{"id":16481,"date":"2023-01-20T11:43:10","date_gmt":"2023-01-20T18:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=16481"},"modified":"2023-01-20T11:43:10","modified_gmt":"2023-01-20T18:43:10","slug":"in-response-to-a-crippling-realization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/in-response-to-a-crippling-realization\/","title":{"rendered":"In response to &#8220;A Crippling Realization&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I got a lot of feedback on my last blog post, and rather than respond to it one at a time, I thought it would be better to just write another blog post and respond to it here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>First of all, thanks for all of the support. I really appreciate it. I&#8217;m not going through a particularly hard time right now, and I&#8217;m not thinking seriously about giving up writing either, so I&#8217;m sorry if my last post gave that impression. I&#8217;m definitely going to keep writing, since this is the path that I feel I&#8217;ve been called to, and the vocation that I should pursue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This isn&#8217;t a question of &#8220;should I give up writing, or should I sell out to the woke agenda?&#8221; Rather, it&#8217;s a question of &#8220;should I go off and become a voice in the wilderness, or should I focus on building my career?&#8221; It may be possible to do both things at once, but when I look at where the culture is today, it looks more and more like a very difficult needle to thread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Or maybe not. Maybe what we call &#8220;the culture&#8221; is mostly just a bunch of bullies, sock puppets, and trolls conspiring with Big Tech and the corporate media to drown out all other voices. Perhaps the true culture has actually bifurcated, and what looks like &#8220;the wilderness&#8221; is actually where the most people really are. Perhaps it really is just a small number of people going crazy, and because of all the gaslighting, everyone else only <em>thinks<\/em> that they are the last sane man or woman in this world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The other thing I ought to keep in mind is that crying out against our modern culture isn&#8217;t actually removing yourself from the cultural conversation. On the contrary, it&#8217;s one of the most outspoken ways to be a part of it, even if you do end up in the wilderness. Hardly anything from the culture of the Old Testament has survived, but we still have the words of their prophets today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is frustrating, though, because the culture really isn&#8217;t producing any of the kinds of stories that made me fall in love with science fiction and fantasy in the first place. Brandon Sanderson is kind of an exception to that, but in some ways even he seems to be bending before the cultural winds. Do I need to bend as well? There may be some wisdom in that: after all, the grass can endure the storm that takes down the mighty oak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So you see, it&#8217;s a much more nuanced question than &#8220;do I bend the knee or give up writing?&#8221; Rather, it&#8217;s a question of where to bend, and where to stand firm. I doubt my Zedekiah Wight stuff is going to amass much of a following, though I&#8217;d love to be proven wrong. But I&#8217;ve still got to find ways to stay true to my inner voice, even if that drives me out into the cultural wilderness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anyways, these are just some of the questions I&#8217;ve been pondering lately. I&#8217;m not depressed, and I&#8217;m not going to give up writing, so don&#8217;t worry about that, though thanks for your concern.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I got a lot of feedback on my last blog post, and rather than respond to it one at a time, I thought it would be better to just write another blog post and respond to it here. First of all, thanks for all of the support. I really appreciate it. I&#8217;m not going through&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/in-response-to-a-crippling-realization\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">In response to &#8220;A Crippling Realization&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1661],"tags":[364,199,599,232],"class_list":["post-16481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-zedekiah-wight","tag-culture","tag-questions","tag-thoughts-reflections","tag-why-we-write","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-4hP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16481"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16482,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16481\/revisions\/16482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}