The Will to Obey
Astrikos Katoikos
Something is wrong when frightened minds
Embrace the very chain that binds
An ancient terror, newly dressed
Finds willing refuge in the oppressed
We build our prisons out of fear
Then praise the walls that hold us here
The burden of a sovereign choice
Seems heavier than a master's voice
Each question threatens sacred ground
Each stranger must be hunted down
The anxious heart demands a throne
And claims the tyrant as its own
A strange relief begins to grow
When someone else selects the foe
The mind relinquishes dissent
And calls obedience consent
We trade rebellion for a promise of peace
And call surrender our release
Freedom on its knees, begging to obey
Renouncing every right to walk away
We dress our fears in robes of justice
Then bless the very hands that crush us
What kind of liberty can survive
When willing captives feel alive?
A child discovers, year by year
That love may disappear through fear
The lesson settles in the mind
Where punishment and trust entwine
The classroom prizes answers learned
While honest doubts are quickly spurned
The workplace teaches whom to please
And calls compliance inner peace
We learn the verdict, not the case
We judge a life without a face
The crowd supplies a ready creed
And conscience yields to tribal need
On glowing screens resentment thrives
As profitable hatred shapes our lives
Each accusation earns applause
Each punishment invents a cause
We trade rebellion for a promise of peace
And call surrender our release
Freedom on its knees, begging to obey
Renouncing every right to walk away
We dress our fears in robes of justice
Then bless the very hands that crush us
What kind of liberty can survive
When willing captives feel alive?
A tyrant thrives when people find
Their private wishes in his mind
His violence becomes their will
His victims those they long to kill
The master offers certainty
Disguising fear as liberty
The frightened learn to celebrate
The very power that seals their fate
Sophisticated systems classify
The very lives their rules deny
Their tables register the cost
But never mourn the futures lost
When knowledge abandons moral sight
Injustice masquerades as right
The throne survives the ruler's fall
Its ancient logic governs all
Who are we without the herd
Without the sacred, borrowed word?
Who are we when no command
Can guide the conscience or the hand?
And if the mind that seeks release
Was shaped to worship borrowed peace
Can freedom rise through thought alone
When thought itself defends the throne?
A change of banners cannot free
A mind devoted to tyranny
Who taught our thoughts to seek command?
Who placed the leash within our hand?
Yet freedom cannot be bestowed
By those who dictate every road
It lives wherever minds refuse
The comforting deceit they choose
We traded rebellion for a promise of peace
And called surrender our release
Freedom on its knees, learning to rise
Confronting its own cherished lies
We dressed our fears in robes of justice
And blessed the very hands that crushed us
What kind of liberty can survive
Unless independent judgment thrives?
What if the tyrant we pursue
Draws all his strength from what we do?
What if the prison we condemn
Is built by those who kneel to him?
And when the tyrant meets his end
What hidden master shall we defend?
For every throne that falls today
A thousand fears may still obey