The Remnant Sings!
April 5, 2011
You are about to see a video that will amaze you. I want you to view it. This will take 15 minutes. Do it on your own time. It isn't going anywhere. Then I will comment.
This video illustrates a number of points, but they all boil down to one: greatness is unplanned by men. Again and again in history, great events are the result of human action, not human design.
First, the speaker is now world-famous. Yet he grew up in northern rural Nevada. That is about as far into the boondocks as people get in the USA, other than northeast California.
His goal -- to be a rock/pop star -- ended in one moment, as he described. Yet that moment came about because he wanted to meet cute girls. This was unexpected.
Second, he instantly discovered his calling: the most important thing that he could do in which he would be most difficult to replace.
Third, he disciplined himself to master the needed skills.
Fourth, he wrote music: a high-risk occupation.
Fifth, a young woman with a Webcam sent him an amateurish video of her singing. The very act of sending him impressed him, not her mastery of the music. This was unexpected.
Sixth, this triggered an idea: why not put together a digital fusion of independent voices?
Seventh, he announced this on his site.
Eighth, he got responses.
Ninth, a digital techie contacted him to volunteer to edit the project. The techie is an artist, but the speaker did not know this. This was unexpected.
Tenth, the initial product is masterful.
Eleventh, we learn that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. There are hundreds of singers, some mediocre, but the final product is magnificent.
Twelfth, the video went viral. This was unexpected.
Thirteenth, thousands more volunteers showed up. This was unexpected.
Fourteenth, the final product could not have been done for less than millions of dollars: bringing the people to a central location, housing them, feeding them, paying them to practice. Instead, this was done with volunteer labor.
This is a gorgeous illustration of Albert J. Nock's 1936 essay, "Isaiah's Job." Nock began with the prophet Elijah's lament to God that he was all alone. Not so, said God; there are 7,000 "who have not bowed the knee to Baal."
The Remnant is out there. You cannot see them, but they are out there. They will find out where the productive people are. They will come.
Try to mobilize them, and you will fail, Nock said. They will not come. They cannot be coerced. But make available an opportunity for them to be productive, and they will come.
Some people worry about the power of conspiracies. But what conspiracy could have organized this?
Yes, there have been fine choirs in totalitarian nations. But the cost to assemble them is high. Few people hear them. Fewer rejoice at what they have done.
You can buy big productions. They are big. They are testimonies to money. They may also be testimonies to power.
This video was done with electrical power, not political power. It was done with digits, but not digits representing money.
Evil cannot make effective use of the Remnant principle. Secrecy does not call forth this sort of large-scale creativity. Evil can tear down. It cannot afford to build up. It wastes too many resources trying to create beauty out of raw materials, especially human beings. It bankrupts itself.
The new era of digits reduces the cost of what F. A. Hayek called the spontaneous order.
The Web is the greatest tool in history of the Remnant. This is altogether appropriate. The Web was the product of human action, not human design.
Freedom is expanding. There is nothing that politicians and bureaucrats can do to reverse this process. If they shut down the Internet, as the state did in Egypt earlier this year, the economy would begin to decline within a month. Mubarak did not last three weeks after he attempted this.
Can you guess what would happen at the next election to a government that attempted to shut down the Internet? Which Congressman would run on this campaign platform? "I shut down the Internet, and I want your vote."
Digits will help free men win this battle. It's time to sing.