Elevator
A Novel
By DeWitt Johnston
Chapter Two
Perception that comes from reading a Book has proven to merit suspicion
from the paradigm of the beholder. When thou tillest the ground, it
will not yield unto you her strength. A fugitive and vagabond shall
thou be in the earth. I have no heroes. There are no myths that I
believe to tell of great liberation and eternal salvation. There is no
Promised Land for me. I have no battlefield shrines, no monuments, no
anthems, and no Book. My home is now-here, anywhere, and everywhere. My
beginings have no end. I have always been here and there. I begin again
and again and getting somewhere has always been a long and hard
journey.
I hate authority. I am the antithesis of pre-determined
mind-sets. I have lost the art of using "good common sense" while
others who still have an instinctual natural intuition find their
security from the safety that comes in numbers. This distinct property
of Orwellian groupthink, or running with the crowd as my mother
describes it, is a fabricated notion. That I will do what is expected
of me by important other peers, employers, and instructors, in
institutions such as government, religion, and education is an empty
expectation. Any attempt to force me to perform a behavior that
threatens the very essence of my uniqueness is futile. The refusal to
accept behavior resulting in cruelty to humankind or destruction of
Mother Earth has resulted in me becoming an outcast. I am alienated
from social recognition and given no validation from the Establishment
because I refuse to play the life-game by their rules.
I was born into this world alone and I will leave the world
alone with no regrets of guilt for my behavior. I make wise choices and
my actions are determined by whether or not it is the right thing to
do. I do not need an authority figure dictating rules for my actions. I
do not need to be controled by paid enforcers who use strong armed
tactics to force me to submit while expousing threats of pain and
punishment to assure themselves that I will not waver from the
established norm.
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