Let me share with you my shit-heap theory.

Power. What is power? For now, I think this definition should suffice: Power is the ability to influence things. (Please note the word 'in-fluence' - to flow in.)

There are two kinds of power:

The first type I like to call power-with (which is Love based), and the second type I like call power-over (which is fear based).

Consequently, there are power-games with both power-with and power-over. In this text I discuss only the later kind, power-games involving power over others.

There are many such games; in politics, economy, the field of sexuality (seduction games), etc.

Any power-game involving power-over can be likened to this visual representation of a power-game called "climbing the shit-mountain".

The rules are simple.

You have to get as high as possible by shitting on others, inforcing them into a shit-heap under you and climbing the newly created wonder. Everyone is game; you may shit on everyone as long they allow you or are made to allow you - one way or the other.

The winner is... eh, well, I don't really know.

In my experience, it's the ones who don't play - but that shouldn't keep us from getting to know this phenomenon better, so we can know how not to play it and recognize it when it's being played on us in order to neutralize it.

You can climb your shit-heap one person at a time, and hope to make the heap into a mountain some day.

If you are resourceful, you can transform others into shit at a much faster pace or more people simultaneously.

If you are truly ingenious, you will do all that and also take the game to a whole new level: you will battle with others who have been quite successful in generating their own shit-mountains, and you will emerge victorious.

Imagine, that's a whole lot of shit at your disposal!

It's too bad you can't stop and admire the sight, because then you would also notice the smell of all that shit you are standing on. Too keep going on is the only option.

Even if you are 'successful', your mountain is high and you avoided being stuck in someone else's, what happens when you run out of energy to feed, material to build, beauty to defile?

You are forced to stop; and boy, it's a long way to fall!

The higher you got, the harder the fall.

Shit-climbing is a lonely business. There are people under you, there are people above you, and there are people who will become under you.

Any other possibilities are almost impossible to be taken into consideration because of the intensely exclusive focus this game requires.

With manipulation there is no such thing as offering everything to each other: all that exists is take-take-take-take-take...Offering/giving as such cannot exist, perhaps only something like simultaneously taking from each other.

Temporary partnerships, business agreements are possible, but there is no true closeness, only rigidity and these partnerships are all doomed to failure.

Yes, you can join up with others to be faster and stronger in what you do - but when you ate up everything, you have only two choices:
1. You either decide not to harm each other, and both of you take the deep fall together at once.
2. One of you pushes the other below him/herself; first one of you takes the fall, then the other.

When all peers are enemy: In the end, there can be only one. When there is no more other energy to feed from, the association turns upon itself, just as when a single entity is on top and without energy; it turns upon itself internally, it digests itself - it implodes and vanishes into nothingness.

The fall is indeed high and the feeling of destruction almost unbearable.

But, when the fall is complete, one can truly relax and be at peace.
The stench is gone; there is no more shit to be standing in.

Once again, there is Choice in all its clarity!

What is there to do, who is there to be?

One can decide to go shit-climbing again - or, one can decide to see which kind of games can be played with power-with instead of power-over.

Afterall; why tread on mountains of shit when you can fly?