Godspeed to Scott Adams - A Great Loss and He Will Be Missed.
"One of the strongest characteristics of a genius is the power of lighting its own fire." - John Foster
I began writing this post well before the death of Scott Adams. Having been an up close and personal witness to the ravages of cancer, Adams’ trajectory for the past year seemed certain. Unlike Charlie Kirk, Adams was someone to whom I’d been paying attention for quite some time. I’ve read all his books and more recently was a frequent attendee of his daily Coffee with Scott Adams streams. And of course, his Dilbert character spoke for every competent corporate employee over the past 37 years. It’s’ clear to me he was dedicated to Isaiah’s Job.
The reasons why Adams resonated with me had everything to do with the fact I had more in common with Adams - closer in age, good at a lot of things but only a master at a few, contempt for leaf blowers, and we each found a way to our respective successes by hard work and taking advantage of lucky breaks when they came our way. With this much under our belts, it was easy to recognize the magnitude of Adams’ undaunted perseverance when faced with adversity - most recently the attacks he weathered from the woke borg and a terminal cancer diagnosis.
There are many reasons why I read and listened to Adams. His honest and pragmatic approach to life. His generosity with his time. His unrelenting curiosity for understanding the world from many different perspective. And the fact he personified many of my ideas around political atheism.
We are fortunate in that he has left a wealth of wisdom to inform and guide us. Above all, he has left us a legacy of humor and shown us a way to laugh at ourselves.
Readers of The Remnant’s Way are aware that one of the inspirations behind why I write here is Albert Nock’s 1936 essay, “Isaiah’s Job.” The title refers to the task God assigned to the prophet Isaiah.
In the year of Uzziah’s death, the Lord commissioned the prophet to go out and warn the people of the wrath to come. “Tell them what a worthless lot they are.” He said, “Tell them what is wrong, and why and what is going to happen unless they have a change of heart and straighten up. Don’t mince matters. Make it clear that they are positively down to their last chance. Give it to them good and strong and keep on giving it to them. I suppose perhaps I ought to tell you,” He added, “that it won’t do any good. The official class and their intelligentsia will turn up their noses at you and the masses will not even listen. They will all keep on in their own ways until they carry everything down to destruction, and you will probably be lucky if you get out with your life.”
Certainly a brutally honest job offer. But God doesn’t have to finesse His sales pitches. I suspect the “wrath to come” envisioned by Kirk was, in part, a world that would follow successful efforts to control speech and suppress reasoned dialog and debate. History holds many examples where the end game of incremental censorship is the suffering and death of hundreds of millions of human beings. But what’s a mortal to do when being voluntold to do the Lord’s bidding? Well...
Isaiah had been very willing to take on the job — in fact, he had asked for it — but the prospect put a new face on the situation. It raised the obvious question: Why, if all that were so — if the enterprise were to be a failure from the start — was there any sense in starting it? “Ah,” the Lord said, “you do not get the point. There is a Remnant there that you know nothing about. They are obscure, unorganized, inarticulate, each one rubbing along as best he can. They need to be encouraged and braced up because when everything has gone completely to the dogs, they are the ones who will come back and build up a new society; and meanwhile, your preaching will reassure them and keep them hanging on. Your job is to take care of the Remnant, so be off now and set about it.”
The “Remnant” is a reference to the words of Socrates as relayed by Plato in Book VI of “The Republic.”
I’m a staunch political atheist and I’m not one for the canonization of martyrs of any sort. I’m not likely to make an exception for Adams.
To my point: It isn’t that Scott Adams is THE Isaiah of our time. It’s that he was AN Isaiah of our time. His work reached and resonated with people around the globe. There are other’s who are working in the vein of Nock’s Isaiah and it often isn’t obvious who they are until something happens outside their ability to influence brings them to light and amplifies their message. Too often, it’s their death that reveals their work. For Adams, his influence has been readily apparent for years.
“Godspeed to Scott Adams -A Great Loss and He Will Be Missed.” last updated on 2026.01.13.
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