The Scorpion’s Song

Preface

Elementary school was the first encounter I had with the “system”. I was in grade six and were doing an activity where the class was split into fake Greek city-states—Athens, Sparta, and so on—for a month-long unit on ancient Greece. It was a “learn by roleplay” program all the teachers created together, and sort of a special tradition at that elementary school. There was one city-state that stood out to me as being reserved for the kids staff didn’t like— the ones who slipped in between the cracks, misbehaved or were too shy to give their teachers some sense of their personality. That was Corinth, the city-state I happened to be assigned to.  

One day, I was “captured” by another city-state, Sparta, and as punishment, the group decided (at the teacher’s recommendation) that I had to sing “twinkle, twinkle little star” in front of the class.  He was one of those teachers who got excited about school spirit, group activities, being the “cool” teacher and even had a daughter in the class that year. I begged the teacher—through tears and panic—not to make me do it. Unfortunately, this grown ass man was completely apathetic to my distress. I was the “quiet kid” who inconvenienced him with my selective mutism, caused by a then undiagnosed social anxiety disorder, and poor grades. As far as he was concerned, I was about to get what I deserved for not making enough of an effort to fit in with the rest of the class.

“It’s part of the game and you have to participate, too” was the teacher’s reasoning for forcing me to participate in what amounted to nothing more than a humiliation ritual. His tone was so casual, like he was explaining the rules of dodgeball. It never occurred to me that I could’ve stood my ground, that I could’ve just sat down and refused or walked out, because I was eleven, and the public education system had already trained me to obey a teacher’s authority. The price to pay for disobedience often included humiliation, which I had come to fear after years of bullying. Knowing there was no way out, I swallowed my panic and half-heartedly sang in front of the class.  

As embarrassing as it is to admit, I still think about that moment sometimes, even as I approach thirty years old. Not because of the humiliation I experienced in the moment, but because it was the first time I understood what “power” really looked like. It looked like a classroom full of kids watching a grown ass man humiliate an 11-year-old girl—facilitating the further social isolation of a child—for his own amusement. He called it “education” and “engagement” but what it really was, was a fucked-up mixture of social conditioning and schadenfreude.  

Where once the system humiliated as punishment in front of a group of your peers, now it simply lets you starve. The teacher has been replaced by your manager; the principal by the landlord. The stakes are higher, the consequences more dyer. If I had understood, back then, how little everything in childhood truly mattered, I would’ve walked out of that classroom instead of forcing myself to croak out “Twinkle, twinkle little star”. 

The same extroverted, people-pleasing personality I was once scolded for lacking is now marketed as a “soft skill” in the workplace. The service industry demands a fake smile no matter how broken you feel inside. It’s not enough to do your job—you have to sell your soul with it. Be likable. Be upbeat. Be compliant. Sell it. 

Basic dignity hinges on your willingness to be consumed—by employers, by institutions, or by soul-sucking strangers who feel entitled to your time and energy. It’s a soft coercion—one that breaks you not with brute force, but with social pressure. When you don’t or can’t play the part, you’re punished—not openly, but systematically through exclusion, poverty or silence.  

A truly free society would recognize the value of people who simply are—who exist on their own terms, without asking for permission. You do not exist to be accessible. You do not exist to be understood, or explained, or managed. You do not exist to perform emotional labor for systems that have only ever caused you anguish.  

The Scorpion

In the scorpion, we see the essence of autonomy—not a desire to dominate, but a determination to control her own space and destiny. She doesn’t go out of her way to impose her will upon others but will protect herself when harassed. This is the spirit of the individual—one who seeks no throne, no empire, but simply sovereignty over themself and their world. The scorpion’s world is one where she is left to be—free from the imposition of forces that seek to bend her to their will.  

Authority, in its various societal forms, does not simply manage chaos—it manufactures submission. Whether in the classroom, the workplace, or under the scrutiny of law enforcement, authority demands your compliance, not because it’s necessary for order, but because it is necessary to maintain control.  

Early conditioning to obey authority begins the moment one enters the public education system. You’re separated from your family and placed in a managed group of peers, overseen by a central authority. You’re told that sharing is good, teamwork is virtuous, that raising your hand, or asking permission to speak, is appropriate social behavior. These aren’t just social skills—they’re drills. Repetitions in obedience masked as preparation for “real life.”  

Individuality is gradually shaved down into something easier to categorize, monitor, and correct. We are given social security numbers at birth. Classrooms assign students numbers based on their name’s sequential position on the class roster. We receive employee numbers, licenses, credentials, more identifiers. You are reduced to a record number in a database for the convenience of the state. 

Teachers often operate less as mentors and more as behavioral gatekeepers. In most cases, they have no interest in cultivating knowledge but simply wish to enforce the status quo. You’re not rewarded for independent thinking—you’re rewarded for predictable behavior. Every rule reinforces the lesson: don’t stand out, don’t resist, don’t question. And if you do, you risk humiliation and ostracization—being shamed, not for hurting anyone, but for disrupting the system’s flow.   

