On Disobedience

Once we were young. We sat in smoky rooms in small groups and talked about important things. We were going to change the world. We were going to be a part of it. We'd get high, and discuss philosophy, and religion, and science. And we knew things.

We aren't so young anymore, but we still know things. We don't get high, and we don't get to talk as much, but we still know things. We know how to write a letter that can't be understood except by the person it's written to. We know how to blend into a crowd so that we aren't noticed. We know how to hide a knife in the palm of our hand so that they don't see it coming until it's too late. We know how to build a bomb, and how to bury it so it goes off when they drive their tanks over it. We know how to bandage a mortal wound, and how to make one.

We learned fast in the early years. It was either learn fast or not at all. When the first tanks rolled into our cities we thought the government would protect us. Then we heard about the strikes. Tactical. Nuclear. No government left after that.

Some people advised caution. Negotiation. Appeasement. But we weren't having any of it. So we started to fight back. That's when the learning process began.

We learned real quick that you can't just run up to a man and shoot him, because he has nine other men with guns right there with him. They had better weapons, and better armor, and we weren't going to win through force. We learned you can't poison their food and water, because they have equipment that tests for that, and they're inoculated regularly to protect them from most poisons.

The hardest lesson we learned was that you can't convince most people to stand up and fight, no matter the cost. No matter the loss. They just accept it and move on.

We couldn't blame them really. For most people, it was meet the new boss same as the old boss. They went about their business. They made goods. They sold goods. They bought goods. They paid their mortgages and fed their families and clothed their children. And they didn't really give a damn which god they were told to pray to at the end of the day, because god had never been there when they needed him anyway.

So we didn't blame them. Not most of the time. Not most of us. But we did blame the men with the guns, who rolled into our cities in their tanks, and slaughtered our leaders with their bombs. For us, it didn't matter who the new boss was. We didn't ask for him. We didn't want him.

So we learned that some people don't need convincing. They fight because they can't see any other way. And more and more those people came to us, to learn our ways.

We started as a small group. Only about a dozen. Men, and a few women, who couldn't sit by and watch the nation they grew up in salute a foreign flag. It wasn't really patriotism. It wasn't really heroism. We just couldn't stomach it.

I suppose it was a kind of pride really. The kind of hubris they speak about in college courses on Greek tragedy. Whatever it was, it kept us up at night. Studying.

So we learned. And we shared that knowledge. And over time, they began to learn too. They learned to keep their safeties off. They learned to look over their shoulders. They learned to fear.

So now we sit in dark rooms, and we gather in small groups and we discuss philosophy, and religion, and science. But we learned fear too, or at least, caution. So we get quiet whenever we hear a noise outside. And we never meet in the same place twice. And we don't use our real names, just in case someone's listening.

Because they are listening. They're always trying to find out who we are. Where we are. Because they want to put a stop to our behavior, but mostly, they want to make an example. They want people to see that resistance can't succeed. More important, they want to go back to believing they're invincible. They want to go back to when they didn't have to look over their shoulders, or test their food for poison.

And it's our job to make sure that never happens. We know we can't win. That wasn't ever the point. We know we're outnumbered, and outgunned, and outfunded. We know they have more materiel, and more time. Ultimately, they'll win. For every one of them we kill, there's ten thousand more, or a hundred thousand. Every one of us they kill puts us on the brink of extinction.

But we're not dead yet. So we leave posters on bathroom walls telling people how to make simple bombs. And we leave guns in public parks with instructions on how to use them. And we put bombs in their homes and cars and leave graffiti at the site to let people know who's responsible.

And maybe it won't matter. Maybe someday, people won't even remember what happened. Do you remember who lived in Rome before the Romans? Who lived in Egypt before the Egyptians? Who lived in China before the Chinese? Maybe historians do. Maybe they don't. We don't.

But we know one thing. We're in it now. We're living it. And the Bard put it best.

Let the world burn, we aren't young anymore.