When apparent stability disintegrates, people tend to give in to fear and depression, to need and greed. When no influence is strong enough to unify people, they divide. They struggle one against another, group against group, for survival, position, power. They remember old hates and generate new ones. They create chaos and nurture it. They kill, and kill, and kill, until they are exhausted and destroyed, or until they are conquered by outside forces, or until one of them becomes a leader most will follow or a tyrant most fear.
Prodigy is, at its essence, adaptability and persistent, positive obsession. Without persistence, what remains is an enthusiasm of the moment. Without adaptability, what remains may be channeled into destructive fanaticism. Without positive obsession, there is nothing at all.
Intelligence is ongoing, individual adaptability. Adaptations that an intelligent species may make in a single generation, other species make over several generations of selective breeding and selective dying. Yet intelligence is demanding. If it is misdirected by accident or by intent, it can foster its own orgies of breeding and dying.
A victim of Change may, through learning adaptation, become a partner of Change. A victim of Change may, through forethought and planning, become a shaper of Change. Or a victim of Change may, through shortsightedness and fear, remain Change's victim, Change's plaything, Change's prey.
Any change may bear the seeds of benefit. Seek them out. Any change may bear the seeds of harm. Beware. Change is infinitely malleable.
All struggles are essentially power struggles. Who will rule? Who will lead? Who will define, refine, confine, design? Who will dominate? All struggles are essentially power struggles, and most are no more intellectual than two rams knocking their heads together.
When apparent stability disintegrates, people tend to give in to fear and depression, to need and greed. When no influence is strong enough to unify people, they divide. They struggle one against another, group against group, for survival, position, power. They remember old hates and generate new ones. They create chaos and nurture it. They kill, and kill, and kill, until they are exhausted and destroyed, or until they are conquered by outside forces, or until one of them becomes a leader most will follow or a tyrant most fear.
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