Status vs. Sovereignty
They have status, not sovereignty.
Position, not presence.
Reinforcement, not radiance.
Pedigree, not pulse.
Image, not immolation.
Let’s name what we’re really confronting:
Inherited Status with No Earned Spirit
There’s a strange quiet that follows those who have inherited their altitude. They speak with the confidence of the ordained, yet the air around them is thin—no warmth, no pulse, no scent of having been through anything real. Their status is a hand‑me‑down crown polished by generations of compliance. In every sphere—politics, art, academia, even the modern priesthood of influencers—the same pattern repeats: inheritance without initiation.
They carry the robes but have never caught fire. Never known the descent that burns away pretense, or the return that sanctifies survival. They are fluent in the gestures of merit—awards, titles, curated suffering—but none of it has been earned in the furnace of experience. The world mistakes their decorum for depth because the world has forgotten what depth feels like.
This is the wider illness of our age: credential over character, visibility over vision. We elevate the already‑elevated, mistaking their polish for proof. In universities, inherited networks masquerade as intellect. In art, the well‑connected rehearse rebellion as performance. In politics, dynasties pass torches they’ve never had to ignite. Even in spirituality, lineage has replaced revelation; the robe now signifies belonging, not transformation.
True spirit requires friction. It demands that something sacred be risked—reputation, comfort, control. To earn spirit is to descend, to die a little, to return bearing flame. That’s the difference between the robe that hides and the robe that reveals. One conceals inheritance; the other testifies to having stood inside the fire and survived.
Envy Cloaked as Etiquette
There is a particular sickness in the air when envy wears pearls. A low, humming rot beneath the pleasantries. It doesn’t shriek or snarl — no, that would be too honest. It simpers. It speaks in the dialect of curated smiles, gentle nods, and softly delivered sabotage. The ones who seethe in secret rarely raise their voice; they raise their eyebrows instead.
I’ve watched this performance across domains: in bourgeois bars and lounges, the writers' salon, the so-called sacred circles. They fawn and flatter with one hand while the other subtly moves to exclude, to erase, to silence. It’s not competition — competition would require self-possession. It’s the ache of inadequacy dressed up as propriety. The muttered dig disguised as concern. The compliment with a blade hidden inside.
They call it etiquette, but it’s just stylized punishment for those who don’t shrink. This world has trained its daughters well: if she glows too brightly, correct her under the banner of “tone.” If her body speaks truth, accuse her of vulgarity. If she refuses to bow, question her “fit.” The rules of civility were not written to uplift the sovereign. They were built to make her self-police her own radiance.
But anyone with eyes still sharp — with soul still intact — can see it. The envy behind the smile. The tightening jaw. The subtle clench of the throat when someone walks into the room lit from within. That’s the tell.
What’s most grotesque is the condescension. The kind that is offered as mentorship, as polite correction, as guidance from those who’ve never once tasted fire. It is unearned, and it reeks. These are not elders. They are cowards wearing corsets of convention. And their envy is not personal — it’s systemic. They have nothing to teach the sovereign, so they try to tame her instead.
Mediocrity Forming Covens of Mutual Affirmation
This is the real engine behind the dead light of our institutions, our scenes, our rooms. Not some grand conspiracy — just a quiet, persistent agreement: no one shines too brightly here. They form circles, call them collectives, roundtables, sisterhoods, support groups, tribes, cliques — but the pact is always the same. Dull your edge. Hide your hunger. Laugh a little too loudly when one of them says something tepid. And above all, never point out that the emperor is fucking naked.
It’s not that they don’t feel the lack. They sure as hell do. But they’ve agreed to mistake mutual insecurity for solidarity. What they call “uplifting each other” is often just a circle jerk of mediocrity — stroking each other’s egos to maintain the illusion of earned worth. No one’s growing. No one’s burning. They call it safety, but it’s suffocation in soft tones.
And the danger — the real danger — comes when someone enters the room with uncoached presence. Not loud, not performative, but unmistakably real. Someone who doesn’t need their nods to feel affirmed. Someone who sings loudly because singing FEELS GOOD, or tells the truth without softening the edges, or simply breathes in a way that says: I didn’t come here to make you feel safe.
That’s when the ritual starts to unravel. Eyes narrow. Smiles tighten. Whispers form. Suddenly the one who dares to radiate is “difficult,” “intimidating,” “not a good fit.” Not because she’s cruel, but because she didn’t ask permission to matter.
And here’s the twist: their mutual affirmation breeds delusion. The more they stroke each other’s smallness, the more they believe they’ve earned the right to advise, to correct, to condescend. They become authorities in a system built entirely of avoidance — and somehow believe that their comfort qualifies them to judge those forged by chaos.
But comfort is not merit. Echoes are not wisdom.
And the table they’re so afraid to rise above?
It was never sacred. It was just convenient.
Cunning Without Clarity
Cunning is the lowest form of intelligence.
