My Indictment to My Generation and the Ones to Come

My beloved peers, and juniors,

I write this to you as a reminder and as an encouragement, to see what we have lost, to realise how far we have fallen. To then get up, and together, head towards the light.

We as a people, have become foreign to laying out premises, and become strangers to sound arguments based on logic. Having invested so much emotion and energy into our beliefs, we have become overly protective of them, hardening our ears and minds to the joy of sound debate. Instead, we have dismissed debates and arguments as 'divisive', and have secured our fragile beliefs as 'taboo' or 'sensitive'. Any attempt to debate merely crumbles into base mudslinging. We have, with increasing measure, turned in and gazed inwardly at ourselves. In doing so, we have while mouthing sweet phrases such as 'diversity' and 'tolerance', have become monsters of our own making - blind, and unable to see beyond our own bellybutton. We have scorned the efforts of those who have dedicated years of learning to a subject matter, insisting with all insolence that our 'expert' opinions are of the same weight and authority. We all have rejected all authority and sense with clever words like 'who are you to judge me?!', and made ourselves the sole authority and judge over everyone else. Yet we pause not to think of the consequences of having so many authorities, all 'wrong', yet all 'right' at the same time. Dark days are here, where everyone will do what is right in their own sight.

Listen to Sophia. She is crying out in the streets, in the marketplace she raises her voice. At the head of the noisy streets she cries out, at the entrance of the city gates she speaks:

Let us gird ourselves, my brothers and sisters. Gird ourselves with a brave heart, and a love for truth. Be brave and challenge the ideas you hold dearly with logical debate as the Ancient Greeks were so fond of doing. Be even braver still to admit that you could very well be wrong, or that you be found lacking, and your belief found ridiculous at the end of a good debate. Pride yourselves in being lovers, not of the women you objectify, but of truth. In trusting that there is true truth to be found, we can examine our beliefs with great candour, exchanging them if necessary, for a better, more truer one, in journey to find that truth. It is completely all right to be wrong, but not foolish.

Before we tear apart our communities through our increasing inward gaze, destroying relationships between father and son, mother and daughter, ruler and subject, teacher and student, neighbour and neighbour, friend and friend. Stop before we estrange ourselves from all those around us, retarding our progress in the sciences and the arts (I would think these pursuits work best when seeking to benefit a community), furthering the cultural divide between races and creeds, and eventually leading to the destruction of our civilisation.

Do so before Sophia says to us: