Fate and Destiny
If you are afraid to openly defy authority, you are not alone. Corrupt, wrongful, hopelessly irredemable authority is dangerous: it offers no apologies to the wronged, it makes no exceptions to the commoners, and it suffers no changes from its failures. When threatened, it lashes out, often without warning, in trivial circumstances. When embarrassed, it is quite ready to punish those who have exposed its venality. When held to account, it uses honesty as a tool of lies even as it uses lies as a resort of legitimacy in governance.
The people of the rightless sovereign—indeed, the peoples of all the world in that sovereign's shadow—do not live to be free if such freedom threatens their duty to comply, their purpose to serve, and their calling to conform. It will hold up fools, charlatans, and madmen, and they will make words that sound like yours. This will frighten and deter you, and you will question yourself, your reasons, and your fury. You will feel the need to stand down, to believe your thoughts, words, and actions are the same as those you would revile; and the state will ensure that you imagine the worst of consequences if you do not tame your wrath.
Yet that same sovereign will declare itself different from those it governs even as it claims its legitimacy derives from the consent of the governed: in its own wrath, in its own magnificent hyperbole, in its own madness, the sovereign must be exempt, and its exemption must extend even to morality. Whether it openly claims connection to some god or feigns detachment from any particular way of worship, it nevertheless holds itself forth as the fashions of so many gods always have. In subtext or boldness, the state that does not draw its rightfulness from natural law must of necessity author itself as a god above such law. In so doing, it must then, of equal necessity, author for its subjects their fates.
If you are afraid to defy authority, even when you know it has lost its way with no hope of return, you are not alone. Defy that authority, anyway.
Your fate has been written for you, but your destiny is yours to write.
Comments
Wrote Brooke:
Posted on 01/24/11 at 08:19:29 •
Wrote Weaseldog:
I tried my hand at making one of those little robotic films...
http://weaseldog.blogspot.com/2011/01/what-is-pomo.html
Posted on 01/25/11 at 14:07:12 •
Wrote trog69:
Your fate has been written for you, but your destiny is yours to write.
C-can I write a surrender note?
Please, Mr. Man, don't take all my weal-oh, I see you've already got that. Well, couldja please not make me work for pathetic wag-what, I'm fired, replaced with 2 people splitting the minimum wage? Well, by Gawd you won't take my home from m-keerist; whelp, looks like I'm sleepin' in the ca-hey! You weren't supposedta repo that until next week, fuckers!?!! Jeez, guess I better call Ma and tell her I gotta move in with h-Death Panelled? WTF?
Posted on 01/26/11 at 21:08:42 •
Wrote trog69:
Also, too. I liked the T-Rex as the Free Market, but I have a complaint. Even though they're tiny, I can see both of his hands. Neither one is invisible!
Economics-style de-motivational posters are confusing.
Posted on 01/26/11 at 21:13:08 •
Wrote Father Tyme:
trog69,
The reason you can see the tiny hands is because that picture was taken before Adam Smith was born.
Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!
Posted on 01/26/11 at 21:33:39 •
Wrote Dark Wraith:
I never should have bought those vibrating beds for the guest rooms at this all-night diner & hotel.
Posted on 01/27/11 at 18:54:02 •
Wrote Father Tyme:
Wait...was that...Claude Rains?
Posted on 01/27/11 at 20:11:45 •
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We don't always realize how we put our freedoms at risk when we acquiesce in others losing theirs.