There was a nice jewish boy who once wrote, “With Great Power comes Great Responsibility.” All the rest of what he has given to the world, pale in comparison to the basic premise of this simple aphorism.
It’s core is simple. If you have power, you have a moral and ethical responsibility not only to yourself, but to the rest of the world around you. The only way that you can consider yourself a moral and ethical person is take up your responsibilities and fulfill them to the best of your ability.
Now, you could go the other way and do like rich and powerful people down through the ages have done. Rather than live up to your responsibility, you can use the bulk of your effort to demonize the poor and powerless, so that you can feel good about shirking your responsibilities.
Doesn’t mean you aren’t shirking them.
And make no mistake. It doesn’t matter if you are the puniest of your sire’s get and you were embraced two nights ago, you are yet, able to do things that a mortal man cannot do.
THAT IS POWER.
I am continually amazed by the number of Invictus who are shocked and surprised at how hard some Carthians work on behalf of their domains. I think most of them tell one another stories about how all we do is stumble around in a haze of bong smoke, muttering socialist platitudes, with our hands out for something. But some of us understand our responsibilities and lean into them. Additionally some of us understand the concept of enlightened self interest. Why do we work so hard on behalf of our Domain? BECAUSE WE FUCKING LIVE HERE!
But the crux of the biscuit is this: This basic idea cuts both ways. With Less Power comes Less Responsibility.
With NO power, comes NO responsibility.
If you marginalize us and take away our power, then we are not responsible for propping up the society that robs us of our agency.
And THEN it’s all Fight the Power/Kill Whitey time.
We work hard at achieving our personal goals.
We work hard at achieving our shared goals.
We work hard at trying to keep our cities safe out of enlightened self interest.
We do this because we know that no one is going to do it for us.
It’s like being in a relationship. If I’m in a relationship with someone and the sex is great, well...there is a certain amount of shit i’m willing to put up with. I think most men and women know what I’m talking about. But say my partner decides, for whatever reason, to stop having sex with me. Well that means that the amount of shit I’m willing to put with goes WAY the fuck down.
Some vampires get this. Others do not. And the sad fact is, Those of us who get this are constantly cleaning up the messes of the vampires who feel they have power, and "responsibility" is just something that happens to other people.
And when I say responsibility I mean it not just in the small sense of honoring your debts and helping out your brothers and sisters in the Movement. I don’t just mean it in the middling-sized sense of trying to keep your nose clean with our laws and keeping your domain safe for kindred and mortals alike. I mean it in the enormously huge sense of thinking about the future. Because the price of standing against a sick and rotting society is that you must have a ready alternative. Be ready when some somebody says to you in open court, “Ok mister smart-ass Carthian. What would YOU do?”
Hit them with it right between their beady little pig-eyes.
YOU SHOULD BE SCARED by the amount of responsibility that comes with the power of undeath.
Because power doesn’t really corrupt. It merely magnifies what is already there. Your virtues and vices will be writ large on the pages of history, and incidentally on the backs of the proles.
It’s absolutely true that if you want to see the measure of a person’s character, give them a taste of real power. It’s the same reason why the revolution tends to eat its own children.
Would that other kindred understood this as keenly as we do.
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