A Moral Journey?

Mark Huitson, November 2025

DIGGER often counsels me to avoid political and religious posturing in my entries onto the diary or within the content of articles on our website. In many respects Digger is far wiser—she, the most passionate in our remarkable partnership, knows when to suppress deep-held sentiment for the sake of objective viewpoint.

However, in the approach to Christmas 2025, with many noteworthy family anniversaries passed by without note, and weeks spent apart on parallel disparate paths to the same place, and financial ruin seemingly our only shared reward, considerations by others have surfaced in the realisation we are but a fleeting moment in the Holywood bells’ history. Guides along our journey have suggested that the artefacts in our care, the road to discovery, and the continuation of our trial have profound meaning. That, not only two remarkable artefacts of significant spiritual origin have possibly reawakened for purpose other than the burden they have imposed on two weary travellers, but the journey itself is a story perhaps as remarkable as the antiquities we hold and protect.

Leaving aside holy men, lawyers, and their allegories by the side of the road, Digger and I find our journey has brought us to a very dark place. Frustration, our erstwhile travelling companion has long departed, instead illness, deprivation and disillusion accompany every step we take. We have been forced, through recent life-threatening experiences, to face our own mortality as well as our misfortune of discovering a most incredible historical find, but in realisation it was found, administratively speaking, in the wrong area, at the wrong time for us, within an inexcusable protracted environment of demonstrable incompetence and indifference.

However, in broader consideration, perhaps it came at the right time. In many ways, while recognising the discovery came at the wrong time for Digger and I—two people who love and already had found a simple, but rewarding life, including self-imposed exclusion from the herd mentality of society, we perhaps were the correct finders, even if timing was not in our selfish interest.

Our discovery further broadcasts and illustrates the pernicious ills that have been allowed, without prudent treatment and intervention, to take hold over our society, emphasising its moral delinquency, injustice, and misunderstanding through corrupted learning. The existence of two church bells may appear trite in a world full of bells, but their extraordinary origins speak loudly to popular culture, especially that part that are looking for redemption and truth, in condemnation of the ills of establishment behaviour—to those that are perhaps looking back to another time where holy resolution and moral boundaries were better defined and executed.

Digger and I, did not buy Holywood Church to discover history, but to protect it, while selfishly providing ourselves a home. We did not ask or expect to find blatant error in the historical understanding of our new charge. It was the bells’ age that was questioned, not their origins. To that end we have dedicated five years of life’s journey to correct what was misjudged. It took years of hard and dedicated travel to arrive at an unexpected Knights Templar connection. Treasure hunting was not the reason for the journey, only the finding of truth. Was our original intent and sacrifice important enough to correct a point of view that had little bearing on our existence in 2019, or our modest ambition? It is ultimately a question of moral and instinctive behaviour, our journey inevitable because Digger and I are analysts; trained to synthesise fact to come to inarguable conclusion. It is a quality, unfortunately not universally practiced by historians; academic or amateur.

Such objective study and dissemination of long past history is important because without universal historical understanding, we can only relate to the last two generations of human existence: through their stories, recollections and experiences. Without a universally informed objective understanding of past history, it allows biased commentators to corrupt the past to vilify one group in the eyes of another, to corrupt past events to promote ideology rather than support objective, critical and predictive thought. This is why Digger and I promote historical truth and protect heritage under objective criterion, and why we will not allow intellectual and bureaucratic conceit prevail over our charge.

Despite Digger’s good counsel, I considered my thoughts better recorded than left unsaid. And whereas I do not think my personal views are important to anyone other than myself, I recognise we have uncovered an extraordinary discovery, not through chance, but perhaps through fate, sponsored by merit, ably demonstrated throughout our careers, vocations, and legend. We repeatedly and successfully challenge the failures of the system; offer proof that there is always a better way—win-win.

I cannot ignore the fact we will come to a point along our journey where we will be heard. That people will congregate to hear our testimony. That perhaps we deserve to be listened to. So, best we present and publish it all in preparation, so we do not have to linger on the current road, long after the goal is reached, simply to recount and debrief, but instead allow us to immediately return to the journey we planned in 2019, free of bells, Templar knights and establishment machination.

There cannot be any doubt, regardless of individual political, religious or intellectual position, that society is not in a good place. Division, prejudice, and injustice exist. We see narrow-mindedness, institutional failure and public derision, rather than mutual respect, individuality, constitutional success, and common approval. Diversity and inclusion are not celebrated, they are in fact universally reviled, because opposing philosophical sides have been drawn, rigid discriminatory positions and cherry-picked parameters, with slur, prejudice and intolerance directed against any that choose to challenge and think differently. Bureaucracy seeks compliance and cancellation for those that do not conform—this is not inclusion.

Intellectual authority is universal, yet one group will always seek to impose its intellectual views or perceived superiority on another. This is the way since the beginning of history. In a seesaw of such conflicting dogma, it is hoped time and logic see balance achieved, but it always comes at great cost, even if at times an uneasy temporary accord is achieved. Mutual respect and charitable behaviour is an anathema to human nature.  This is why we need a moral code—a spiritual guide. My choice of moral code is Christianity, in primitive form, but I respect all those others who choose differently, so long as it is by free-will, in mutual respect of other faith and belief, within a win-win society.

Humankind will always rebel against the imposition of conformity of thought, because such abhorrent control over free thought is no different to our innate survivalist nature, combating a zombie plague intent on eating itself alive.  Extreme, oppressive and discriminatory political, bureaucratic, academic and religious ideology, even in diluted forms, in my personal view is such a plague. It is an evil intent on destroying our heritage, free-thought, and discrete culture—replacing truth with fiction to elevate the few at the cost of the many. Digger and I refuse to cast honour, charity, integrity and cultural preservation aside to appease a bloated, unrestrained, bureaucratic and malignant establishment—shielding deficiencies with demonstrable falsity.

My political position? I am a Libertarian by nature, seeking a free market and the reduction of bureaucracy and needless governance. I respect those that disagree with my stance. I adhere to common law and the people’s consensus without vociferous protest. Do not however, expect me to abandon confidence in my own intellect, and the very real outcomes of value I have provided for the most that justify my personal philosophy. Do not expect me to willingly acquiesce to someone else’s thought—particularly when that thought does not bring benefit to the most. I will tolerate and support the people’s choice for direction but challenge it nonetheless if it directly corrupts the well-being, moral mission and verity of that contained in my charge.

Without restraint, sections of our establishment; institutional religion, academia, international and local governance bodies, once respected, are now inflicted with corruption, bias and manipulation by the few and their ideologies in counter-interest to the many. Our journey is just one of many graphic illustrations of a failed establishment, and condemnation of institutions that persist in failure, supported and protected by those invested in their own self-interest.

And for all we condemn public governance, we have empathy with bureaucracy because we are or have been a part of it. In employ, we only ever sought benefit to our employer’s published mission and intent. We have been unwavering to that end. We have delivered value where it was lacking, and benefit to the public where there was little. We are, in terms of public servants a rarity in the establishment, the antithesis of the typical bureaucrat’s self-serving spirit.

Thankfully, there are still heroes invested in noble mission and self-sacrifice. Compassion, integrity, empathy and chivalry are their nature. Rebellion is a necessary part of their human existence. It may not be commendable to those it threatens, but necessary when one side refuses to acknowledge the merit in another and fails to offer any cogent or logical argument to defend its own behaviour. Our journey has turned Digger and I into reluctant heroes. We challenge anyone to demonstrate that our actions, to have history recognised, is not based on comprehension, merit, prudence and truth, or that our journey is undeniably in the public interest, more than our own, despite the reward it will bring us further down the road.