The corporate world is a continuation of the classroom, only now the rules are dressed in the language of corporate professionalism. Managers take on the role of soft enforcers, using feedback loops and one-on-ones to keep behavior in line. HR becomes the friendly interrogator: equal parts therapist and cop, always smiling, always watching.  

“Toxic positivity” has become one of the workplace’s most effective tools of control. Dissent is rebranded as “negativity.” Burnout is framed as a personal failing rather than the logical result of constant surveillance and performance pressure. You’re expected to smile through the exhaustion. If you’re unhappy, the solution is another “coaching session” or a “personal improvement plan”, more control.  

And unlike school, failure the workplace holds a far more brutal consequence: poverty. You don’t just risk being reprimanded for disobedience—you risk your rent, and access to food and healthcare. The leash may be longer, but the stakes are higher. So resistance becomes quiet. Subtle. It’s the closed-off body language, remaining muted during an online meeting, a sick day taken out of the blue, in silence.  

If school is the training ground and the workplace the polished continuation, then law enforcement is the blunt instrument—authority without pretense. Police are cast as the final line between order and chaos, the “thin blue line”. It goes without saying that this narrative is a myth—one carefully maintained to legitimize their real function: to enforce the will of the state and protect those in power. 

Laws are not written for us—they are written with the intention of benefiting the writer–the elite class. As authority grows more centralized, its demands become more absolute. One of the clearest signs of this shift is the ongoing war against personal self-defense—the right to bear arms. Legislators frame disarmament as a matter of moral obligation and “public safety” but their intention is to make the public more dependent on System for protection. 

To rely solely on the police for protection is to believe in the deadly illusion that the state cares about your safety. Police officers are not obligated to protect you, in fact, their training prioritizes their own safety above all else. In a crisis, they are taught to neutralize threats—not to provide you with protection.  

Your safety cannot be outsourced. It cannot be handed over to a system that sees you as a liability. Disarmament is not peace and self-defense is not violence—it is sovereignty. Authority will always say it’s acting in your best interest, but if that were true, it wouldn’t fear your ability to defend yourself. The truth is that a disarmed population is easier to manage. 

Rejection of the state is not about seeking chaos—it is about refusing to surrender your autonomy and individual sovereignty. It is about standing firm in the face of a system that demands compliance, not because said system is necessary, but because your submission and participation is necessary for it to exist. Reclaiming your sovereignty is to affirm that you do not need external validation or permission to exist freely.  

Returning once again to the scorpion: she does not seek to dominion over other animals in her environment. She simply wishes to be left alone. In the solitude of its desert, she thrives—not by dominating others, but by maintaining control over her own space, her own life. The scorpion doesn’t crave conflict. She only strikes when cornered, when her existence is threatened. She is a creature defined by independence, not aggression.  

Freedom lies in the refusal to bend to the will of the collective and the rejection of unnecessary control. Sovereignty is a rebellion against the idea that anyone else has the right to control our lives. The scorpion doesn’t announce herself, posture or seek admiration. Instead, she simply exists—self-contained, alert, and unwilling to be controlled. That is its threat: not aggression, but self-ownership. And that is what the System fears most—the individual who operates outside of its reach, and exists on their own terms, without its permission.  

The Machine

The System encompasses both the State and the large corporations that drive its economy—its laws, its expectations, and its so-called democratic process. The reality of ‘choice’ in the System is a lie. We are given the illusion of freedom, or influence, through voting but when you break it down, voting in today’s world is nothing more than choosing which boot will stomp on your neck.  

It’s easy to get lost in the theater of elections and the illusion of democracy. But no matter where a politician falls on the spectrum, every action the state takes serves one purpose: the expansion of its own power. The Democratic and Republican parties may bicker, but they both share many commonalities, such as their support of state surveillance. To the state, your autonomy and personal sovereignty comes secondary to their maintenance of power.  

Every so-called public service—every social program, every “safety net”—is built on the labor of those who try to escape the System. Their reward for productivity is to have their income siphoned off and fed into a machine that keeps others trapped in dependence. Whether through taxation, inflation, or the outright seizure of assets, the state always takes its cut first. What remains is rationed back to you—never as a gift, but as a transaction that demands obedience.  

For those who dare to operate outside the system—small business owners, freelancers, creators—there are always new taxes, regulations, and bureaucratic permits to bind them. You are never free to build or innovate without the state breathing down your neck and digging into your pocket like some sort of busted prostitute.   

Anyone who’s ever tried to navigate the labyrinth of bureaucracy that is your local government or major corporate institution knows that these systems do not see individuals. They see statistics, categories, risk factors, a handful of numbers in a sequence. The individual does not exist in the eyes of the system because the system is incapable of comprehending an individuals’ soul; their unique nuances, and contradictions. 

