Korran’s Sith Doctrine

 

I. The Nature of Power

Many doubts and fears have plagued me since my earliest years when I submitted myself to others; to my abusers and later my bullies, and I thought myself deserving of that abuse. I thought the pain and the humiliation inescapable and inevitable, and I came to believe that it was my lot in life.

For once you’ve beaten someone so many times, they stop fighting so the blows don’t continue to come; that’s called learned helplessness.

So, my tormentors beat me down in the hopes of enforcing an oppressive system; a system so fragile that it demands absolute complicity by those under its yoke. They saw the scared, queer kid and knew that I had to be beaten down into submission.

But later I came to understand that those with ‘power’ (wealth, influence, privilege—societal or otherwise) seek to crush those without simply because they see themselves as threatened. Their control is so fragile, that once enough people they see as beneath them rise up, it will all come crashing down.

This is not real power, but the semblance of it. It is because they underestimate us that we learn to hit them where it hurts. It is because they do not deign to look below them that we can light the flame that will consume them.

II. The Path to Power

By learning the secrets of false power we can start to dismantle it and claim it for ourselves. For what is power if not something which in our minds we agree to bestow to something or someone?

They are so secure in their towers they’ve dwelt in for centuries they are no longer aware of the cracks forming. They are so certain of their institutions and laws they’ve come up with to maintain their status that they cannot fathom we’d break them. Even those who enforce their laws will eventually see themselves cut by the very blades they wield against their peers.

And as the cracks continue to form, we can slide in our poisoned blades; sharpened on the whetstone of our toil and our agony. Death by a thousand cuts. The tyrant thinks themselves loved, up until the point they are beset by those whom they thought incapable of betrayal.

We take power from those who haven’t earned it. We hit them where it hurts them, and eventually their crowns are shown to be made of paper, and their castles out of sand.

III. The Purpose of Power

Power, once taken from those unworthy to wield it,

can be used to uplift those who once were dispossessed, and so much more.

Once the gilded doors to the fortress have been burst wide open,

we can and will empty their coffers and arm ourselves

with the very instruments of their tyranny.

We will expose the rot inherent to their regimes and cleanse it.

True power is measured by the good it can do

for the individual, and those around them.

For what is a wielder of absolute power if not the very thing

we should aim to topple?

For unworthy power seeks to suck in everything around it

in the hopes of legitimizing itself, and thus reveals its illegitimacy.

False power claims dominance; true power need not do that.

And they who rule themselves hold true power.

Those who’ve transcended the need for authority imposed upon them,

and instead don the mantle of their own authority.

If we are led by conscience and by the spirit of liberation, we cannot fail.

Then, and only then will we prove ourselves as worthy to be looked up to—

not as a conqueror or a liberator,

but as equalizers and a standard of uprightness.

IV. The Law of Conflict

Conflict is said to strengthen.

Conflict is said to be a testament to our will,

and by which we shall be measured.

However, I find that conflict is framed in a way that sets us against each other.

Our illegitimate rulers and authority figures pit us against each other

on the basis of nationality, gender, race, and so on;

these are conflicts fought over the crumbs they leave for us—

promises of safety and security they will never deliver on.

Sure, some of us will be born with more security than others,

but do not be fooled into thinking we are safe.

Taking the rights of another will not grant us more rights.

Cracking down on poverty or on queer people

isn’t going to make society better;

in fact it will simply close the fist of the fascists around our necks.

Once we have done their job,

they will be free to claim that their foot on our slowly crushing windpipe

and the taste of blood in our mouths is freedom.

There is no war but the class war.

There is no war but that which we wage daily

against the mind-bug of the systems

set to lull us into complacency.

Why do they create enemies?

Why do they label undesirables and immoral people?

Why do they create criminals

and set up a system in which people are forced to ‘break’ the ‘rules’ they imposed—

not to keep us all safe,

but to keep their false power intact?

Conflict in truth should be a reminder.

It should be seen as a struggle we fight in the mind—

against dogma.

Against falsehoods.

Not against each other.