Message 13/38
Date: 20-Feb-03 @ 04:41 PM -
RE: discussion over fire and beer
ok, the once and for all thing...there are limited resources, and this is still a game of selection, but this time the traits are much more subtle than simply whether your nose is a certain shape or your skin a certain color. The traits are artificially created. They are things like who you know, and what you know. It's all a knowledge thing. It really is. If you know enough secrets, and know how to use them, you have power. That's the only power there is. The only reason why certain people are still alive is that others do not hold the secrets.
An example: If somebody held the secret of the home addresses and last names, and whereabouts of the family memebers of all of the secret security officers on duty at any one time guarding the president, he wouldn't live very long. That is a secret. Same with the cops. If you knew the chief's vices, and the aforementioned secrets of the above...you'd hold power over the cops, cuz all of a sudden, the cops lose their advantage, and a BIG vulnerability is exposed, cuz you know how to scare them, and only you hold the secret of where you are going to be, and they can't be everywhere at once.
The other thing is having the power to diperse the secret into the open if anything happens to you that you don't want to happen.
The Pope has power cuz he hold the secrets of the Vatican. So do others, in it, many even more so, but he holds quite a few.
I could go on for hours with examples, but this is the prize. In this case, it's the oil, and its currency value that are the secret, along with the military might, and hiding the truths from the troops who are doing the fighting to take and keep this resource. You think a soldier is going to fight and die if his superiors tell him that he's not going out to fight for what he believes in, but simply the greed of a few that want to stay in power? THAT's a secret.
Ok, enough telling of secrets, time for you to come up with some of your own.
Ape