Power And Defiance

As a writer, my aspiration has always been to share my perspective on what it means to be a human being, in all its complexities. I wanted to tell a story that reflects a comparative importance of political structures, religions and histories of the past. This book represents a lifelong dream of putting into narrative form, my many observations of the brilliance and kindness of the human spirit: people at their worst and people at their best. It is my intention to engage the reader in the process of observing history in both times past and in current day happenings for the sole purpose of gaining greater clarity in the shaping of one's own approach to life and the deepening of individual insight. In creating this book, it was not my intention to condemn or elevate any particular people, their mannerisms, lifestyle, or religion, but rather to create for you, the reader, an intriguing story that combines dialectics and poetry that together will elicit your own thoughts and feelings, bringing to life new ideas and new understandings. In reading this book, I hope you will discover how true it is that we all create our own world. Everything visible or invisible is merely a deceptive dream. Nothing exists unless we create it. We create new forms and then, unfortunately, we seem compelled to demolish them in order to create others. This pattern will continue on into eternity. But there is no doubt that great ideas, morality and religion are needed in all our lives; otherwise society would be a chaotic structure. Still, all must be governed by reason. We celebrate certain events that have changed the course of history and have shaped social structures, yet there are other events of seemingly less significance that have changed the destiny of millions of individuals, the ones that we never hear about. During the writing of Power and Defiance, I have only doubled my certitude that the law of civilization is to renew itself and to advance. Those who have the irresistible need to grasp and assimilate whatever they can from their surroundings, making it their own, in order to gain power, to rule the world if they can, will never persevere. I am convinced that the pitiless law of power-hungry individuals will eventually and always reach an inevitable downfall. It is true that arrogance is a sin that the universal harmony does not forgive. However, it is also certain that the common rule is destined to engender the annihilation of this destructive power. In seeking to find answers for the violence and killings that are overwhelming our society today, we seem to want to philosophize, yet we consistently arrive at the same conclusion: the merging of injustice, discrimination and poverty always creates the powerful ammunition for violence. The primitive need of victimized human beings to rise and demand justice with rifle in hand is well documented throughout history. I believe that unless the so-called civilized world invests in the education of children who live in hopelessness, they too will grow in darkness. The fate of future generations depends on our children who are called upon to create a world of their dreams. They will be the ones who will define triumph and despair for humanity. And so, I invite you to explore with me the worst and the best of humanity, politics and democracy as together we discover along the way, that each of us, left, right, religious, agnostic, activist, reactionary, theorists, conservatives, liberals, civilized, educated, scientists, artists, poor, rich, all of us are searching for the formula of life.