John Krygelski - The Aegis Solution

“Sadly, as is the case with most things, natural human tendencies are quickly identified by the less than scrupulous, and exploited for less than noble causes. There are those who relish the power they accrue from the formation of a group. In the case of the labor unions, there is no longer any oppression of the workers. Society has evolved and the abhorrent labor practices of the past do not exist, nor would they re-emerge should the unions cease to exist.

“If we were to compare the creation of labor unions to the public revolt in France, the revolution was accomplished and the oppressors were removed and killed. The people who joined forces for a cause succeeded in their goal, and there was no longer a need for the extemporaneous coalition. Yet, in the case of the labor unions, the construct has become self-perpetuating and institutionalized. They must now manufacture straw-man oppressors from whole cloth to justify their continued existence and indeed, in some cases, have become the oppressor themselves in their relentless quest for power and wealth.

“In the case of inner-city gangs, there are influential neighborhood figures, community organizers, local and national politicians, popular entertainment figures, and a variety of others who benefit from the existence of gangs. Whether they are the senators seeking funds for their states or the corner drug dealers interested in growing their customer bases and distribution networks, there are legions of parasites who live off the strife and tragedy which accompanies the gang structure in the urban community. They must, on a daily basis, sustain the lie that these youths are being oppressed, for the purpose of maintaining their power base.

“That is the underlying reason for the tremendous peer pressure felt by an urban youth to dress in a certain way, walk with an affected style, talk in a manner which is unintelligible to others, and at all times exhibit an air of hostility. If the lie is that the larger community hates you, will not employ you, and will never embrace you as a peer, it is crucial to create a persona which makes these messages a self-fulfilling prophecy. As the young man in the neighborhood emulates his peers and is greeted with unfriendly glares, harassing police, and rejections from potential employers, that message is reinforced. The young man’s commitment to the group is cemented.

“Why else would these same fraternities turn so viciously on a member who dares to trim his hair, dons the garb of a suburban businessman, speaks the King’s English, and adopts a positive attitude, all so that he may obtain a job? Because they don’t want their members to discover the truth.

“It was the very uniqueness of Aegis, this surreal facsimile of a culture, that made it impossible to maintain the illusion of oppression. How can you claim to be oppressed when all of the lodging within these walls is identical and, other than those already occupied, available for all, when the food and clothing dropped from the sky are more than the residents require and are freely shared?”

“That would be difficult.”

“It was. All of it was compounded by the absence of currency. There could be no, even fabricated, claim of oppression since none existed.”

“Also, in Aegis, there was no power structure that benefited from the illusion.”

“Essentially true, Elias. There were a few entrants who had been leaders in their old gangs and missed the power that went with that position. They became the core of ZooCity. Internecine rivalries were the rule during that period, with minor skirmishes until the end, as they vied with each other for the position of top dog. But there was no manipulation from above…from the aforementioned community organizers, politicians, and celebrities.

“However, they soon discovered that the underlying impetus which provided a steady stream of recruits was absent. Instead of claiming to fight what they could portray as a noble and just crusade against the oppressive establishment, they were unable to disguise the fact that they were organized, indeed existed, for the sole purpose of robbing, beating, raping, and killing the newcomers to Aegis.

“They found that these goals attracted a significantly smaller following than the former, appealing only to the sociopaths among them. A great many entrants, having come from a similar environment out there, enthusiastically joined the habitants of ZooCity, only to quickly migrate to either Walden or Madison, once they saw the true raison d’état.”

“So other than the occasional gangster newbie,” Tillie stated, “they dwindled down to a hard-core collection of thugs. And the ones who still had souls when they arrived here split so fast your head would spin. And like Wilson said, a lot of them went to Walden to get away from the punks. You have to admit that Walden would look pretty good after that — enlightened, peace-loving, tolerant, all that stuff. It didn’t take them long to hightail it out of Walden and zoom over to Madison. That’s where they are now, for the most part.”

“We’ve been dancing around the issue regarding Madison and Walden,” Elias broached the subject. “Would you describe the two enclaves as microcosms of the political right and left, or Republican and Democrat…conservative and liberal?”

“Yes!”

“No!”

Tillie and Wilson had answered simultaneously. Tillie was the first to expound. “Walden is a collection of liberal pukes. Their whole thing is ‘if it feels good, do it.’ They see Walden, and Aegis as a whole, as a commune. All they preach is tolerance, but they are the most intolerant bunch I’ve ever seen, when it comes to someone or something they disagree with. They are smug, self-righteous, proscriptive, and sanctimonious, and they believe that they know what is best for everyone. They have actually tried, more than once, to intercept the food drops and remove any item they find offensive because it isn’t organic or it might cause obesity or whatever, before it is distributed to the rest of the residents.

“And they can’t stand anyone who might rise above the others. Conservatives believe that if you fertilize and water the garden, things will grow — things of all shapes, heights, sizes, and colors, things that will look pretty, things that will bear fruit, things that will produce vegetables, things that are destined to be eaten by the farm animals so they can grow. And you can’t always predict what might sprout next.

“Liberals are like the lawn mower that comes along and lops off any plant that excels and tries to grow higher than the others. They are like the spray that kills anything other than the designated and acceptable form of life.

“No wonder the newbies who came to Aegis to avoid killing themselves went ahead and did it anyway after a dose of that stuff!”

By the end of her diatribe, she had worked herself into a frenzy, her voice bouncing off the surrounding concrete walls, reinforcing her passion.

“Tillie, I never cease to be entertained by your tirades,” Wilson remarked, chuckling.

“Well, it’s all true!”

“I take it that you don’t agree with her,” Elias commented to Wilson.

“It isn’t that I don’t agree with our exuberant friend; in many ways I do. When I responded in the negative to your question, I was being more literal.”

“How so?”

“You asked if Madison and Walden were microcosms of the political right and left, or perhaps the Republicans and Democrats.”

“Yes.”

“Since Mathilda launched us, emphatically, in this direction, let’s begin with Walden. I believe that if you took a poll of the residents, present and past, you would indeed find that almost all of them would describe themselves as Democrats; however, I have never perceived that political party to be as ideologically monolithic as others might. Their current socioeconomic bent is certainly not consistent with the firmly held beliefs of prominent Democrats from the not too distant past.”