There is no appropriate image for this missive. In some cultures (therefore some schools of communication theory), pictures and images are to be avoided at all costs, and when put together with words, they can allow you to make false connections between the picture and the ideas behind the words. News media, for example, takes advantage of this to keep the propaganda machine running. But there is no embodiment of the title here that deserves some derision we can all share in. No political leader, no religious figure, no Teen Icon even. No object of scorn we can throw stones at, in the name of letting loose the flames. “There, look. The bad man.” What would be the point? The process is what’s important. There are a hundred and one thousand of these things in circulation daily, and they reduce themselves to a meme on facebook: subject + image = duh?

You cannot quash your desire to be with others, though simply being with them is of no use, and only when you are cut off from the fruits of collective effort do you know what it means to be a part of that collective. But if you follow their way without upsetting anyone, are you anything but a sheep? If they follow you, you are the leader, and who does the leader follow? Normals go to a youtube video to upvote a comment about loneliness without having the first clue to the nature of alonehood, and how to avoid it, if it is in fact a negative and not a certainty.

The land of the unknown is where you are destined to be, because in the known you are travelling in degradation without noticing. Looking forward, if you see “darkness” it is because you have taken a wrong turn, even though the search for truth is to the brim with darkness and wrong turns. Others who have been at the threshold before you will not mind pushing you in this direction, because if you fail – “oh well.” Repeatedly, your point of failure is fear of the unknown, the very space you know you must enter.

Those who reach their limits here are then afraid to just stop and restart, because likely they have done so too many times already. Instead, followers and all, they are clueless dead-end seekers repeating mistakes, going in circles, with no good intentions left. Then they come in contact with someone who has actually crossed the threshold, and they see what they truly are, and how attached they were to what turns out to be a big nothing. By the time they detach, it is often too late. They are “eternal spirits.” Truly, but they have no idea of what kind, what lineage, what order. They are leaders of rats, and will be consumed by the same.