Take! Take! Take!

That’s all we do, isn’t it?

Pleasure 

We desire, we seek, we consume.

It’s cyclical, isn’t it?

A satiated desire only reveals ten more.

Then a hundred.

There’s always one more.

Insatiable carnality.

_Hedonism_

The shepherd that guides to destruction:

Compressive destruction 

Self-indulgent 

Self- contained 

Subtle 

Oppressive destruction 

Sinister 

Selfish

Sensational 

We collect

We deprive others

We dehumanize

All so that the self may be pleased

Desire calls forth doom

What we want is what we see.

It is what we seek. 

It is what we feed.

The world is ours to tame,

its treasures ours to claim.

Such is the gift of freedom—

of will,

of intention,

of action.

Freedom:

the absence of shackles.

But perhaps freedom is slavery.

A man without restraints is a man enslaved.

_Have you not seen he who takes his desires as his god?_

Servitude to one’s desires above all else is loyalty to destruction—

the most disdainful sort of slavery.

Destructive! Evidently so!

Desire manifests destruction!

I said it again!

Take a look around.

An ever-present case study.

Perhaps the most destructive manifestation of desire:

_Rape_

Ah! Men.

The defenders and protectors.

For women, the young, the elderly.

The man is pronounced the shield,

a fortress.

What is it that we shield them from?

Predators?

The elements?

All things threatening,

all things destructive?

Without a doubt, we are duty-bound.

But so disastrous have we been at the office

that the embrace of a blood-thirsty bear feels closer to home,

more so than our proposed protection.

Goodness! 

Such madness!

A certain painful death is more palatable

than the unpredictability we exude.

Madness, I tell you.

They’d rather glimpse the warmth of their entrails

than walk alone with a man.

Folly! Or is it?

Open your eyes, dear brother.

The scars their skins bear

are etched by men, not by bears.

The horror of man’s insatiable desire has touched them.

The terror of a bear’s clutches has not.

So in their world,

our trimmed nails are far more mortifying than iron-hard claws.

It is stupid, I know.

You must understand that it is… understandably so.

Desire has weaponized strength.

We harm.

Taint what is sacred.

Every day.

Every hour.

Every second.

The air shivers from silent screams.

Protectors ravaging what they had sworn to protect.

There is no greater tragedy.

The knights have grown devilish horns,

stalking in the dead of night in corroded armor.

The shield has become a tyrannical blade that bears no scabbard.

It is unrestrained,

lording over the fragility it was bestowed the honor to defend.

It is disgraceful.

When unrestrained desire meets unchecked authority…

well, you don’t have to imagine the cost of such freedom.

That is just one manifestation 

The most pronounced

The most pervasive 

The cruelest case study

Desire manifests in many more realities—

many more that are universal.

Afflicting men.

Afflicting women.

Inflicted by men.

Inflicted by women.

Suffered by men.

Suffered by women.

Tainted hearts we harbor.

The lot of us.

Man. 

Woman.

When the self becomes all.

When the self becomes the only king.

When the self becomes god.

The devils rejoice.

A slave is born.

A slave to desire.

A slave en route to destruction—

either to suffer it,

or even worse, inflict it.