A Free Man Tells His Own Story

So, what's your story?

Such a simple question, right? No, it's not, and you know it because it's not the right question.

The right question is "So, who's telling your story?" If you truly are a free man, then the only proper response is "I am, and I alone."

In history, journalism, and political science we use the word "narrative" to mean "the story that a party tells to explain their perspective with regard to a given matter". Political campaigns are, for all intents and purposes, struggles over which narrative is more compelling to those who decide upon what to do or whom to elect with regards to those matters. Control over that narrative, therefore, means control of what story gets told and how it's presented. This is why politics is about illusion and perception, not reality.

Empire, as a toxic meme--or, as John Lash puts it, the "archonic infection"--requires the manipulation of one's paradigm in order to operate; as a fundamental, existential requirement it comprehends the need (as one comprehends the need to breathe to stay alive) to subvert, seize, and thereby control the narrative. Empire needs to tell the story of your life--of Mankind's life--in order to lay the foundation necessary for latter-order levels of dominance and control.

In more plain speech, we're talking about myth. No, not myth as a synonym for "lie" or "false", but the way that Joseph Campbell revived the term: "the narrative that a nation tells itself to explain how it relates to the environment wherein it exists". Those that control the mythology of the nation control the nation's narrative, and thereby exert control over the individual narrative of that nation's people. By shaping the very ground wherein battle is joined, those who control the narrative control the very language used--the symbols employed, and the meanings they convey--by all parties, constraining what is even conceived of in the minds of the combatants long before any conflict ensues. This is, in a very real sense, what ancients such as Sun Tzu meant by defeating an enemy first, and then joining battle to expand a victory.

If someone else tells your story, then they are dictating to you what you are to yourself. They tell you what your world is, and how you relate to it, and they exert real power over you by doing this because they con you into accepting their claims and thus subordinate your beliefs against you for their benefit. Belief is a very powerful thing; that which is not permitted within one's mind due to belief cannot ever be considered, let alone acted upon, so if you believe that you are weak and powerless then you shall conform to that belief- and that belief always stems from a myth that someone else foisted upon you when you were too weak in fact to resist it.

Slaves are chained, first and foremost, by the myths told to them about them by others. Empire is a slaver; it wants you to believe the myths told to you about you by it--it wants to control your narrative--and it cannot rely upon the physical, objective reality wherein facts exist and can be independently and universally verified to support its toxic mythologies. If you, on the other hand, build your own mythology upon that very same reality--the one with gravity, chemistry, physics, etc.--then your mythology will be stronger than anything that does not rely on that same foundation. A free man's mythology is self-made, builds upon the real world, and is told by no one but himself. He alone controls his narrative.

So, will you tell the myth of how you made Empire fall? No one else can. No one else will.