Going Down the Rabbit Hole

The search for truth is not meant to be bright, shiny, and straightforward

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

– Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken”

The search for truth that unites us of the counter-hegemonic resistance is a paradoxical pursuit, for it would appear the more we discover about the world, the less we actually know.

Our quest for knowledge often leaves us with less certainty about the nature of existence than we had before we decided to stop believing everything the TV told us.

And the deeper down the proverbial rabbit hole we go, the more side passages we discover, the more crooked the way becomes, the dimmer the light and the less we know for sure until we reach such depths as we are left with no choice but to rejoin the credulous world above or make peace with the darkness and admit that we know next to nothing.

How strange and contradictory for so-called truthers to wind up in this position and our adversaries would likely chortle and rub their greasy hands together with delight and smug declarations of ‘I told you so.’

They love their rabbit hole analogy – have you noticed? It’s right up there with ‘conspiracy theory’ for the preferred weapon of choice when combatting dangerous misinformation that might cause them to examine the incongruency between what is happening in the world and what they are told by the talking heads on the 6 o’clock news. They view the twists and turns and badly-lit passages of the rabbit hole as the very proof of its falsehood; that anything so complex and confusing could be anything less than a web of lies is incomprehensible to them because they believe in perfect unambiguous knowledge – a technocratic understanding of truth largely synonymous with what they call ‘science’.

This is the standard normie position: That there are no conspiracies, no mysteries, and no monsters; that everything has a bright and shiny explanation that always tends toward dreary, comforting officialdom; that life is simple, and to be enjoyed first and foremost, and that everything would be a whole lot better if everyone just followed the rules and didn’t ask so many questions (Trust The Science).

In other words: I’m too lazy to employ the divine bestowment that differentiates me from other creatures – critical thinking; I’m too selfish to put the betterment of humanity before my own convenience and pleasure; I’m too cowardly to call out evil; and I’m altogether too sick with dishonesty and hubris to admit any of the former.

You may have noticed that it is a hallmark of the lazy, the selfish, the cowardly and the dishonest that they will claim absolute knowledge on subjects they cannot possibly know the truth about.

For instance, ask your standard normie friend what’s going on in Ukraine and you’ll likely be told that Vladimir Putin is a bad man. He invaded a ‘sovereign’ country, and the invader is always bad, and the defender is always good, thus Putin = bad and Zelensky = good. End-of-story.

Yet ask the same person to tell you anything about the geopolitical history of this conflict going back only ten years and they’ll have nothing to offer, because their programming does not encompass this information and you’ll likely receive a hostile response such as “Putin apologist!” or the human equivalent of a 404 Error – a bored shrug, the limp little smile of the liar, and a glassy look in the eyes which tells you the conversation is over.

I could offer many more examples, but the point is that truth for such people is not a complex and elusive endeavour to be approached through the strenuous application of one’s critical thinking faculties, but a clear and concise explanation from which there can be no deviation.

This type of thinking is akin to a child’s constant demand for easy-to-understand answers about the world, but it stops short at the question ‘what?’

As any parent will tell you, a child who has not yet been moulded by the education system into the compliant drone that the machine desires, will ask what’s happening, expecting their curiosity to be swiftly satiated:

“Dad, what are those men doing?”

“They’re digging a hole in the road, son.”

But upon hearing the answer the child will likely pause, a thoughtful look on his little face, then go on to ask the all-important question:

“Why?”

But the normie adult human is not interested in this question, because to them, truth should be clear cut, simple and painless.

What’s happening in Ukraine?

Putin invaded.

Why did Putin invade?

