If I had to think of one phrase that sums up the promise for the underground, it is this: they haven’t taken our thoughts away … yet.  We can commit any crime that we want in our heads and no one yet has the authority to punish us for the sins between our ears.  Neurologically speaking and psychological speaking, there may be no avoiding the crimes we commit each night in our heads.  The psychopath is wired to be aggressive.  Some are wired with unmentionable sexual preferences.  Others feel so hopeless in their interpersonal relationships that they dream of murder as a way out.  The list goes on and on.  Instead of throwing us into the gutter for our deviancy, should not others respect the fact that we realize that certain actions are off-limits?

Restraint is not good enough for the masses and powers that be.  The secret desire of any in-group is to convert or eradicate the out-group in full.  Psychologists bemoan the fact that the psychopath is left with her thoughts even if she shows no deed.  Being clean is never good enough when everyone wants full sobriety (sobriety is the complete removal of those forces that influence an addiction).  We chemically castrate (or worse) the sexually violent in the name of rehabilitation.  The truth is, those with the power want to punish or eliminate thought crimes.  Maybe one day they’ll succeed.

However, for now we are safe.  We are able to live out the darkness in our minds that we cannot with our hands.  They haven’t taken our thoughts away … yet.  I preach restraint even though I know that no one will ever celebrate the effort involved.  We should be celebrating those individuals that have sinned before in deed by now only sin in their minds.  It won’t happen with the masses and the powers that be, but the promise of sentience and the underground is that we can remain with thought.

I should note that none of this applies to the in-group.  They are off-limits from their own frenzy.  As long as you have the privilege, you can commit any thought crime that you’d like.  This may not be fair, but it is reality.  One person’s thought crime is another’s “progressive” message of hope.  It is all dictated by whether you are aligned with those with the power.  A call for genocide by the powerful is almost always lapped up by the masses and is anathema to the proposed dead.

We can refuse and resist.  We can live out our desires in our minds at any time that we would like.  Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but keep for your self the most precious commodity of the human existence: your thoughts.  This is the gospel of the underground.