The Way of Poets & Prophets

In Huxley’s Brave New World, the drug Soma was used to help people escape or avoid reality. A passage in the novel describes its effect this way: “Swallowing half an hour before closing time, that second dose of soma had raised a quite impenetrable wall between the actual universe and their minds.”

We find ourselves in an eerily similar moment. We face what appears to be an impenetrable wall between the actual universe and the artificial reality that has been sold to us as the counterfeit story. But it only appears to be impenetrable. The artificial isn’t eternal. It isn’t even permanent by human standards.

As more and more people are waking up to the cost of the artificial, the Machine is already starting to glitch. Reality is breaking through. Dawn is coming. We just have to open our eyes. In various ways, ancient prophets and modern writers have signaled the alarm throughout time. As Ed Abbey says in The Journey Home (“Shadows from the Big Woods” essay): “The Machine may seem omnipotent, but it is not. Human bodies and human wit, active here, there, everywhere, united in purpose, independent in action, can still face that machine and stop it and take it apart and reassemble it—if we wish—on lines entirely new. There is, after all, a better way to live. The poets and the prophets have been trying to tell us about it for three thousand years.”

Through our art, we too can be poets or prophets. But only if we choose the better way to live that they’ve been telling us about through the centuries.

One last thought. If today’s reading resonated, take a moment now to email or share it with a fellow creative, friend or family member who could use the encouragement.

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