The resounding silence that followed my contestation for leadership of
Serenwilde -- not just lack of support, but complete lack of
conversation -- nearly had me convinced to just pack up shop and head
off into aetherspace, find some quiet place to get away from politics.

Then after talking to a few people in private, it suddenly dawned on me
where the thundering silence had come from and why no one seemed to care
one iota about our conduct as a commune.

When people disagree with our government, leave is exactly what they do.
If they feel passionate enough about an issue to demand change, they
choose to leave the forest and seek hope elsewhere, rather than stand
and fight. They assume they're going to get expelled from the forest
anyway if they dare to raise their voice in dissent, and they choose to
simply save themselves the grief.

So, I'm not going. Neither am I going to hold my peace any longer. The
Serenwilde has lived in blind obedience for too long, and it has led to
the ruin of the very things that brought me here: freedom of thought,
freedom from obsessive hatred, freedom to live by the dictates of
conscience instead of slave to an unreasoning crusade like some city
dweller.

Now it's the city dwellers who see us as the unreasoning crusaders,
hungry for power at any cost, and that didn't come out of nowhere.

So, I say, "Enough". And I'm going to keep right on saying it until this
commune becomes once more about people and forest instead of empire and
obedience, or I'm expelled from the forest for daring to.

Penned by my hand on the 11th of Dvarsh, in the year 152 CE.