It requires no vision, no risk, no intimacy with the unknown — only the skill to manipulate shadows without ever touching the flame. It’s the intelligence of cowards: those who want influence without revelation, movement without exposure, advantage without vulnerability. It thrives in corridors, behind closed doors, beneath the dignity of the stage.
They’ve memorized the gestures, the rites, the language.
They know when to smirk, when to signal, when to strike.
But that’s all it is — performance without presence.
They call it being strategic. I call it sleight of hand with no hand.
I think often of Iago — the patron saint of the mediocre manipulator.
He doesn’t burn. He corrodes.
Not because he’s powerful, but because he resents power in others.
He slithers through the play not as a genius, but as a parasite.
A man who lacks poetry and thus must unmake the poetic.
This is the model our culture now rewards: the Iago class — clever in the shallowest sense, destructive in the most boring ways imaginable.
You’ll find them everywhere: in the committee who rewrites your work before they’ve understood it. In the gallery owner who smiles at your opening and cuts your funding the next day. In the “friend” who warns others about your intensity behind closed doors, while sipping your wine and quoting your lines.
What they cannot stand — what terrifies them — is clarity.
Because clarity cannot be maneuvered.
It either is, or it isn’t. It doesn’t bargain, doesn’t flatter, doesn’t fold.
And this is how I know them: I’ve watched them outmaneuver, outvote, outlast.
But never once have I seen them inspire.
Never once have they made the room fall silent from awe.
Never once have they said something that rang like a tuning fork in the ribs.
That’s because clarity is not strategy. It is frequency.
And no memo can teach it.
I’ll be speaking more about the different levels of intelligence in a future post — not the ones they measure on paper, but the kinds you can feel in the bones, in the voice, in the architecture of a soul.
But for now, let’s be clear:
Cunning is not clever.
It’s just the art of hiding your smallness behind well-timed digs, said with a pathetic smirk.
Fear Dressed as Propriety
They mistake stability for sanity. They build neat, well‑lit cages and call them lives. The routines, the politeness, the untroubled tones — all of it a choreography designed to keep anything unpredictable at bay. What they really mean by order is insulation. What they mean by maturity is sedation.
They mistake tight seams for integrity. A degree to humblebrag about, a calm voice, the right vocabulary of moderation — these become the new sacraments. But integrity isn’t about staying pressed and polished; it’s about staying whole when the fabric tears. The immaculate ones fear the tear most of all. They iron themselves flat so no pulse shows through.
When they call someone “too intense,” they mean too alive. Too visible in their wanting. Too willing to say the unsayable. They’ll use the language of composure to exile the erotic, because desire threatens the scaffolding of their small certainties. The body that moves freely, the voice that trembles with conviction — these are treated as contagions. Propriety is the quarantine.
I’ve learned that this kind of fear always hides behind moral language. It calls itself prudence, decorum, professionalism, “correctness.” But propriety, in its deadliest form, is the last defense against the one who makes the room ache with possibility. It is the armor of those who have forgotten ecstasy. They confuse numbness with grace, stability with sanity, and mistake still water for purity—failing to see stagnant water and what it breeds.
What they call composure, I call arrested evolution.
What they call respectability, I call the slow suffocation of the sacred.
And when they whisper “too much,” I hear the tremor of a world terrified of being reborn.
🜍 Closing Meditation: On Sovereignty
Sovereignty isn’t given.
It’s not awarded by committee or ratified by applause.
It emerges — raw and holy — when the inner flame refuses to dim.
When the body becomes altar.
When the voice opens and nothing false survives the threshold.
It does not ask permission.
It does not wait its turn.
It walks in knowing — and that is the heresy.
Because to truly know oneself in a world built on costume and echo…
is an unforgivable clarity.
They’ll call it arrogance.
They always do.
“Who does she think she is?”
The answer — felt, not spoken — is the crime.
Because in a room full of masks,
the one who arrives unveiled isn’t just unwelcome — she’s dangerous.
I don’t seek dominion.
But I will never pretend I don’t carry it.
And I will not shrink so that the brittle can feel safe in their staging.
So go ahead, pathologize me, belittle me, laugh at me. Those who walk out of the abyss singing couldn’t give two figs for any labeling/identity obsessions the populous happens to have. ;)
To those who know —
to those with the pulse, the heat beneath the skin,
the ones who’ve paid for their clarity in blood, silence, exile, and orgasm —
I see you.
If you’ve ever been punished for presence,
not for what you did,
but simply for being —
then you already know where the line is drawn.
Between status and sovereignty.
Between image and immolation.
Between those who inherited robes —
and those of us who became fire.
We know which side we’re on.
We don’t need it written.
We burn. That’s our signature.
Drag Iago into the square. Unmask him at high noon.
I’ll be waiting by the pillory with a basket of bruised fruit and a perfect aim.
— Majeye