Double Refusal: Or Why Intelligence Can Never Hold Power (July, 2026)

The refusal to dominate,

A key mark of intelligence,

One never embodied by a governing State,

One hard to attain and retain due to mechanisms of defense,

One equally necessary as the refusal to be dominated.

The effort strains our muscles,

Unpracticed as they are, their exertion belated.

But, how may we practice this refusal?

Is this what meditation trains?

Is this a reminder to still my cravings,

My restlessness in wanting more?

Denigrating as “quietists” us Huxlean mystics,

Marxist materialists insist 1+1=3,

As if one site of power displacing another

Could transform dominators into harmonizers.

Yet, toppling power with power,

Will not instill courage in the masses

Who currently apprehend eternal darkness and cower.

It will not teach them the art of patience,

The art of stillness in facing settling mud.

“Liberated” by a revolution that brings more of the same,

They will continue to fear chaos,

Reaching for control, they will seek to dominate

By finding scapegoats they can blame.

How can a dictatorship give way

To a harmonious relationship

With life, with ourselves, with each other?

My logic feels so tight,

Nonetheless, I feel an eerie presence, a haunting,

Peering at me from my peripheral sight.

Is my indirectness indicative of my own fear

Of death and struggle?

A way to elude my moral responsibility to fight

As I rest comfortably in a privileged bubble?

Moving cautiously for now,

I go home.

Investigating the Mind-Body,

But asking no questions.

With my mantra as a Resource,

I seek a re-source

In the habitual disintegration of my bounds,

Hoping this unraveling will ease my sores.