Tomorrow is Now

I’ve written many, many essays over the years. The vast majority of them have never seen the light of day, either absorbed into another essay or simply deleted altogether. But there was only one (until recently) that ever stood out for me, published in May 2020 at the height of COVID hysteria. It contained a comprehensive breakdown of the key issues as I saw it: how fear about death was unjustified in comparison to other infectious diseases, how geographical climate appeared to play an important role in spread of infection and rate of death, and how the fallout of the pandemic related to China’s new Belt and Road Initiative. I included screenshots, sources, the whole lot - only to post it on Medium and be immediately banned. I made a new account, posted it, and was banned again. I only saw others begin to speak the same narrative, on less mainstream sites, months later.

Over the next few years I published sporadically. I made a couple of Medium accounts, posted once, then deleted after 6 months of inactivity. I made a Substack and never posted anything. I tried to start a digital publication and found it surprisingly tough to garner enough submissions to sustain it past the first issue, despite having a reasonably-sized online presence at the time. But I carried on writing, carefully recording information and outlining theories. I maintain a folder full of essays at various stages of completion. Now, suddenly, they feel very pointless. I have always gotten great joy from words, but now it is being suffocated by another more pressing emotion: trepidation.

Once upon a time the sharing of information was heavily restricted and, whilst this obviously limited people in negative ways, it was at least usually clear who published any piece of material and what their intentions in publishing it were. There is so much information on the internet, so much so that even imagining the sheer volume of it feels overwhelming - and it is. It’s a virtual arena full of people all constantly outputting, and naturally most gets lost in the melee. Everyone from bad actors to attention seekers submits fabricated, extrapolated, or decontextualised material into this arena, further adding to the chaos. In the midst of all, the truth is drowned out. No one can rely on information simply because they cannot conclusively identify its source and its trustworthiness.

To further add to this serious problem is the ‘echo chamber’ of information. Imagine in this virtual arena there are 1000 people and 10 of them are dotted around shouting the exact same thing. Each gathers a crowd, convinced by what they are hearing. They pass it on to others, who confirm they have heard the same. All are satisfied this knowledge is not only correct but common, and as such do nothing with what they know except endlessly repeat it to each other whenever the topic comes up. In this scenario information is almost hoarded, like simply knowing it constitutes action, or even treated as some sort of precious treasure that must be borne by no one other than hallowed torch-bearers. Eventually the information either becomes part of the background noise or is restricted to these insular guardians, losing any potential impact as nothing is ever actually done upon its dissemination.

The final and most pervasive of pitfalls is the inability of most to fully comprehend the information they are given (even assuming it is entirely correct) and nowhere is this more prevalent than on social media. A common victim is the Magna Carta, or more specifically its role in today’s political situation. It would be remiss to pretend this document was anything short of revolutionary, but what made it a symbol of freedom and justice was the context in which it was created: under a feudal system, where a ‘free man’ would generally be understood to be anyone who was not a serf, much like a ‘free man’ in colonial America would be someone who was not enslaved. Whilst the Magna Carta did indeed democratise to a significant extent it was not intended to deliver freedom (and therefore power) to the people without restraint; neither was the United States Constitution, in which the newly federated nation took the values inherent to the Carta and enshrined them into supreme federal law. The United Kingdom, however, has to date not done the same, with only 4 of the original 63 clauses in the Magna Carta having been embedded into further legislation and therefore given precedent in a court of law. (In fact, many who champion the Carta would likely not want it to stand as constitutional law in whole, considering clause 41 would allow ‘merchants’ to freely enter, occupy, and exit England at will as long as it was for ‘trade’…!)

But allow me to post one final idea for consideration: there is a solution. It won’t be found in rerouting our path from past to present, it won’t be found in protests, and it won’t be found in a people’s democratic revolution. There’s no need for violence and no need to rely solely on elections. It’s surprisingly simple in its outline - but deceptively difficult in its execution, and this is where the British preference for community solutions must be urgently revived. We are yoked to the plough most significantly by our lack of independence and self-sufficiency, our spiralling inability to function without the interference of a third-party authority, who naturally expects something in return. What is entirely legal is stepping away from what siphons our power: what makes us ineffective, what makes us known, and what makes us atomised. We can not shout from rooftops that have mortgages on them, we can not reroute taxes within multinational corporations, we can not create or claim power when we are each so reliant on that of another.

Please do not mistake this as support for parallel societies: they are not strong because they sacrifice symbols of strength to the primary power, the national government. What I do advocate for is resistance where it matters: for our current economy to continue people must buy at large supermarkets and retailers instead of farm shops and small craftsmen, pay for material goods they do not need on credit, and declare every penny to the taxman by paying card instead of cash. What’s needed is to stem the financial flow in their direction and start bringing back to us; investing in our people, our communities, and not lining their pockets with profit made from pernicious taxation, interest repayments, and the multiple layers of policy that set all our real domestic industries which create sustainable wealth up to fail in favour of making a quick buck on selling off everything they were meant to hold in trust for us.

We must continue to engage where it matters. If we do not retain a presence in politics, in education, in health and social care, in business, in law, and all these other fundamental systems of British society then we will lose them entirely, becoming outsiders to everything our ancestors built and subsequently considered hostile by our state apparatus. As such what I post next will not be a ruminative essay, but instead a return to my original style of posting: informative and (hopefully) instructive, so that I can stop adding to the confusion endemic to this arena and start instilling a structure that will guide our efforts towards glory.