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| Chess pieces and Chessboard |
Never in my life before had I seen philosophy in this royal game of Chess. I had only thought of it as an idle quest for victory through subterfuges and strategy. But just recently, as I try to allude the wooden chessboard as the firm earth on which “self-professed rational animals and their subordinates” dwell, my inquisitive mind meandered into a profound (yet not entirely new) realization.
In accord with the Conflict Theory in Sociology, the inhabitants belonging in the lower caste system have been unflinchingly succumbing to the unspoken rule of their being used as pawns by the elite group with high socioeconomic and political status, always unconsciously ready to do their bidding. These higher classes cannot do things which tend to sprout naturally favorable results for them all by themselves, hence, they resort to manipulation, monopoly, and obscurantism against the oppressed; Because they control the industry, oversee the distribution of resources, perhaps even have a say in governance, the proletariats have no other choice. Despite their indefatigable drudgery, nothing seems to change. The cycle continues to turn and turn, almost mechanically, while we gaze at the widening gap between the poor and the wealthy in hopelessness.
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| Karl Marx |
There are silent competitions on who can accumulate more greenbacks, the wealthy against their fellow wealthy, both of them have servants in tow. Contemporary society is governed by material desires and tainted by self-interest, all of them who are annexed to it, including the government, even the Church. The militia (knight) which is an adjunct of the government wouldn't even bat an eye on whom they're strangling, as long as they know they're following orders from the infiltrated “higher authorities.”
To what extent can those pawns survive? Their limitations, including but not limited to, financial, political (we're fools by simply thinking our votes will haul us into a life of raised living standards), and educational contexts, are not unknown to all of us. We are privy to the truth that they can only move so much, and when the elite masses think that they can't no more, being utterly exploited, they'll stop bothering. The laypeople are aware of the system's fault, banes, and shortcomings, but they're unfailingly adamant to venture because to immerse in this inimical environment, prima facie conducive only to capitalists, is their only way to survive. At the mercy of the other exploitative class, they're left. Eventually they'll get annihilated, and no one will care. But surely, there are tenacious spirits who succeeded in their endeavours to part with their former life status, those who made it to the 8th square amidst many bone-breaking misadventures. Lucky are they to be finally at par with those high-and-mighties whom they once served with docile complaisance.
As Longfellow versed it, this world is like a theater stage with Nature as its director as much as how a chess game is puppeteered by knowing yet unfathomable hands. Chess pieces are carved randomly; we really don't know, and may not probably know for eternity, how our “facticity” (i.e. Race, Sex, Family, Genetics) is predetermined. Is there a past life? Then why are humans in lower classes suffering from something they don't even remember? Mayhap something is wrong with Nature itself; but who are we to grapple against a thing that established everything, to blame a thing (or supernatural phenomenon) we don't fully know?
Black or White is just an outer covering (and no, I'm not literally talking about skin color alone). Underneath we're all the same as all the Chess pieces; regardless of “position,” we're all shaped out of a single piece of wood. Whoever emerged the victor wouldn't matter in the end because whether you're a pawn or a king, in the pitch blackness enveloping the inside of a chessboard, no one could make a distinction of who was who. Winners and losers would be commingling, and each would laugh at how foolishly nice their game was.
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