Two Hundred and Ninety Two

Love makes the world go round, says the old song.  Freud said the lover needs his beloved as the predator needs its prey. 

The predator needs its prey because life feeds on life.  We feed on each other as a dying body feeds on its own flesh; and every body begins dying the moment it's born.

The body politic is a sadomasochistic game in which the rich pretend they govern and the poor pretend they are governed.  They need each other because only a god or a beast can live alone, without the company of its own kind on which to feed.  But only by lying to ourselves, and each other, can we live together without admitting we're killing each other.  

Society's the macrocosm, and the family the microcosm.  In most families, parents use and abuse their children because they were used and abused themselves when they were children, so they never learned what love is.  

Most children never admit their parents abuse them.  Not because they're innocent, but because they're afraid of admitting they're helpless, powerless.  Thus adults can abuse children without fear of reprisal, just as the rich abuse the poor.  

Children should eventually grow up, but most never do because even as adults they remain powerless.  They only grow older, struggling to believe the lies they were taught when they were young.  Most adults want good masters for the same reason most children want good parents.

Society is dying now because we're realizing those we’re taught to worship as gods are no better than we are. 

Adults abuse children, men abuse women and the rich abuse the poor.  Most of us despise ourselves and/or each other for abusing other people and/or allowing them to abuse us.  But we can’t or won’t admit what we do to them and/or allow them to do to us, because we need each other as the predator needs its prey. 

   We're sadists, abusing the people we claim to love so that we can comfort them, soothing the wounds we ourselves inflict.  When they're wounded and helpless, we no longer need fear those we love—fear they’ll find out who and what we are, and despise us as we despise ourselves—so we can love them safely, without fear of reprisal.