The Unquietmind is the sudden rancorous bile that pools in the back of the throat of a just and humane person when s/he sees inequity, incompetence or repression. The Unquietmind is the shriek of joy when a politician’s absurd statements are finally proven to be prevarications.

The Unquietmind was the reason a lone man halted (however temporarily) a column of tanks in Tiananmen square in Beijing, by the power of his will. He was probably among the thousand that Amnesty International estimated were killed between that day, June 4th and the 5th in 1989. Knowing what frail creatures humans are beneath our greatness, it is likely that an hour later -- if he wasn't killed immediately -- the man considered what he had done and crapped himself, shaking in fear. Nevertheless, when the opportunity was there, that man did what he could. In the face of pure mortal terror, he behaved in accordance with what he believed.

The Unquietmind is at the core of every peace-loving man or woman -- turned freedom fighter -- that ever pitted Molotov cocktails or rocks against the rifles of government troops. The Unquietmind can cause a meek bystander to abruptly take up a sign and march in protest, or approach strangers with a petition, because he or she has become aware that something incredibly important is at stake.

Of course, the issues at hand aren’t always life and death or (more importantly) freedom versus slavery. The Unquietmind can be stirred to action by any of a multitude of everyday evils that cross our paths: willing ignorance, lethargy, victimization of the innocent, abuse of power.

A carefully tuned Unquietmind can lead to raucous laughter in the face of the teacher or preacher or congressman who is articulating preposterousness in a public forum. It can sharpen the stick of sarcasm poked in the eye of a supervisor or bureaucrat or cop who is engaged in ludicrousness above and beyond. An Unquietmind can be merely mischievous, when a single clever, well-timed act will do the job.

In the remote past, the world was moved along by a few women and men that were strong, wise, frugal and inspired -- all elements of an Unquietmind. They built civilizations by galvanizing the teeming hordes to choose freedom over slavery and science over ignorance and assumption. They taught the value of investing in self-interest over the willingness to be a sacrifice to whatever priest or god came along demanding blood -- since they knew to look farther ahead than the next meal.

These are the days of the common man, of democracies made up of the collective uninformed voting for the undeniably unqualified, of the unsophisticated led by the spin doctors to vote for themselves bread and circuses and leave the consequential matters to the "experts". People are being trained to believe anything except what their own senses (and sensibilities) tell them. Most of humankind are mental slaves, and won’t be inspired to care.

There will always be a few of us who are not slaves -- who will insist on doing our own thinking and making our own decisions -- who have the Unquietmind. We will not be dragged so willingly into the darkness.