Why is the opposite of hope despair and not indifference, and why is it is easier to hate when you no longer love?

Back before the brain was addled, I was a fan of Nietzsche who explained this perfectly. The oppressed never seek emancipation, it’s not in their nature. They seek a role-reversal. That’s how we get an Israel after a Holocaust, a Stalin after the Tsar, a Spanish Inquisition post-Roman repression. It’s a cycle that just keeps turning.

This pattern isn’t just confined to the history books, either. It’s present in the here-and-now. It’s in the way we are tempted to fight racism with reverse racism, respond to misogyny with misandry, meet terrorism with islamophobia, and answer crime with tribal vengeance. These reactions aren’t intentional, they’re just us, listening to our deepest, most primal instincts. It is a bug in our kernel. Tribalism, we are born with it.

This seemingly involuntary action, when continued with reckless abandon, drives a deeper wedge between a man and his hope for a solution. Yesterday’s oppressed becomes today’s oppressor, while today’s oppressed is being primed to become tomorrow’s oppressor.

The cycle didn’t start with him, and it certainly won’t end with him.

Inking my thoughts onto the page no longer holds the same innate fluidity it once did. This might be a fruitless endeavor at pattern interrupt, or possibly, it could be the dawn of an unconventional series—one of slippery banana peels and whimsical unicorn dreams.