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The Philosopher Between the Capitalist and the Communist Chapter 40 : Empty Hands and a Full Mind By Punkerslut
In the end, Roz and Pan were never executed in the style promised by their potential executors. Neither were their families, who simply blended into the endless mass of what became known as to the world as just refugees and survivors, they were only the victims who had been displaced by the wars of mighty empires. But Pan was dead, and so was Roz. The way their lives ended was with enough choice on their part as it was on the part of the emperors seeking their deaths. Dishonorable, despised, hated, and even pitied. Everything that Roz and Pan had done was wiped from the history books or given an alternative and less meaningful telling. Every war that Roz had fought in, every medal and decoration which he had earned by fighting, every part of that was taken from his legacy in Babylon. Every meeting that Pan had organized, every workers' union he established and every lecture given to massive crowds, every word and every syllable were somehow turned toward discord and confusion in the presses of Athens. Since the start of the war, their monuments were torn down, their posters were replaced with others, and the public buildings named after them were quickly renamed, but now with the deaths of their physical bodies, so too came the death of the truth about them. The Dissidents knew that they were going to lose. That's part of what makes them Dissidents. But did they really know the extent that their former masters would go to erase their memories? Do Dissidents know that what they're going to do will be twisted and warped by interpretations of those with smaller minds and greater power? Or is their struggle really a personal one against one particular force that has been the one only haunting in their lives? If you Dissent, you know you're going to lose, so why would struggling against any single power make sense? Revolutionaries and Dissidents both want a different world, but what was it about the latter that made it impossible for them to become the former? Was it the dignity of dissenting, or the repulsion of revolting? What was it about Emma and Benjamin that made it too difficult for Pan and Roz to be the same way? What was so bad about the Revolution that Dissension would look more appealing? None of the answers to any of these questions are going to be the exact same for any two human beings on the planet. So it's almost a little redundant to even think that someone like either Roz or Pan could explain why dissenting was worth the story and legend behind the greatness of their character.
Communist and Capitalist. That was all that mattered. In a Communist village, that was the question, and in a Capitalist village, that was the question. Communism and Capitalism are the same thing. They each want to make sure you're not part of the other side. It's not so much if you believe in them. They're not testing you for purity of heart, they're testing you for heresy. The suspected are interrogated not for how much they believe in what is considered truth, but for how much they believe in what is considered falsehood. And the elites of these societies existed on the same boundaries. They were not evaluated based on how much they loved their own society's order, but for how much they hated anything that threatened this order. It wasn't a matter of whether they trusted their own people so much as whether they distrusted the enemies of their people. It was Authority that allowed this attitude and mindset to flourish, grow, and consume everything that stood before it. The Communist world and the Capitalist world, those two sides that had enveloped the planet, and there was nothing that questioned their power. Except each other. That's why there had to be another war.
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