Now, come you all, pray, tell, wherewithal life and evolution without violence? Wherewithal, creation without destruction?
How are we supposed to advance unless we destroy the old? And, how do we elevate unless we view, with destructive disdain and creative contempt, that which is? In its place, we recreate, rebuild a glorious and enduring totem to our vision.
Of violence and destruction? Why, even the very act of living demands it and reproduction itself compels force. Shall a woman conceive without the invasion of her body or the mind-mending machinations of science? Shall she give birth absent the unsettling of her grace or succor in the absence of displacement??
How shall they eat unless he kills? How shall they strive except by labor?
Even in the midst of kindness and love, does he negate displacement? Civilization. What is it if not a root and branch replacement? And, advancement! Does it not call for the abandonment of old-held beliefs? The doing of violence to what we know. The painful disarray and careful replacement even as we hang our harps upon the willows of nostalgia.
No, my friend. Look again. I tell you, we do not change except for discomfort neither can we live unless we engage the rearranging force of violence.
Even when our warfare is cerebral, how can we persuade except by confrontation? And, how do we shrink from the precipice except by upsetting that which already exists? In doing so, we take it apart. Examine it. All the way around. Top to bottom and back up again.
We u.n.d.e.r.s.t.a.n.d it that we may change it to more effectively serve our purposes.
Think, my friend, think again.
The craft of creation brings forth from nothing or rearranges that which already exists. It makes way for the emergent– good and bad. That process, Sire, does violence to the status quo. Try cleaning without doing violence to the dirt. Persuade me without unsettling my basic perspective.
Even the light, though silently moving, does great violence to the domain of darkness. When the shadows come, it is the departure of the light. Silently. Piercingly. Violently.
Wisdom understands the utilitarian value of this tool of life. In its raw state, it is terrifying and indispensable. To exhibit this trait is to bear witness to the primordial instinct to sustain life.
The soldier’s world is that of invasion. Of destruction. Of renewal. Violence lays waste that which no longer serves the sovereign. To put it another way, it is the tool of the mighty. It lives to be used to propagate. To change. To build. To transform. The soldier is everyman.
So, you see, my good man, it is not violence that we abhor. Pray that I do that which is right with it.
Violence is the tool of the sovereign. At some enchanted moment in time, every man is sovereign. He must take and defend his place.
At some fateful moment in time, everyman wields the tool of violence…for self-preservation. That is the destiny of all men. That is the destiny of life.
All men are soldiers…trained to use the tool
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