Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan has posted the following on Instagram where he describes how a figurative ‘mob’ has attacked him over the years for his contrarian views:
“The most dangerous things in the world are a free mind, a free heart, and free will. Society, or culture (which aren’t always the same, mind you) defines itself through a collective consensus. But far too often throughout history the psychopathic leanings of the mob have been dead wrong. So it isn’t surprising that the mob uses itself to justify an ill-logic, turning inward to ask, ‘aren’t we right in our feeling/belief/suspicion?’ (cue loud, guttural cheer). And by extension that same mob hates, and I do mean hate, that which it cannot control.
For the existence of any contrarian symbol, be it man, woman, bird, or falling duck is that which the mob identifies as threat to its so-called hegemony. So they endeavor to stamp that virus out, only to target the next most dangerous elemental force, and the next, and the next. Continuing on forever until like a snake eating it’s own tale, there are simply no more witches to burn.
And so over a lifetime of wonderings and wanderings I have deduced a pattern that says if I’d only gone along to get along (to abuse the old aphorism) my life might have gone different, or better, or more brightly. I must admit that I even fall into the trap occasionally of this same query. But thankfully I have seen the light on this new moon, falling as it did on my birthday, that the gift that has saved and resurrected me again and again is the treasure of discernment.
And for years I did struggle with the question of how one can both oppose that which attempts to destroy you all while participating in it’s mad game. (Which stands as a larger parable for Life). So note that which opposes your dream and like myself you will detect the stench of the crowd, furious that anything so weak as a lone individual should refuse their math: 2 + 2 equals 5.
No, 2 + 2 equals 4. And my name is William, not Winston.
Last point: if your bias filter is with the mob you will read such thinking as I have laid out here as complaint.
It is not. My heart is free. I am smiling. And I love God.
The ramblings of a madman being not far from the laughter of a child. So God bless you in finding your own rainbows.”
