ΕΟ ΧΟΑΙ!
"Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared."
Niccolo Machiavelli
We free ourselves from the shackles of futility, only to fall into the treacherous laps of hope. We tear our souls apart and shiver at the thought of wastefulness. Yet other times we are hopeful. We breathe the humid air of industrialization and momentarily feel parts of the great machine. Like automatons we speak and socialize, work and repeat until we are too worn to be of any use to the corporate machine.
That's when we take a moment to look back, to that original feeling of despair, to the moment childhood felt so betrayed that it had to abandon us in our senseless perfection.
We become philosophers; interested in the greatest of designs and the slightest of details. We care not to express ourselves in emotions but in descriptive proverbs. We cover ourselves with quotes and sayings, and somehow feel empowered in our knowledge of the past.
We read "The Prince" and the "Social Contract" and associate with Morgenthau and Kennan, shake our fists at the sky, pretending we can challenge the wrath of God, just as we have sticked it up to government.
We feel engulfed by anarchy -- suddenly the words of Prudhon make a whole other sense to us -- and then we are down with the Jews, down with the system, down with everything.
Suddenly, we are despaired again. We are activists, not theorists, but our actions are no more pervasive than those of the state we so much strive to understand.
Slowly we return back, each cog in its original position, and resume our infinite turning.
And we turn, and we turn, and life goes on.
And we slowly become the great machine's embodiment.
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