After a year of building up content on this blog, the time has finally come to start releasing content under this pen name. The content will be a mix of philosophical and historical fiction and nonfiction, but this first release is philosophical fiction in the dystopian grain of Orwell, Rand, or Huxley. It is part of an anthology of dystopian shorts, many of which deal with various philosophical themes and with the general theme of authoritarianism in a variety of forms.
The anthology releases on October 26th, and I will be sharing snippets of my own story here in the five weeks leading up to release, but I will also be sharing interviews with some of my fellow authors answering questions about the philosophy behind the stories and the reasons they wrote the stories they did.
For now, I want to take the time to answer the same questions I’ll be asking other authors to give you all an idea of what you can expect from the story. Without further ado, let’s dive into the questions!
1. Can you tell us a bit about why you chose to participate in this dystopian anthology?
So on this one, the answer is two-fold.
First, James Quinlan Meservy, the initiator of the project, reached out to ask me if I would be willing to work with him on the project. He and I have worked on other things together, and I thought we would be able to balance each other and the third member of the committee selecting stories out. So I agreed to work with him to organize the project and then also agreed to do all of the interior design for the ebook and paperback.
Second, I have a novel I’m working on that deals with a dystopian world that’s marketed to its inhabitants as a utopia. The book is all about totalitarianism and how replacing Judeo-Christian values and morality with the State leads to the destruction of a free society and the minds of its inhabitants. In order to demonstrate this message conclusively by the end, I needed a mixed cast of characters with some who are just coming out of the regime and some who already made that journey. This anthology offered me an excellent chance to tell the story of one of the characters in the latter group since readers don’t get to see how he was converted from faithful devotee of the regime to a freedom fighter. So I submitted Illuminare to James and our other committee member, Allen Steadham, for review to see if it would be suitable for the anthology. After a few rounds of suggestions from James and Allen’s stamp of approval, the story was included.
2. Before we get into the themes and philosophical messaging of your story, would you share what your story is about to offer some context for the rest of the discussion?
Of course! Illuminare is about a man clawing free of the prison of the mind enforced by the totalitarian State in which he lives. The entire story is focused on his journey from a general sense of unease at the way things are, which he brushes away to go on his way as a “good citizen”, to his decision about whether to flee to freedom or stay and fight.
3. What is the overarching theme or message of your story?
The overarching theme is the mind’s jailbreak. Everything in the story drives toward the concept that a mind restrained to “group think” or the acceptable line of reasoning and threatened with violence if the individual refuses to follow along is a mind in chains. The message that goes along with the plot’s theme is that it is possible to break free of even the most stringent of mental prisons, but the person must want freedom (mental and physical) more than they want life itself if that life comes at the price of being a slave to the collective.
4. Why did you choose that theme or message?
I chose it because it fit best with the character. Fremont Sotiris isn’t like some of the other characters in the main novel, Animus, many of whom have experiences that jolt them awake to reality. Instead, he is living in a bubble as the warden of one of the State’s prisons for “dangerous” criminals. He interacts with these men on some subconscious instinct that they are still people like him even though the State has declared them worse than animals. Through those interactions, he develops the uneasy sense that most of them haven’t done anything he thinks worthy of the punishment being inflicted. The only thing he can see that they’ve done wrong in most cases was to think differently than society deemed acceptable. But he pushes aside that feeling and does his duty as a citizen. He is a walking contradiction between adhering to the State doctrines and refusing to take them to their logical conclusions by treating those who defied those doctrines as infidels worthy of the worst of punishments. So instead of having an experience that forces them to confront a reality that doesn’t fit into their little bubble, he needs someone to force him to face the contradictions he is living and choose between the two philosophies: one that makes people cogs in the wheel to be discarded if they cease to function or fit properly and one that treats people as individuals with a vibrant array of thoughts, personality, and desires. The only way he can choose is if he frees his mind to choose between them, and that is why the plot theme is the mind’s jailbreak.
