How to question authority

This entry is part 34 of 39 in the series Manual

 

Loudly, so the police sirens will be abashed.

Softly, so your blood-sucking interrogator will lean in close where he can be asphyxiated by your garlic breath.

From within, so the authorities will begin to doubt themselves.

From beyond the grave, which affords some form of protection against reprisal.

Through the slogan NO, which, as nitric oxide, reduces blood pressure by expanding the veins during its brief half-life in the bloodstream.

Through songs, which spread by invisible spores and can grow six inches in a day.

In the voice of unreason, since all the reasonable men defer to whomever commands the most barking guns.

Casually, as if walking on hot coals.

Automatically, through negative phototropism.

Surreptitiously, linking to your co-conspirators only through quantum entanglement.

With an absense of authority, which calls the very logic of authority structures into question.

Joyously. Because otherwise what’s the point?

Series Navigation← How to driveHow to cook →

4 Replies to “How to question authority”

  1. “Why?” Is the question that authoritarians loathe.
    The most powerful question in the world, Dave : )

  2. Wonderful in whole, lovely in part. Love the negative phototropism, which is an idea that I’ve loved for sometime now, since it hints at, as other scientific findings do, such as astronomical obfusctory dust, or “dark matter” for that matter, the promise of the absence of light, which is mass and substance. A wonderful and true via negativa, that is followed by vines.

    1. Hmm, I hadn’t thought of it in terms of the via negativa. Of course, my comparison raises the question: Is authority really all that similiar to light? Doesn’t that actually give it far more weight than it deserves?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.