Power

Power is comforting. Those with food don't have to worry about eating. Those with homes don't have to worry about sleeping. Those with wealth don't have to worry about poverty.

But to have power is not to be without worry. For those without it have their own comforts. Those without food don't have to worry about it being stolen. Those without homes don't have to worry about break-ins. And those without wealth don't have to worry about keeping it.

Herein lies the principal difference between the worries of the empowered and the worries of the disenfranchised: the haves fear loss, while the have-nots fear death.

To have power is to live perpetually in fear of powerlessness. This drives the empowered to ever seek the means to further consolidate their possessions, to drive them into a safer and safer state. This is accomplished in a variety of ways.

If you have a throne, you build a castle. Once the castle is built, you dig a moat. Once the moat is built you install cannons. And on, with larger walls, bigger moats, and more fearsome cannons. But these are all the methods of callous brutish lords, and we have come far today from feudalism. Cleverer lords know that if you weaken your enemies, your defenses will never be tested.

So you send ships loaded with plague rats to your enemy's capital. You rally your forces to destroy your enemy from within, and with such subterfuge that by the time your enemy thinks to suspect you are responsible, he has already been defeated. You teach them that hard work earns its just rewards. You elevate the empowered as heroes to the peasants, that they may worship rather than despise them. You make them human, relatable. You tell the peasants, this too may be you one day. The only thing between you and success is yourself. Work hard, and you will be rewarded.

And the mice in the maze scurry excitedly about the maze in hopes for cheese. Except the maze goes nowhere. It has already all been taken and hoarded away in a secret room where the master rat lords over them all. If only he hadn't been such a very, very clever rat. The mice might have raged out at him. They might have taken a look at the maze walls and thought about chewing through.

They might have noticed the enterprising effort of an inspired young mouse and thought, I shall lend a hand to this certainly worthwhile effort. I too will eat away at these walls. They may be thick but my teeth are sharp and only grow sharper as I chew at my bonds. That fat ugly evil master rat may be big and mean but he is small when measured against the force of me and my brethren. And soon, soon, he will wonder how he ever thought he could keep so much to himself, and leave so little for the rest of us.

If only. But the mice cannot see, for the mice cannot think. The empowered have so well developed their means and methods that we are far sunk into their trap and without the will to escape. Many of us have developed Stockholm syndrome, convincing ourselves that we are better off in a cage, that we would not know what to do with ourselves were we to be freed.

Domesticated, we were born into captivity and have never learned to defend ourselves against the wild. Trained, we love only our trainer and trust all too surely in the intent of his methods. Even when the evidence alarmingly indicates the clear truth, that the methods of the empowered serve only themselves, and our training too, has served only to better them. But no matter. We have our chew toys and the affectionate guiding hand of the leading party's ideology to console our battered spirits. What more could we wish for? What more could we want?