Thursday, September 25, 2008

Tyranny's "Black Hole"

The qualities of the cosmic anomaly called a "black hole" have some lessons to teach us about tyranny.

The more mass an object has, the stronger its gravitational field. Add enough mass and there will come a point where the gravity will be so great that the escape velocity of the body will be greater than the speed of light. The object will become invisible, although its existence can still be observed by looking at its effects on nearby matter and light. (This skips over the whole description of the object collapsing upon itself until it becomes a "singularity" of infinite density condensed to a single point which is smaller than an electron. Although that, too, has certain similarities to government)

If you are falling into a black hole, there is a point of no return, called the "event horizon", where you will disappear from the view of the outside world (or, possibly, appear to be frozen in time right at the event horizon to an outside observer). Yet you would not notice anything different, other than the constantly increasing gravitation and acceleration. Once you pass the event horizon, there is no escape, you must go into, or possibly through, the singularity. You will either be squeezed into oblivion and add to the mass of the object, or hypothetically you might come out elsewhere in the universe. Probably not a pleasant prospect either way.

That is just a complicated introduction to get you to this:

This is similar to falling into tyranny.

From the outside, such as through the lens of history, it may be obvious, though to you there is no clear point of no return. However, it is real and you really don't want to go there. Turn around before it is too late, because you won't be able to see it coming, and you may not make it to the other side. The real problem is that your family and friends will also be dragged along.

Much easier to avoid than to survive.


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