A Time for Heretics

Over time, what was once fresh discovery becomes dogma.

We have seen this in institutions as varied as the church and the sciences, as it offers the opportunity to exercise power and control, and along with it, accumulate wealth and influence.

Eventually, it percolates down from the corridors of power to the dusty corners of everyday life until the orthodoxy doesn't just control what's going on; it strangles it.

When this starts to happen, the heretics appear. While things are running satisfactorily, we ignore them as fringe or lightly deranged, their influence is limited, and they are easy to control. When things start to seriously fray at the edges, though, people begin to listen and take them seriously.

Now is such a time. At times like this, we cannot delegate our thinking or responsibility for our actions to others because the new wants to emerge, and the new we get is the one to which we pay attention.

The transition is made more difficult by the bindweed of previous means of control…