Honesty is frightening. Honesty with ourselves, and with others, is an extremely frightening thing. When we are radically honest, we often come to conclusions that we hold to be true that frighten us. These frightening conclusions are not something widely accepted, especially in today’s political climate. The most extreme we are allowed to be is which dementia ridden sex offender we will vote for, because voting for a socialist, or an anarchist, or a libertarian is just too damn much.

If we do not allow ourselves to engage in this radical honesty, change will never be enacted. The status quo will never change, and the theft of wealth, sanity, free time, the environment and our lives at large will never stop. Yet it is no surprise that we do not engage in this honesty. Our friendships, our reputations, our social circles, our livings and our very role in the society to which we belong depend on us fitting our opinions into a nice, neat little box that can be summed up in nice, neat little political slogans.

Speaking from a personal place, my politics, ideas, beliefs and spirituality are the farthest thing from being able to fit into a nice, neat little box. This is so with many of the people in my life as well, and I would imagine that it is quite the same for many of the people that are not in my life. For a person to truly be a complete human being, will be clashes inside of us. But our current political system does not allow for idiosyncrasies. It does not allow for quirks, or unlikely coalitions. It does not allow for oxymorons, confusion or internal conflict. And it certainly does not allow an upsetting of the status quo.

Rigorous and radical honesty will inevitably lead to the conclusion that the status quo is not sustainable. It is not honest, healthy, beneficial or good for the average person. And a corrupt and unsustainable status quo needs, more desperately than anything else, is extremists, of all shapes, colors, creeds and contradictions, working together.