Renegades Epic takes a rocket launcher to collective guilt
Collective guilt plagues Western society, and it shouldn’t. My shared universe, the Renegades Epic, throws a giant middle finger to those who practice it.
I’ve often said my books are for you if you don’t like sanitized, safe fiction that embraces reader sensitivity. So, if you’re that kind of reader who won’t open a book unless it’s “safe-space approved,” click the ‘X’ in the top-right corner of this page because what you’re about to read will hurt your feelings.
In short, the Epic spits on collective guilt. You see it in Spirit and Fire, where Mali LaSalle’s paying a price for a crime her ancestors committed. The crime in question? They were part of a group that invaded Tamuria and marginalized its native population.
Fast-forward a few hundred years, and a woman named Morgana invaded Tamuria and, in turn, marginalized the descendants of those people. She rendered them Untouchables and damned them to a life of pain and struggle.
Nothing changed in Elementals of Nordica
The Elementals of Nordica series takes place 600 years after Spirit and Fire, and things have gotten worse. In Book I, Wind Wielder, society sees elementals as dangerous people who historically oppressed non-elementals.
While that oppression existed, there are two caveats: Those individual elementals living in the present day did nothing to non-elementals. As for those who harmed them? Often, those working for a strong, powerful government deserved the blame. A small group of elementals, in other words.
So, while it’s true elementals marginalized non-elemental counterparts, the real ‘bad guy,’ the State, was the culprit. But the State passed blame to average, everyday elementals, and wrote oppressive laws against them. Yet ironically, a small, elite group of elementals still rule the world in Elementals of Nordica.
Much like how the State still rules the masses in our world. Even if that same State and its surrounding institutions are ultimately responsible for said marginalizing to begin with. They just blame the majority race for the crime.
Collective guilt is plaguing Western society
Modern institutions turned guilt into a weapon. They’ve convinced entire populations, especially those of European Christian descent, that they carry a moral debt for crimes they never committed. That debt has no end and no payment plan. It’s designed that way.
The trick is simple: Take empathy, twist it into obligation, and repeat it until people submit. Schools, media, and HR departments all play their part. They tell you to “acknowledge your privilege,” “check your bias,” and “do the work.” But the work never ends. It’s a treadmill built to keep you tired, compliant, and apologetic for existing.
The Antidote: Moral individualism
The cure for this collective guilt is radical individualism. You are responsible for what you do, not for what someone with your skin color did centuries ago. You don’t inherit moral debt, nor do you owe strangers atonement for history.
A free society judges the individual, not the group. That’s what made Western civilization revolutionary in the first place. It broke from tribal punishment and bloodline blame. Yet the same collectivist mindset that once divided people by class or creed now disguises itself as virtue. It’s the same poison in new packaging.
Want to see characters like Mali LaSalle in Spirit and Fire and Sion Zona in Wind Wielder take on the State that wants to guilt trip them into thinking they must atone for their ancestors’ crimes? I’ll tell you this much: They’re not taking any sh*t from an institution that survives through coercion. Nope, they ain’t buying it.
Check out their stories at The Rebel Lore Vault.
