For many of us, the past 18 months have been among the hardest of our lives. The isolation, the shunning, and the sense of betrayal as our loved ones lose themselves to this mass hysteria and as our right to think and speak freely is smothered by righteous busybodies. There is a grey filthy fog that has descended over everything.
But the human spirit does not tolerate being chained for long – it will always find new ways to carve out pockets of freedom. Sadness must give way to smiles. Isolation must give way to new beginnings. Silence must give way to the chatter of fresh voices and to the uncensored laughter that renews the soul.
So, it’s time to revive the speakeasy, updated for the digital age.
In the 1920s, speakeasies reached their heyday as a way of pushing back against Prohibition-era busybodies intent on controlling individual choices. Alcohol was the forbidden fruit. And speakeasies became a kind of social laboratory, planting seeds for a new cultural era that has, for the better part of a century, revolved around enjoying that forbidden fruit.
Today it is free speech that has become the forbidden fruit. Today it is free speech that needs to be put in a cultural laboratory to give it fresh wings for a new century of free-wheeling thought. Today we each need to find that private hole-in-the-wall where we can wrestle with half-formed ideas, where judgement is suspended, where we can think the unthinkable, where debate is conducted with honor between friends, and where friendly faces light up when they see you enter the room.
We cannot undo the past. But we can find ways to create light and color and sunshine in our lives to drive back this grey filthy fog by strengthening connections to the few who have stood by us and by taking the risk of reaching out to strangers who, like all of us, have been left standing so very alone.
Every darkness is followed by a fresh dawn. It starts with the smallest of flames. A skype account, an internet connection, and the willingness to invite a stranger to come in from the darkness. A whisper repeated a million times can shake the Earth to its core.
Speak easy! Unburden your soul!
Today Nick Hudson (https://www.pandata.org/), Kate Wand (https://very-opinionated.com/), and Julius Ruechel (www.julius.ruechel.com) are opening a window into our speakeasy in the hope that you will hang with us for a short while and enrich our conversations with your thoughts and comments.
Welcome to our first episode of Speakeasy: The Inmates Are Running the Asylum, a conversation about whether there is a man behind the curtain pulling the levers that have tipped our world into madness.
The video will also be cross-posted to both Kate's YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR9kGfLP_dGp0KCDTNiUjow) and on Julius' YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC98CS1lXw-DSwFHtsaXZL_w)
And make sure you also head over to see more of Nick's work on the Pandata YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDdN8LSNc3onvOyCd_UR5wg
