A Time of Fools and Masters
A privileged man has at least two masters: his ego and those who know how to manipulate that ego.
We know many such men. We know that man. The one who starts with more than most and will to his last day, sacrifice all honor and fight with his every breath to convince everyone else and most especially himself, that he really is special. Such a man is the legal notion of an attractive nuisance in human form. A curiosity that draws those like him to devastating results.
Fools flock to such a man because he is the only avenue by which they will achieve a taste of power or prestige. They are not truly qualified nor capable for the roles and responsibilities they lay claim to in his orbit. Any arguments to their qualifications are superficial at best and outright disingenuous at worst. No amount of attempts to rebrand such deficiencies as innovation or ground-breaking will justify or cover for their inevitable failures. Positive outcomes will be despite their ineptitude, coincidental with their presence, the result of momentum that preceded them or sheer luck. The fool lays claim to an understanding they don't actually have, an insight of truth that isn't supported, a secret only they are in on. The fools on stage are bolstered by the fools in the audience.
Do not indulge the men who believe that wanting something is to be entitled to it. That wanting something is the same as deserving it. That wanting something is the same as earning it. That wanting something is the same as being qualified or capable of it. Do not indulge their attempts to define those words or set their measure.
The man who seeks dominion over fools always has masters. The desire for power is unfailingly exploitable.
Beware the powerful man who surrounds himself, wittingly and unwittingly, with a striving mass of fools and masters. None of them truly understand which they are and operate under incorrect assumptions about their place, power and significance.
They mortgage their legacy, now tainted by association and deference, in the hopes that somehow, their cooperation or enabling of defiling noble ideas and achingly aspirational endeavors will, at best, please their struggle for validation and at worst, not be their fault alone.
That the destruction of so much of what humanity has and is comes about on a recurring basis not because of cataclysms beyond our control but because the cycle of human nature is such that someone who doesn't understand their own feelings or know how to deal with them can still amass enough power and resources to take that emotional conflict out on everyone else.
Greed. Envy. Desire. Fear. Disgust. Jealousy. Inadequacy. Selfishness.
We're living in conflict with the whims of powerful men with big feelings they don't know how to handle and deny the very existence of. They seek power, or at least proximity to it, as a means of relieving the ache.
Beware the fool who enables the master through service or deference, for he, by the nature of his service or approval, facilitates the fool's predilections and incompetence. He disqualifies his own competence and negates his claim to either honor or sound judgment.
Beware the master who empowers and puppeteers a fool, for he, by the nature of his actions, is neither guardian nor genius; neither logical nor wise; neither honorable nor trustworthy.
Beware the man who has both fools and masters for he is also both without knowing it and that makes him the most dangerous of all.
Our role in a time of empowered fools and masters, is to defy their example and deny them success in infecting others with their motivations.
Deny the fool agreement with his qualification. Deny the fool absolution for his participation, active or passive. Deny the fool his attempts to brand his fealty as strategy. Deny the fool credit for passivity. Deny the fool acceptance for his facile justifications, his lack of judgement, his ignorance.
Deny the master of his belief in his own superiority. Deny the master of his influence. Deny the master agreement with his confusion of acquiring power with having earned it. Deny the master indulgence of his belief in his own genius. Deny the master of the respect he has not earned. Deny the master a serious or believing audience for his performance of wisdom and honor.
Deny them all their delusions and their aspirations. Deny them all forgetting what they've done. Deny them all any notion of being special.
Deny them all letting their fears, their hate, their greed, their selfishness, from driving our actions too.
Understand that they are limited in their imagination by the constraints of their motive. An imagination driven by negative emotions is only half an imagination.
For every act of fear, we act with reason.
For every gesture of greed, we grow equity.
For every word of hate, we respect each other.
For every effort to divide, we come together.
For every lie, we tell the truth.
For every harm, we remember.
For every diminishment of hope, we imagine better.
For every deprivation of rights, we hold the line.
For every attempt to make us less, we must remind them that we are capable of so much more.
A time of fools and masters is ended by dreamers and guardians.