It's no longer safe to be an independent thinker. I think it's a matter of numbers. If you ask 100 individuals with an IQ of 80 if they are of above-average intelligence, most will say that they are. No one wants to think that they're less intelligent than the majority around them, even if it's true. Everyone can admit that there are some people who are smarter, but we all want to be smarter than most. This implies that it's difficult for a person to see upwards from their station, but it's easy to see downwards, even if the view in either direction is skewed by the internal conflicts of self esteem.

So it's a matter of numbers. If the herd sees itself as intelligent, then those who truly are more intelligent, or more perceptive, or more outspoken, or more aware become outliers. The easiest way to reinforce that an individual is smarter than anyone else is to destroy any other individual who threatens that viewpoint.

Maybe it's wrong to talk about it as though it's intelligence, but it's at least derived from that. Maybe it's education. Maybe it's upbringing. If it requires algebra to make a deduction, then anyone who doesn't know algebra can't make that deduction. What if they believe that they can? How do you tell them that they're wrong if they lack the ability to understand the rules that make them wrong?

I realized today that there are a myriad of thoughts that I cannot and will not write down. I'm unable to keep a diary or any sort of record of what goes through my head because I know from experience that words will be found and taken out of context, twisted into weapons and used to put the writer down. I also know that writing helps provide order and organization to thoughts, helps structure planning and helps the brain develop into a better tool. Ah, conflict.

I choose not to write them online because I know that the Internet has no anonymity. Hell - it's the opposite. The Internet is an efficient tool for tracking user behavior across a range of systems. I used to embrace the thought of blogging about topics with real substance, but it's dangerous to have words mined and archived forever by the Internet. The only safe topics now are in the categories of banal and transient - nothing moving or powerful if it's too edgy or threatens the status quo.

That's what Freenet is here to change. Perhaps in Freenet I can write what I think, what I feel, what I see in the world outside, with less fear of persecution by the cows who believe what the TV tells them, what the government tells them, what the police tell them, what their good taxpaying neighbors tell them.

I truly don't understand how the world has shifted the way that it has. It's like I woke up one morning still trapped in a dream where reality isn't defined by what's real but instead by what enough people are willing to believe, a self-sustaining festival of masturbation lacking substance or value. It is from this confusion that words will come, as I walk the streets in disbelief, wondering how it is that everyone exists in this mockery of society, and how it is that I came to be so far outside of it.

I joke that I want to call my parents and yell at them for failing to raise me properly. All adults hate their parents at some point, right? We seek to blame our failures on them, as if they could have made a change in our youth that would have put us on a path with a better outcome. I would yell at them and rail about how they failed me by:

teaching me critical thinking
teaching me to challenge the opinions of those around me
teaching me to be independent
teaching me to be self-sufficient
teaching me not to depend on social interaction
teaching me to save money and avoid debt
teaching me to listen, and save words for when they have value

My parents taught me how to be gentle and thoughtful and to watch, and wait, and move in a way that is right as right and wrong are defined by the Universe, not by a group of men in a building somewhere. I think that I'm an excellent human being, and before you roll your eyes and close the tab, I know that I have many faults. On the spectrum of humanity, though, I'm on the good side, yet on the spectrum of society, I'm on the outside. Perhaps if they had raised me to be a dumb cow hipster interested only in what satisfies my needs today, I would be numb to the dying of the world.

I think to care, you have to have a soul. Maybe everyone around me is already dead, and I just haven't caught up to them.