2/of capital and social organization that had taken hold. There would then be a bunch of "Van Halenists" in battle with some other group.

Maybe the Austrian Artist got into art school. Or Ayn Rand had stayed Alisa Rosenbaum and never made it out of Russia. The 20th century as we knew it would have played out very differently.

Some might argue the same forces would have come to blows, but it still would have played out differently.

All this is to suggest that ideas and timing matter immensely.

3/So as we are dealing with our current battles, it is important to recognize just how provisional and tentative they really are: they are frameworks that are totally accidental and of our moment.

We reify them in our minds until they take on the strength of steel beams. But they are nothing more than gossamer threads that stitch reality together in a framework we can relate to. They are a set of stories we can reference together, and within them battle for advantage.

4/But less explored is the value of new stories, new ideas, and new accidents — all of which are available to us at any moment.

We can invoke them anytime we like, and there is an infinite supply. Why must we do battle within the stories that have come before, instead of inventing and telling new stories?

Steve Bannon famously said "flood the zone with shit." Why should we not "flood the zone with heroes?"

There is no shortage of new North Stars.

5/So as we struggle mightily, as we will, to prevail within the gridiron of the accidents of the past, perhaps it would be worthwhile to stop and think "What If?"

What new stories might we tell that render the old ones ragged and obsolete? That corral the minds of the aggrieved, the oppressed, the seeking, to forge new social constructs that lead us forward?

We are huffing the fumes of old stories and old, tired ideas. There is nothing but possibility before us.

6/The bellwethers of the past are but sad tethers on our future selves. Why must we submit ourselves to such constraints?

Whence does 1850 or 1876 or 1933 or 1952 shape our future — and this electrified moment that no one could have foreseen?

We suffer no obligation to these dead gods. Break free! Think anew and be refreshed with the cool water of original thought and inspired leadership!

Crush the surly bonds of MAGA and Marx, Putin and Dugin, with ideas anew with the dew of spring.

7/Our battle-drive is in full bloom; the drive to draw blood no matter the cost, to seek revenge on the enemy of old does not easily subside. But were we to forget it? To simply... walk away from the battles of old to cast a new puzzle that leaves only questions in its wake?

We can do this, if we think to do so. If culture is upstream of politics, then certainly metaphysics and epistemology are upstream of culture.

We must ask better questions, and burnish the ones thick with rime and moss.

8/The battles we fight today are purely an accident of history. We must make fresh accidents. Force the battles of the future through new channels.

Nothing of the past was set in stone, and nothing we are dealing with now is so firm it can't be reconfigured. It's all, in the end, pure energy — mind stuff. If that sounds abstract, sure, it is, but it is this toolkit the owners of the future will employ.

This is a pragmatic philosophy, neither rooted in dogma nor ephemera. Merely insist on...