5. Can you share with us the philosophical message behind your story?
Yes. The philosophical message is that freedom cannot come under an authoritarian regime. Not only do the people under such a regime lose their physical freedom (whether through being told where to live, when to eat, when to sleep, what medication or treatments to take, when they can have children, who they can marry, what career they will have), but they also lose their mental freedom as fewer and fewer variations of thought from the accepted narrative become tolerated. Such a regime claims to be humanitarian, to be protecting citizens from themselves, to be ensuring that everyone does only what is best for them, but it always ends in the sort of horrifying abuses of power we see in so many totalitarian regimes–left and right of center–because those abuses are baked into the pie of authoritarianism. Even under the guise of being benevolent, such a regime must exercise massive power in order to exert the level of control needed to create such a planned, collectivist economy on any scale.
And as James Madison once so wisely said of government, “Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been, and ever will be pursued, until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. … But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department, the necessary constitutional means, and personal motives, to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defence must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to controul the abuses of government. But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controuls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to controul the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to controul itself (Italics mine for emphasis)” (Madison, Federalist No. 1). In other words, because men are not angels and have a nature which leads them to abuse unlimited power, if men in power are not obliged to control themselves, you end with tyranny, disaster, and injustice. The government, in other words, ceases to fulfill its only end–justice–and in so doing, liberty is also lost in their unfettered pursuit of power.
That is the philosophical mooring on which this entire short story rests: unfettered power creates a dystopia no matter how hard those in power and those trying to lie to themselves for their own comfort tell themselves it is a utopia. It may take many forms, but unless you are one of the few in power or one of the few who are glad to give up all freedom for the mirage of security a totalitarian offers, no form of it will ever be a utopia. Human nature denies all hope of it, as Madison wisely indicates in his discussion on how to avoid setting up a system that makes tyranny easy and rampant.
6. How does that message extend from your own philosophy, and why do you feel it’s so important to share with the reader? In other words, what is it you want people to learn from this or hope they will reconsider about their own worldview/philosophy?
My own philosophy is a formation of long and continuing studies into the nature of man, government, God, and America’s Founding. I believe the Founders had the best model for promoting freedom because they based those beliefs on Scriptural principles. While one or two of them were atypical either because of their Christian beliefs (Thomas Jefferson toward the end of his life) or because of their Deism (Franklin), all agreed that the Bible and its principles were the best basis for a civil society. This led them not to the creation of theocratic society but to a society that recognized the individual and the necessity of freedom to think as one pleased and, perhaps most importantly to them, worship as one pleased with the promise of equal protection under the federal government. They believed people should be freed to live their lives as much as possible with the government becoming involved only where necessary to protect individual rights to safety from violence to their persons, properties, and pursuit of happiness. But they also believed that this was only possible so long as the people were a virtuous people bound by Judeo-Christian morality (obviously, some, like Franklin, had more lax views of what went into that morality, but even Franklin reveals in his writings how much the Biblical teachings influenced his personal philosophy and his views on how a free country remained free). They understood that freedom didn’t mean the ability to do whatever you wanted but instead the freedom to abide by conscience, do what was right, and live through reason and truth without threats from others or government to rob you of that freedom or force you to act against it.
My philosophy is much the same. Because I believe in the Bible as the inerrant Word of God, it is my belief both that there is an absolute standard of morality and truth and that people cannot be forced to it. They may be reasoned with, pleaded with even, but if they are forced and do not come to it willingly, they are no more human than the animal who obeys out of fear that its owner will beat it if it does not. In order for people to make any meaningful decision to do what is right, there must be freedom to choose what is right, which means conversely that they have the choice to do the opposite and place themselves in bondage to lies, sin, and despotism from one master or another. Civil government is intended only to enforce justice, to refuse to one man the ability to take another man’s freedom or property from him without repercussions. It is not the arbiter of morality or reason, and it never will be. My philosophy is deeply rooted in both reason and Biblical precepts, and this leads me to a rejection of any government that seeks to act as God to their fellow men. Illuminare is an extension of that philosophy as it demonstrates the end of rejecting such a philosophy in favor of the philosophy of collectivism, atheism, and State deification.
