The Libertine Gospel by Ronald MacLennan

There is nothing noble in a tamed man.

I have stared into the mirror of society and seen not faces, but masks—smooth, hollow, interchangeable. I have watched as individuals, once shimmering with peculiar radiance, surrender their edges for the approval of the mob. They speak not their own truths but repeat those which will not cost them anything. They suppress hunger in favor of harmony, passion in favor of politeness, and then, confused by their own anemia, blame the world for being dull.

I do not want harmony. I want the discordant cry of the individual unchained. I want the feral howl of a man who has remembered that he is not furniture in a drawing room, but a creature of muscle, blood, mind, and desire. I want to see the beast that crouches beneath the velvet etiquette of civilization—and I want to see it rise.

We are told from birth that to be wild is to be wrong. That to hunger is to be guilty. That to be unapologetically oneself is to be selfish, narcissistic, dangerous. The words change depending on the century—“sinner,” “degenerate,” “non-conformist,” “dissident”—but the message is the same: Obey or be devoured.

But what they never admit is this: the self, fully realized, is not a danger to the world—the self is a danger to the system.

To claim one's individuality, one's hungers, one's peculiarities, is to expose the great lie upon which all order rests—that we must all be the same. The same manners. The same smiles. The same ambitions. The same fears. But sameness is not peace. It is rot. It is a slow, odorless death masquerading as safety.

And I would rather be torn apart by my own longings than be embalmed by conformity.

The beast within me—oh yes, it is there—it does not gnash its teeth for blood but for authenticity. It does not crave destruction but expression. I want not to murder but to awaken. To scream when silence is demanded. To f**k when shame is whispered. To cry in front of men who were taught to bite their tongues until they bled. To speak when it is forbidden. To desire what has been demonized. To be, fully and completely, myself—unrepentant, raw, seething with contradictions and shining truths.

And should the herd recoil at my scent—then let them stampede away from me.

The individual, dear reader, is not some quaint soul meant to be slotted into a spreadsheet or seated politely at a wedding table. No. The individual is a living cathedral of flesh and thought and fire. A unique chaos. A singular cosmos. We are not meant to be polished stones smoothed by the hands of teachers, bosses, priests, and politicians. We are meant to be jagged, cut from the bedrock of existence, difficult to hold, impossible to place, but undeniably real.

And so I say this to every youth who feels the tremor in their bones when asked to smile for the family portrait: you are not broken—you are still alive.

To every woman who hungers for something more than marriage and manners: you are not a scandal—you are sacred.

To every man who weeps and loves and rebels and dances: you are not weak—you are not theirs.

And to those who do not fit in—who never did, never could, and never will: you are free. And you are enough.

There is a beast inside me. It licks its wounds in the dark corners of my mind. It waits, not to maul, but to sing—to sing the song of the Self that no one else can compose. And when I unleash it, I do not apologize.

I open my arms.

And I run with it, naked and wild, into the forest of what I was always meant to be.

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