Severed Souls (Part 1: The Atlas Dilemma - To Shrug or Not To Shrug?)

What's the connection between Terry Goodkind and the Atlas Shrugged dilemma?

Fuckin' Badass, cognitive dissonance.

[After fighting tyrants, evil, darkness, black magic, superstition for 13 novels...]

Zedd: “I ask myself all the time, what is there to live for anymore? I can’t live in peace. My whole life, until I quit and fled to Westland, was spent in a life-and-death struggle with that evil. It never ends. I am tired of it, tired of the struggle, tired of the withering plague of hatred, tired of everything.
“That is why I say you need to quit and enjoy what you can of your life while you have it, while you still can.
“Give it up, Richard. Go and live for yourself. Forget the rest of the world. Let the inevitable happen as it will. In the meantime, turn your back to all the hate, take the joy you can, and live for yourselves. Just as I did, you will find that after a time the savage streak in mankind becomes a distant memory and unimportant. Let it become unimportant to you and Kahlan.”


At a time like this (Passion Times), this is a central question. What do you do?

SHORT:

It's simple, really. You can't hide. You make a difference, or you don't.

LONG: 

There's a lot you can do.

From empirical evidence, 

1.

Stay away from people who have real coercive power. (AKA Don't sleep with the enemy. Don't do Faustian Bargains.)

Why? 

• Because they may well become moral dilemmas for you. 
• You run the risks of them turning on you if you ever take a stand.
• Once you accept some evil into your life, others will follow and it will be easy to accept them too.
• It's not as good as it seems.

2.

Know your enemy, know your friends.

If you know more about them than they do themselves, good for you!

3. 

Find out what you can do for freedom.

"Ask not what freedom can do for you, but rather, what you can do for freedom."

Off the top of my head...

• Free currencies! Bitcoin! Precious metals! Alt currencies!
• Free software! Go open source! Help out! Firefox!
• Free economy! Go startup!
• Free communications! Encrypt! Tor! Firechat!
• Free the minds of your fellow humans! Encourage them to resolve their personal issues. "Government is based on violence. Violence violates the non-aggression principle and is therefore immoral. Government is immoral."
• Free social networking! Go and talk with people in real-life!
• Free yourself! Free your body, mind, spirit! Resolve your issues! 

4.

"Give me freedom or give me death" 
"Take your freedom and forget about dying for freedom"

Wakeup call - The people who said this centuries ago wanted a government. 

Freedom is not given. You take it, or snatch it from tyrants who hate your freedom.

Begging for freedom is like fighting a war for peace, sex for abstinence or having nothing for dinner. It's contradictory, and hence logically wrong.

5.

Remember to Laugh!

Even the Soviets had a sense of humor. In fact, communism/socialism is well-suited for extreme humor. Of course, comedy was also an extreme sport in the Soviet Union.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_political_jokes#Gulag_Archipelago