breeds degeneracy, and speaks in the flowery tongues of apathy. You ask to hear the horn, the singular pure sound of your own purpose as it rails against the crashing tumult which rages all around you. And you are told, not that you must seek it out on your own, but that it is wrong for you to search. These word will never be spoken, but they are implicit to anyone with eyes. They speak to you: You are small. You are cog. The whole is greater than you. It is circumstance which allowed you to succeed. The earth is more important, the animals of greater value, the wants and needs of your fellows need attending to, there is nothing more important than stopping people from dying, fighting is a waste of time, suffering is always wrong and privation is always perpetrated, never earned.

                These are the mantra's of the age. These are the drills which bore their patterns into the hearts and minds of the Men of the West.

                Is it wrong to be apathetic, is it wrong to bow your head and admit defeat in the face of Legion, of the insurmountable? Yes.

"We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness."

                -Ronal Reagan

                The zeitgeist of which I spoke earlier is one which makes the fault lines of the coming disaster apparent, but unassailable. There they are, brazenly exposed for all to see and yet nothing is done. It is because those with the capacity to do, to change, to fight, are disarmed. You are made apathetic. And perhaps you are not wrong. I have admitted that the machinations of our demise as a culture, as individuals, as a culture of individuals, are impregnable. The likelihood of affecting any change is negligible at best and as horrifying and intangible as a nightmare at its worst. You cannot win. But that is why this Age is one tailored for heroes.

                Here you have before you a task which cannot be accomplished, a mountain which cannot be conquered, a river which will not be stymied, a wilderness which has never been tamed. And you will die alone in the ascent, in the fording and amongst the trees. But unlike the teeming masses huddled around the base of the mountain, on the banks of the river, or the edge of civilization, you will have died well. You will have died a conqueror of reality, not its slave.

                I entreat those who have surrendered, you know who you are, to renew yourselves. Those of intellect, of mind, you seekers of truth, the listeners and the watchers, the subdued. I entreat you to recall that because an enemy cannot be conquered, well, this merely makes him a worthy adversary. This age kills men of spirit, of burning passion. Well I say if I am to have my fires quenched, I will at the very least have deserved it.

                You out there, you watchers on the wall, you listeners at the gate, for us, surrender was never an option. Even when it was the only sensible one. Let the impossible inspire you, not defeat you.