Harbinger

If I were to lose everything, I would want to run away from home, and join the Flat Earth Society. If I did that, I would want to experience everything: the warmth of secret fire, the embrace of an embattled community, bolstered by unswerving consensus against the bafflement of supposedly open-minded intellectuals, the predations of nefarious mass media, the setbacks of scientific inquiry, and the bemused bafflement of those we once thought of as friends.

Perhaps, in due course of my metamorphosis, you would move (in my perception) from Inside to Outside. You would look at me with incredulity. If you cared for me, you would become a prophet to me, calling out across the chasm which has opened between us. For how is it possible, with the education you know I have received, and the books you and I have read and discussed together, and damn it, all the reasonable discussions you and I have had in which you and I were the keepers of the secret fire against those idiots?

Yeah. If I joined the Flat Earth Society, I would inevitably become such a prophet to them. For I love the Flat Earth Society. They are beautiful and they are disturbing. They are a harbinger, whether you believe them or not. They are a harbinger unto themselves. For whether you believe the earth is flat or whether you don't, you will have to ask yourself: how is it possible, in this modern age, for so many people to get it wrong?

If we have rested our backs against the bulwark of mass consensus, the "flat earthers," the "moon landing hoaxers", the "anti-vaxxers", the evangelical atheists and orthodox religion will all make you uncomfortable. Witness the invective these groups receive. It is not enough to counter their arguments. We must also heap disdain upon them. How could they dare to give utterance to such, such, misapprehension?!

But how shall we live in a world of rampant misapprehension? Shall we double down on tribalism, stoke the fires against the stake, and consign large groups of people to the flames? How to know which tribe is right?

Here is a better question. If anybody you have ever met has begun to be acquainted with the Truth, would you be able to recognize it?

"Hah!" you may be beginning to think, "you, the author, have concocted a clever scheme. You've rolled the Flat Earth Society in here as a Trojan Horse, and now your own particular 'Truth Bomb' will emerge. You want me to join your own preferred church, or society, or whatever. Predictable."

Well, I probably am predictable, dear reader, and styling myself as one acquainted with the Truth would be a bit rich, considering that this "better question" I have put forward is the question which disturbs me. It disturbs me, and if I'm dogmatic, it's because I think this question should disturb you too.

I do not trust crowds. To quote the prophet Sting: men go crazy in congregations, but they only get better one by one. I take this to mean that acquaintance with the Truth must be a lonely business, one lacking the mutual bolstering which is the sacrament of both the Flat Earth Society and the rest of us. Do not expect that your pathway into the Truth will be thronged by encouraging initiates.

The way is lonely, and difficult. But it should be possible, and it should be worthwhile; for wisdom is justified by all her children. There must be something satisfying about becoming acquainted with the Truth which is not the sickly sweetness of shared apoplexy, broken, and spilled, and eaten together amid the din of shouts and the tumult of arguing. No, it would have to be something better than that, something which makes the sacrifice of such pleasures a worthwhile trade.

And if you begin (or if you have begun), what then, should you expect, when you meet another who has also begun to be acquainted with the Truth? He is probably irritating. He is outside your social strata: too rich, or too poor. He smells like the people among whom he lives his daily life. He will have flimsy arguments to support his opinions, not worthy of your consideration; which means he will apparently have gotten into this the wrong way, and without the intellectual rigor which you have required of yourself. It will be hard to like him, and hard to understand him, and yet you'll see something which will allow you to know: some piece of honesty which flashes and glints in colors you have seen before. And the real question for you is this: does that glint of Truth mean more to you than all the irritation you feel when you look at him?

Whoever has an ear, let’m hear.