Activism, in its most earnest and self-congratulatory form, often resembles a group of people loudly shouting at a parade they believe they’ve organized, while the parade marches on oblivious to their presence. They don’t realize that the band was already playing, the confetti was already falling, and the crowd was already cheering long before they picked up their signs. Take, for instance, the secularization of society—a grand process set into motion by the grinding gears of time, by the natural erosion of old certainties in the face of new doubts. But our plucky activists, armed with righteous indignation and a few catchy slogans, took to the streets as if they were the architects of this grand transformation.

They weren’t leading a charge; they were merely racing to the front of a movement that had already lapped them several times, hoping to be seen as the heroes of a battle that had been won before they even showed up. It’s like standing over the corpse of a once-great beast, delivering a rousing speech about the triumph of slaying it, all the while ignoring the fact that the poor creature had already died of natural causes. This, of course, is the essence of activism: the noble art of taking credit for inevitabilities and then basking in the self-satisfaction of a victory that was never really theirs.

So there they were, these champions of the obvious, these valiant defenders of the done deal. Like frantic squirrels hoarding acorns in a barren oak, they clung to the fading husk of a world order that had already sprouted new and altogether godless trees. They were, in essence, a horde of religious relic hunters, digging furiously for dinosaur bones in a bustling metropolis. The age of faith was a fossil, and they were the museum curators of a bygone era, desperately trying to stuff it into a display case. It was a noble pursuit, I suppose, if a tad delusional. After all, what’s more heroic than tilting at windmills that ceased to exist centuries ago?

They were a peculiar breed, these activists, convinced they were midwives to a new age. But the baby had already been born, slipped out unnoticed while they were still fussing over the amniotic sac. The world was already a secular place, a godless, grinning expanse, and they were merely dancing on the grave of the old gods, their frantic jig a desperate attempt to stay relevant. It was like trying to stop a runaway freight train by throwing pebbles at it. A futile, comical spectacle, really.