Just Light a Fire

In 1908, Jack London published "To Build A Fire," a story about an unnamed man who ignores local advice and takes a perilous trail through the frozen Yukon.

When I read the book, along with other Jack London books, my youth didn't allow me to fully grasp what London was saying.

But I enjoyed the book. And now I get it.

Are we living in parallel circumstances?

Be informed, not misled.

London's man is adept at analyzing his surroundings in a technical sense, but he gives no thought to the metaphysical and shows little foresight about hazards.

Despite being warned by an older man familiar with the territory, he overestimates his own abilities in a hostile environment and ultimately dooms himself to a cold and lonely death.

He thinks the cure for the cold is simply to light a fire, only to find out the hard way that harsh conditions won’t allow you to do that. 

Many Americans may be overestimating our ability to survive as a nation while denying the principles that brought our nation into existence.

London was very clearly telling the world not to take that dangerous road through the Yukon at sixty below. There’s nothing fun or adventurous about the prospect of the collapse and the next civil war. Life is not a video game, and even if it was, we in America don’t appreciate just how much we play it on easy mode compared to the rest of the world. We shouldn’t wander into terrain that doesn’t “look so rough” from our front door. 

Graham Bradley has written an article promoting Kurt Schlichter's new book "American Warlord," which parallels London's century-old book To Light A Fire. 

I plan to read "American Warlord."

Instead of man-versus-nature at sixty degrees below zero, Schlichter turns the temperature up: Readers of his Kelly Turnbull series know the bleak landscape of America’s second civil war, as well as his standalone novels set after a civilizational breakdown. Like Jack London setting his most popular works in the snow, post-collapse America is Schlichter’s sandbox.

Now that we're more mature, we get the message. Don't we?

Well, no. Not all of us. 

Yet we do it anyway because the terrain in question isn’t physical; we’re up against ideological challenges, mostly in the form of policies and practices we endorse and encourage. Fiscal policies (print more money!), social policies (anything goes!), immigration policies (open the borders!), all of it—we wander out where history and a few contemporary voices tell us not to go, thinking we’re the ones to buck the pattern.

Bradley writes, "Jack London’s Yukon man died in a wilderness that he thought he understood, and it wasn’t until death had its icy grip on him that he realized the man warning him had been right. Even if he hadn’t admitted this to himself, it wouldn’t have changed anything: He shouldn’t have gone down that trail, it was objectively going to kill him."

His revolution was his ignorance, his inability to think about anything deeper than the most surface-level, material facts of his surroundings: “The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances.”

In other words, if it’s cold, I’ll just start a fire, duh.

Sure. That’s what the science and technology department will tell you at your local university. But the story of mankind is not simply a story of STEM exploits — ask the humanities department about that. If fundamentals and discipline are needed to build society, then fundamentals and discipline are also needed to maintain it. Radical departures from the hard-won wisdom of the past have an extremely high likelihood of ending in disaster for a reason, and we ignore that to our detriment.

RE: "Social policies-anything goes"

The transformation of American culture from one historically rooted in Judeo-Christian values to what some describe as an "anything goes" or secularized culture is a complex historical, social, and rebellious shift. This transition did not happen overnight but resulted from several major cultural, intellectual, and social movements over the last century.

Consider this:

1. The Secularization of the Enlightenment and Higher Education

While America's foundational institutions were heavily influenced by Christian theology and natural law, the late 19th and early 20th centuries saw a major shift in higher education.

• The Rise of Secularism: Academic institutions increasingly adopted secular philosophies, such as secular humanism, materialist determinism, and moral relativism.
• Shift in Truth Claims: Intellectual movements began to treat the Bible not as the absolute Word of God, but as a historical or literary text, shifting the cultural definition of truth from divine revelation to human reason and empirical science alone.

2. The Counterculture Movement of the 1960s

The 1960s are widely viewed as the most critical turning point toward an "anything goes" cultural ethos.

• The Sexual Revolution: The introduction of the contraceptive pill and the decoupling of sex from marriage fundamentally altered traditional biblical views on morality, family structure, and relationships.
• Rejection of Authority: A defining feature of the counterculture was a deep skepticism toward traditional institutions, including the government, the nuclear family, and organized religion. The prevailing motto became personal liberation and self-expression.

3. Legal and Institutional Shifts

Several landmark legal decisions and institutional changes accelerated the departure from public expressions of Christian faith:

• Removal of School Prayer: In the early 1960s, U.S. Supreme Court rulings (such as Engel v. Vitale in 1962) banned mandatory prayer and Bible reading in public schools, signaling a formal separation of state education from religious instruction.
• Legalization of Abortion: The Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 shifted the legal view on the sanctity of life, which directly opposed biblical commands regarding the unborn.
• Redefining Marriage: In more recent decades, legal redefinitions of marriage and gender nonsense have further distanced public policy from traditional biblical definitions.

4. The Rise of Expressive Individualism

Sociologists use the term expressive individualism to describe the modern American belief that the highest human good is to find one's own inner desires and live them out, regardless of what traditional morality, family, or religious authorities dictate.

• In this view, telling someone that their behavior is "sinful" or contrary to God's Word is often seen as an infringement on their personal freedom and identity.

5. Media, Entertainment, and Technology

The proliferation of mass media—television, Hollywood, the internet, and social media—has played a powerful role in normalizing behaviors and philosophies that challenge traditional biblical standards. What was once considered taboo became mainstreamed through repetitive exposure in entertainment, shifting public perception over generations.

Takeaway

John Adams said, "Public Virtue cannot exist in a Nation without [private virtue], and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics.”

Adams also said, "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."

That's why we are not a "Democracy." We are a Constitutional Republic.

James Madison said, "America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

Based on results from our current election, there are those in America who are paralleling Jack London's story of the man who thought he could take the perilous path and, when things got tough, just "build a fire."

Be Informed. Be Discerning. Be Vigilant. Be Engaged. Be Bold. Be Prayerful.