A Better Society

This week I completely read through The Freedom Philosophy, and to my surprise, it ended with a well known essay called ‘I, Pencil’. Don’t get me wrong, I like that some work that was familiar to me was included. For my assignment, I will address the chapter before it, titled ‘Isaiah’s job’. My assignment is: “Can the Remnant in one historical era become the majority later?

Let’s define what the Remnant is first. An example would be the one given in the chapter. Isaiah was a prophet, so he was the one who would speak out loud the message told to him by God. Most of them ignored this, and/or became upset with him. But, the few who listened and agreed with what he relayed, they were called, in the essay, the Remnants. In other cases further mentioned, sometimes the Remnant was alone, being but one man in a crowd of many. That on man would live to rebuild society anew, when all things had fallen apart.

So, to answer the question, can the remnant be the majority, rather than one in a million? Well, that depends. Sure, the Remnant would at that point be the heart of that society that he helped create, but that doesn’t mean that all people that are part of the society will be Remnants, so to speak. Let’s say that society took a different turn and whatever beliefs that they had were changed. In that case, then they would no longer see things the way the first Remnant did. Over time it could, in theory, begin to grow and eventually change that society from mostly Remnant, to fairly Remnant, and it has happened. In that case, the whole process would start over, and the few who remained Remnants would build society anew again.

Now it doesn’t have to be this way. If the other were to occur, where the society were firmly built upon the Remnants’ ways, then I suppose the few who saw things differently wouldn’t be as influential. A different possibility is that over time, the Remnants would grow into the majority. If the Remnant were influential enough, over the course of months, years, even decades if needed, enough new followers could be recruited to the point where they were the vast majority.

So, in conclusion, my answer is that yes, it is possible, but it won’t always be the case. Take Christianity for example. It takes some time, but it continues to grow. And just like what was written in the Old Testament and the 13th chapter in Freedom Philosophy, the Remnant could be the one to bring about a better society.