404 Error.

Conversely, ask me or anyone interested in the truth about what’s going on in Ukraine and you’ll likely hear a bit of the back story and some observations about the attendant political machinations on either side of the Atlantic – but more importantly you’ll hear the words “I think…”

I think it’s more complicated than the media is making out…

I think Putin is a bad actor, but Zelensky is also an actor (literally!) and not a good one, in either sense…

I think it is a Military-Industrial Complex boondoggle for the Biden regime and their buddies at Boeing and Raytheon…

Now, of course, I don’t always preface the statements I make about such matters with “I think”, because this would detract from the flow and impact of my writing and become repetitive, but any discerning reader ought to know that the views I express here are simply my opinion based on the evidence at hand – in other words: this is what I have seen, and having analysed these observations against past and peripheral events, this is what I believe is likely to be true…

This is the beauty of our God-given ability to think critically – it opens up unlimited realms of possibility and wonderment, an invigorating enterprise of exploration and adventure, free from the constraints of dogma and hierarchy.

Indeed, a rabbit hole.

This is in fact the very essence of science. Science is a rabbit hole.

But it comes with one crucial caveat:

I think – therefore I could be wrong.

The omniscience assumed by the normie concedes no such fallibility. His is a hubris that would make of himself a god:

I know – therefore I am right.

The search for truth is a rabbit hole by its very nature; it always has been, and until such a day arrives as we are indeed judged by an omnipotent God, it always will be.

Until such a day we must be content in the imperfection of our earthly knowledge, comfortable in our state of confusion, and courageous in the face of the unknown and unthinkable.

For what can we truly claim to know? Our feelings? Our perceptions? To what extent these are even ‘our own’ is often dubious given the power of propaganda, mass psychosis, and mind-control. Edward Bernays anyone? Or how about a little MKUltra?

The serious scientists among us would claim things such as the Theory of Relativity or the splitting of the atom as proof of absolute knowledge, but again I would argue that all such hard science is merely an understanding of what is, as opposed to an explanation of why.

As Indiana Jones once told his students: “[Science] is the search for fact, not truth. If it’s truth you’re interested in, Dr. Tyree’s philosophy class is right down the hall.”

For instance, I’ve yet to encounter a human who can explain the physical concept of nothing upon which The Big Bang, and thus our entire scientific understanding of the universe, rests.

But if I continue down this path I’ll start talking about God, which was not my intention today, suffice to say that only God has absolute knowledge, whether you understand God as a divine being, or simply the secret fabric of the infinite universe itself, the outcome is the same – that we, for all our brilliant strides forward as a species and individuals are imperfect.

We can observe and evaluate and develop our pattern recognition to a level that approaches certainty, but to know anything for certain is exceedingly rare. And even when we do grasp one strand of truth, it immediately calls into question dozens of peripheral vectors.

Simply put, we can know that we are being lied to but are unlikely ever to know the whole truth.

We can see that the jab is killing people but may never decode the malevolence behind it.

We can surmise that Epstein didn’t kill himself but may never know who did.

We can see that the climate change narrative is fraudulent but may never know its true motivation.

It would be much easier to agree with the TV news anchors and just say the jab is safe and effective, Epstein killed himself, and climate change is an existential threat to humanity. How knowledgeable we would sound!

But I for one would rather be in the dark, groping my way along a rope toward some incomplete understanding of the truth, my curiosity and humility intact, than dazzled by the brilliant, smooth-edged simplicity of the corporate fact-checkers.

Knowledge is not to be found in the guise of absolute truth such as we have been offered by our rulers in the form of a shiny new deity – The Science. True knowledge is a quest; it is elusive and deep; complex and difficult to locate.

It is to be found down the rabbit hole – a place where nothing is clear, where one road can often become three, where you encounter dead ends, impassable obstacles, and dangerous elements; or indeed, like Alice, creatures and circumstances so fantastical that they defy belief.

It is a place where one can be misled and end up back where one started, none the wiser.

But such is life, and, to quote from The Princes Bride: “anyone who tells you differently is selling something.” It is incumbent on us as freethinkers to navigate this labyrinth.

The mendacious salesman and credulous fool and alike will tell you – I know.

The humble man who is approaching the truth is far more likely to tell you – I don’t know.

You know nothing. In fact, you know less than nothing. If you knew that you knew nothing, then that would be something, but you don't.

John C. McGinley as Ben Harp, Point Break (1991)