Action –

Moving, doing, changing,

the world constantly rearranging.

Without it there is naught

and nothing to be fought.

Reaction –

That which grips us of its own accord,

a deadly viper to the lonesome and bored.

The Stoics observed and controlled it.

We are far too busy to withdraw it.

Competence –

A rare and necessary treasure

we always seek like mad.

Ye we can’t in artists measure –

we call it talent and that’s that.

 Aggression –

We all know its face, yet hide it away.

Peaceful in words, with fire we play.

Resentment brews from hidden rage

at the dawn of the last man’s age.*

Possession –

We amass, we own, we crave ‘til the grave.

To always more like addicts enslaved,

we burn though every waking moment

in a desperate rush to control and own it.

Individual –

What can’t be divided, the indivisible.

One dissolves in the group until invisible.

To stand your own ground against the crowd

is courage never known to the blind and loud.

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*The Last Man is a psychological category coined by Friedrich Nietzsche. It refers to people who have no moral or ethical structure, who only consume, do not produce and are blind to their own miserable existence. The Last Man is a creature whose existence is mere consumption and repetition, almost entirely unconscious. Nietzsche claimed that the mass spread of such a state of existence would mark the end of civilization, for parasites can’t sustain, they only drain.