7. Can you share some of the points or scenes that were your favorites because of how they highlighted that philosophical message or aim in your story?
Sure! The story is full of symbolism that helps to build on both the philosophical message and on the psychological state/realizations of Fremont. A few favorite points in the story that showcase the idea of how totalitarianism knows no boundaries are the glowing eyes that are always watching and the broadcasts that the State puts out through Ransom, the face of the State, taking control of all broadcasting devices for even the most trivial of messages. At another point, in chapter one, Fremont is speaking with a prisoner who begins to ask him uncomfortable questions, and he parrots back one of the State’s mantras regarding the regime in an attempt to avoid the discomfort caused by being asked to think or go beyond his State-granted place. He tells the prisoner “Well, I’m only a cog in the wheel. Not important. Easy to replace. Everyone is replaceable. Only the State is important because only the State will last forever. Ransom and the State. They’re all that really matter. They keep us all safe and sane.” When the prisoner asks if that’s what he thinks or what he’s been told to think, he shows where he’s at with his answer: “Who cares?” And indeed, who does? In his society, not many see a difference between what they think and what they’re told to think, and while Fremont does think a little differently than most, he doesn’t think that differently yet.
In the same scene, one of my favorite lines of dialogue comes from the prisoner, who ironically states back to Fremont, in much clearer terms, exactly what the State’s philosophy implies. He tells Fremont that “there is no I, no individual, in this utopia. No mind either, just as it should be.” That line sums up the entire driving force behind the so-called utopia and the philosophy of collectivism in every form, but it also states the end result: no mind.
The final scene that I really loved was the one where Fremont sees his wife for what she is for the first time. He’s spent this whole time thinking that maybe, at least, his home was a sanctuary the State hadn’t touched only to realize in the mundane process of sitting down to a meal with his wife that even his home wasn’t free of the State because it was sitting right across from him in the form of his wife. The scene represents the culmination of his mental distress as he grapples with the new ideas, the implications of them, and the two competing ideals he is now straddling. It is the turning point that galvanizes him to action and proves to him that escaping their cage is worth any cost because he has nothing left they can take from him but his mind, and he is determined not to give it up after he’s just started to regain it.
8. If you could ensure readers learned just one thing from your story, what would it be?
Your freedom, mental and physical, is the most precious thing you have in this life. That freedom, in the form that the Founders envisioned it, lets you pursue happiness. It doesn’t promise that you’ll achieve it. No one who’s honest can promise you happiness. But it does promise you the opportunity to go after that happiness, to go after your dreams and goals. It promises you the freedom to think! Don’t waste it on a mishmash of thoughts others told you to think and a hodgepodge of others’ philosophies you accumulate by accident throughout your life. Instead, take advantage of your freedom. Cling to it and do not give it up without the bitterest of fights because once you have lost it, you may never regain it. If you do, it will not be without great cost and likely a great deal of bloodshed on all sides.
Once you surrender to tyranny, the tyrant never gives power back. No crisis, no situation, no excuse ever should excuse relinquishing freedom because to relinquish it is to relinquish your responsibility to think and to live rightly. No man can take that responsibility from you, and even if you are foolish enough to try to give it away, there is no power on Earth that could absolve you of the responsibility you bear for your irresponsible use of the gift of rational thought and the freedom it brings with it.
If you learn nothing else from this story, learn this: the truth will set you free. It may bring you sorrow. You may have to struggle to hold onto that freedom and that truth. No one promised it would be easy. But if you cling to it and get the truth and its freedom at any cost, it will set you free. A people whose minds are free and engaged are a people no tyrant will find easy to subdue. Americans once taught Britain that lesson. Others throughout history have been teaching other tyrants the same. Let us continue to pass on that truth, that lesson, in our generations.
