More and more I find that the world around me is fake and disgustingly shallow.
More and more I need to stop and think before I act.
My patience grows thinner still with every act of mastering my impulse to act and lash out against the miserable injustice perpetrated by almost every living soul on this planet of ours on almost everyone else.
No more brave knights in our blasted day and age.
Only victims!
Why do I say all this? Because I feel this way, of course.
I feel as if I am trapped in a night-mare inhabited by cowards, lackeys, stupid, and ruled by Satan himself. Nay, not Beelzebub himself. By a lot of his lapdogs and devils and demons.
Sometime, life seems like a struggle because it is one. It is the struggle of decency against the ongoing attacks of the wicked. It is trench warfare at its worst. It is the death of a thousand cuts, whereas the protagonist cannot move with all his might against his many enemies, because the rules prevent him from doing so.
Well, what are these rules then? Why, they are, of course, the rules of organized society where one cannot defend his honor against slights. Where one cannot stand his ground on principle, because principles have been outlawed and replaced by ukazes, edicts, laws, implemented by the rich against the rest. Enfin, this is a hellish world whereby one must become a victim without ever being allowed to protect his own life, belongings, or family.
This is a world where the wicked, the cowardly and the dumb run amok and do their worst and where the kind, gentle, and meek are victims in waiting.
This is why I maintain and solemnly declare that I was born too goddamn late.
Because in my preferred day and age, anywhere from the 6th to the 16th century, that’s a good thousand years, folks, back then I would have been able to function as a normal human being. DEFINITION: One that doesn’t shudder at the thought of not being able to put up any longer with the wickedness of the world.
Back then I would have faced easier odds and came out on top.
Why am I so sure?
Because in those glorious times of old, one could hold one’s own without fear of the Law. God was and will always be the moral arbiter of what is permitted and not.
Back then, men were men and women women.
Life was not easy, and sometimes times were hard, and fraught with danger.
But one was never afraid of one’s shadow. One was only afraid to not rise to the challenge when it met one.
Case in point.
Du Guesclin was a French knight, who lived in the 14th century and who had the habit to save his monarch, the French king, from bad tidings, of which during the 100 years war (1337-1453), there were many.
Bertrand du Guesclin (cca. 1320 – 1380) was the Constable, that is to say the Commander of the Royal Army, for most of his adult life. The man was born and lived to fight. It just so happened that the Almighty in His Providence provided him with plenty of opportunity to do so against the godons, aka the English, the Welsh, as well as the Castilians, and everybody else who looked at his King the wrong fucking way.
Nonetheless, this knight always did so with honor. Meaning that every victory was achieved according to the rules of chivalry, as was every defeat.
In fact, in one of Arthur Conan Doyle’s books, The White Company, one of the English mercenaries unleashed by Edward III (1327-1377) on France in a war of dapnum-damnum or destruction in Latin, gets to meet this illustrious character of Du Guesclin.
He does so in a most interesting circumstance. They meet in the middle of the French Jacquerie, which was a peasant rebellion brought about by the convergence of War, Pestilence, Famine, and Injustice.
Not to spoil it for you, but these two opposing characters manage to fight off the enraged peasantry trying to kill them, by burying the hatchet in the skulls of those seeking to murder them.
They also protect Du Guesclin’s Lady, and in doing so, they fulfill one of the tenets of Chivalry, namely the “protect the innocent” aspect. They achieve their role as bellatores or warriors, as ordained by God.
This is what is missing from our day and age. The powers that be that decided some 200 years ago to ban personal vendettas or the notion of taking justice in your own hands, as had been the case for thousands of years, they made courage, honor, and thus personal responsibility illegal.
And this is wrong.
It is illogical to think, to pretend that it is more just to wait for a third party to adjudicate a conflict or solve a crime and punish a criminal, then it is for the Law to allow for the immediate punishment of the culprit on the spot of the crime.
Let’s face it, folks, this day and age of ours is neither just, nor good, nor Godly, not even moral.
We live in wicked times. And we are being ordered to suspend our disbelief, and believe we are free, when in actuality we are worse than the serfs of the Middle Ages, or the slaves of Antiquity.
Post scriptum
174 years ago, today, on 2 December 1851, President Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, decided to make himself Emperor of the French, and do away with the Republic. Flawed as it was, the Republic was the representation of the French people. One of its elected representatives, Jean-Baptiste Baudin went before the Parisians who defied Napoleon’s coup d’etat. He came before the insurrectionists and told them that since Bonaparte violated the Constitution, it is their duty to take up arms.
To which the people said, “Why should we listen to you, a politician? Why would we risk our lives for the likes of you?” Others said, “We’d be nuts to be shot at by the Army for 25 francs!” At the time, that was the daily allowance of French parliamentarians. To this the politico replied, and his words exited history to enter legend:
You will soon see how one can die for 25 francs per day.
Baudin, 3 December 1851
Baudin took the French flag and went up the barricade… where he was promptly shot by the soldiers.
My point is this, folks. Honor and courage are not optional. Dying ain’t optional either.
All that matters is how and when we die, to die risking our lives for a good cause. To me the only cause I know to be just and true is my family and friends. And God. Nothing else matters.
Götterdämmerung 