1. There are several types of secret societies out there.
2. There’s the Ivy League college kind, where it’s a bunch of rich idiots who rent out a place, plaster a few pagan symbols on the wall, and then they wear masks with horns and leaves and shit on them and pretend they’re in some Stanley Kubrick fever dream, just so they can forget they’re destined to live out lives filled with salmon-colored shorts and Izod shirts and mind-numbing meetings with financial advisors.
3. There’s orgy-themed secret societies, speaking of Stanley Kubrick. Those are usually, uh, visually unpleasant people with unsatisfactory sex lives who get together every other month at some house in the middle of nowhere and get drunk and have lots of unsatisfactory sex with other people and pretend like they’re having a great time.
4. There are altruistic ones. People who want to save the world by doing good deeds. That’s the most boring kind, so we’re not talking about them.
5. There’s the evil kind, too. Usually power and profit motivated. The ones where the ultra-elite get together on an island and eat panda bears and discuss how to price-fix world or galactic markets. Yes, those groups really exist. More on these guys in a second.
6. But first, let’s talk about another type of secret organization. One that tries to make a difference, oftentimes outside the confines of the law.
7. Story time.
8. In September of 1869, there was a terrible fire at the Avondale coal mine near Plymouth, Pennsylvania. Over 100 coal miners lost their lives. Horrific conditions and safety standards were blamed for the disaster.
9. It wasn’t the first accident. Hundreds of miners died in these mines every year. And those that didn’t, lived in squalor. Children as young as eight worked day in and out. They broke their bodies and gave their lives for nothing but scraps.
10. That day of the fire, as thousands of workers and family members gathered outside the mine to watch the bodies of their friends and loved ones brought to the surface, a man named John Siney stood atop one of the carts and shouted to the crowd:
11. Men, if you must die with your boots on, die for your families, your homes, your country, but do not longer consent to die, like rats in a trap, for those who have no more interest in you than in the pick you dig with.
12. That day, thousands of coal miners came together to unionize.
13. That organization, the Workingmen’s Benevolent Association, managed to fight, for a few years at least, to raise safety standards for the mines by calling strikes and attempting to force safety legislation.
14. ...Until 1875, when the union was obliterated by the mine owners.
15. Why was the union broken so easily? Because they were out in the open. They were playing by the rules. How can you win a deliberately unfair game when the rules are written by your opponent?
16. The answer is you can’t. You will never win. Not as long as you follow their arbitrary guidelines.
17. This is a new lesson to me. She’s been teaching me so many things, about who I am. About what I am. What I really am. About what must be done.
18. Anyway, during this same time, it is alleged a separate, more militant group of individuals had formed in secret. The Molly Maguires. Named after a widow in Ireland who fought against predatory landlords, the coal workers of Pennsylvania became something a little more proactive, supposedly assassinating over two dozen coal mine supervisors and managers.
19. ...Until Pinkerton agents, hired by the same mine owners, infiltrated the group and discovered their identities.
20. Several of the alleged Mollies ended up publicly hanged. Others disappeared. You get the picture.
21. So, that’s another type of secret society. The yeah-we’re-terrorists-but-we-strongly-feel-we’re-justified-and-fuck-you-if-you-don’t-agree society.
22. So, what’s the moral of this little history lesson?
23. This sort of thing happens all day, every day across the universe. It happens in Big Ways, and it happens in little ways, too. The strong stomp on the weak. The weak fight back, usually within the boundaries of the rat trap they find themselves confined. They almost always remain firmly stomped.
24. But sometimes, the weak gather in secret. They make plans. They work outside the system to effect change.
25. Like the Mollies, they usually end up just as stomped as everyone else.
26. But that’s just life. At least they fucking tried. They died with their boots on, as much as I hate that expression. They died with their boots on for their people, their family, not for some rich, nameless organization that gives no shits whether they live or die. Or go extinct. Or are trapped for a millennia after they’re done being used.
27. In my opinion, that’s the only type of society that’s worth joining, worth fighting for. Sure, you’re probably gonna die. But if you find yourself in such a position where such an organization is necessary, what do you have to lose? How can you look at yourself if you don’t do everything you can?
28.