End Power

The need for power is at the source of all fight and also the source of all triumph. And what is egalitarianism but the balance of power? The powerless feel powerless and grasp whatever nuggets they can claim. They create countercultures to assimilate control in order meet the powerful with an equal gaze. The powerful defend their holdings in every way they can. They use force, sophistry, religion, politics, and all the icy facets of their frozen convention. For who is so noble as to relinquish power? It is the simplest desire of the human condition.

Power meanders in the caverns of human interaction, unseen and unacknowledged but always intrinsically felt. Power manifests itself in every conceivable relation. Everything from romance to fashion to economics is soiled by it. The soil is particularly filthy because it weds itself to the soul. And everyone knows or should know that the soul cannot be cleansed.

Power finds its way even in the pursuit of knowledge. Surely it is always the ignorant who are the most powerless, the most easily swayed by the powerful elite. And the truly educated are either a danger to the status quo or are instrumental in maintaining it, no matter what the cost. It is this latter group that is bought by the current state of affairs.

Power finds its way into love. It is the same, tiring game that even the animals play in order to gain dominance.

It's always about dominance. Emotional dominance. Intellectual dominance. Economic dominance. Political dominance. Technological dominance. It is the whisper of a savage world and its sound drives one mad. Dominance and dominance and dominance....

Now the great question nags, horrifies, keeps listeners awake at nights. "What is to be done?" And the irrevocable voice plays over and over in the brain a dismal and unsatisfactory answer: "NOTHING."