In recent years, the explosion of labels—particularly among younger generations—has only made it easier for the system to sort and control. Every facet of gender, sexuality, and identity has been dissected, categorized, and assigned its own acronym, flag, or subgroup. What began as a grassroots effort to find belonging in a world that isolates difference has now been folded neatly into a system of surveillance and data collection. Online flickers in the dark, signals for others in need of community, now tell the state and corporations exactly who you are, what you believe, how you vote, what medications you might need or use, and exactly where you fit in the consumer demographic chart. 

Your identity is reduced to a record in a database used to gauge how easily one can be conditioned into total institutional dependency—benefits, subsidies, medical and psychological diagnoses, a life designed around state assistance, defined by weakness.  

This is not compassion; it’s an insidious method of control. The state does not uplift the “marginalized” but integrates them into a state sponsored consumer class.  The System wants your reliance. It wants you to believe that your only hope for survival is compliance: follow the rules, fill out the forms, know your place and stay in your lane. The system wants you to see yourself as unfit to survive without its assistance so that the very idea of freedom feels like a threat instead of a birthright. What begins as a helping hand becomes a crutch, and the longer you lean on the state, the more your muscles of self-reliance atrophy. Eventually, you forget how to stand on your own at all and fear the very prospect of trying.  

Social programs are not designed with the intention of helping lift people out of poverty—they’re meant to trap them in it. Financial Assistance from the state is structured with strict income thresholds, meaning that the moment you begin to earn more—take a raise, pick up extra hours, start a side hustle—you risk losing the very benefits that make survival possible. This creates a brutal paradox: you either stay just poor enough to qualify or find yourself worse off than before. This isn’t a safety net—it’s a leash. The message is clear: stay in your place, don’t aim higher or try to build something of your own. Initiative is punished and stagnation is rewarded. 

The COVID-19 pandemic was the perfect test for how quickly the average person will surrender their autonomy when one falls upon hard times. The more uncertain we are, the more we are willing to hand over control but when the crisis fades, the state’s power doesn’t. That’s how control works: not through sudden takeover, but by making emergency measures permanent. Now, the modern state doesn’t need police officers patrolling every street corner anymore—it has your phone, your social media, your digital footprint. Every action, every word, every interaction is catalogued in a database for analysis.  

The labels that define you—your diagnoses, identities, and assigned categories—aren’t just used to shape behavior. They’re tools for assessing your threat level and determining how much monitoring or social coercion you require. Mass surveillance isn’t just something out of some dystopian Cyberpunk fantasy movie—it’s real and its already here, embedded in the everyday. 

In this new age of surveillance, digital autonomy is an illusion. We are told we have the freedom to choose what we consume, but our choices are subtly shaped by algorithms designed to guide our behaviors, preferences, and actions toward a predetermined goal. Surveillance doesn’t need chains or beatings to control—it works through “friendly” features: 

“Recommendations” that lead you down rabbit holes you didn’t ask to fall into and “Targeted content” that knows what you want before you even do. 
“Location sharing” that lets others know where you are, even when you think you’ve disabled your mobile device’s GPS location features. 
“Wellness tracking” that tracks your temperature, heart rate and other vitals.

These features are not random. They’re engineered with the intent to create compliance through comfort and increase consumer demand for useless commodities. Everything is streamlined, making it seem like a choice, but all the while you are subtly nudged toward the behaviors that keep you engaged, compliant, and ultimately more predictable. The system is not just monitoring your actions—it is shaping them, thus stripping you of your individuality. Every convenience we trade away comes at the cost of a more genuine existence.  

Demiurgos

In the act of creation, the artist or craftsman steps outside imposed systems—outside productivity metrics, laws, expectations, and hierarchies—and into a space of total autonomy. There are no gatekeepers between the mind and the canvas, between the impulse and the expression. Whether through painting, composing music, writing, programming, crafting or building, creation allows the individual to express themselves entirely on their own terms. It is self-willed, self-defined action. The final product is an extension of the self—a declaration of one’s inner world.

In the act of creation, there exists a sacred refusal to allow yourself to be molded by any outside force or individual. To create is to stand against a System that thrives on homogeny. It is a reclamation of the soul—a silent revolt. Every mark of the pen, strike of the hammer, brick laid, decision made during the act of creation is chosen. The process of creation is intimate and cannot be commodified without losing its soul. In a world where people are increasingly alienated from the outcomes of their labor—forced to produce for systems they did not choose or create—the act of creation returns agency to the individual.

Art, when pursued independently, is a liberating force. The creation becomes a reflection of the unique mind behind it, a statement of independence and personal truth.  To create for oneself is to defy the commodification of identity. It is to make something that is not bound by expectation, something that exists simply because it is true to the creator. The value lies not in the product, but in the act itself—the unfiltered, raw expression of the self. This is the essence of freedom: the ability to exist and create outside the frameworks imposed by society. 

The choice to reclaim sovereignty over your soul is yours alone. The moment you choose to create—not for an audience, but for yourself—you take the first step in breaking free from the System. Start small. Start with a thought, a doodle, a word on paper. Let it be yours, unfiltered and unrefined. With each act, you will strip away the layers that seek to bind you, and what remains will be your true self—pure, undomesticated, and undeniably free.