Pro-log to exploration 351 succeeded by Children Liberationists at any time as heads of fate and state. Beneath the bludgeonings of Chance, My head is bloody but unbowed. I am the master of my Fate. I am the captain of my soul. (W.E.Henley, “Invictus”) The “diehard” as anesthetized man becomes the touchstone, the means of anticipating change. In every situation metamorphosis depends on the frozen arrest of an action. The “diehard,” paradoxically, can be read as an epitaph on his own tombstone.* The problem of the “diehard” is that he is unable to attain the role of continuing the complex process of transmitting tradition. He freezes on the controls. VERTEX V. VORTEX Fallacies of the Paraphernalia of Power If the “diehard” fails to understand the processes of power, the “revolutionary,” in seizing the positions of power, mistakes “the state apparatus” for the actual controls of power. The effect is the setting up of a “police state” regardless of ideology or intent. Power is always a relationship, the putting on of the vortex of the living community by becoming an acceptable service environment. The components that go into this mask of power must, therefore, vary according to the character of the communities. A wearable or bearable “mask of power” must comprise all the principal features and postures inherent in the life of the community. Today, on the other hand, it is a natural mistake of revolutionaries to take over the new service environments of press, radio, and TV. These cannot possibly wear the recognizable visage of deep currents of experience or feeling. Numerous shortcuts to power now loom as we learn to do more with less. Actually, this is the time when more and more awareness is demanded of everybody. When everyone is more and more involved in the information environment and in the creative process of discovery and innovation, the old divisions of work, play, and idleness disappear. The creative worker is never more powerful or more at leisure, never more the dropout from the specialist job, than when using all his faculties. We are entering a time of dialogue and heightened human awareness *For more on this theme of transformation and innovation, see “Narcissus and Narcosis” in Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan.