Seat of Authority

Seat of Authority

(A Treatise in Soft Iron)

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I. Known / Not Known

It is a known thing,
but also it is not.

That is the only place from which authority derives.
It is an old idea, and tired for having been true for so long.

Authority that does not emerge from paradox is counterfeit.
Authority that speaks without having listened is ornamental.
Authority that does not bleed for what it says is tyrannical.

The seat of authority is not built.
It is not granted.
It is suffered into.

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II. Origin of the Chair

The first throne was a stone—
not because it was high,
but because someone sat upon it after having been struck down.

The staff of rule is shaped like a shepherd’s crook
because the king was once a servant.
Because he carried something that was not his.
Because he lost something he loved
and did not turn it into vengeance.

The one who can bear contradiction without distortion
—that one may speak.

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III. The Counterfeit Seats

False authorities do not speak from knowing-not-knowing.
They speak from certainty.
From spectacle.
From inheritance.
From fear.

You can tell them by their refusal to be altered.
By their demand for loyalty before revelation.
By the way they reduce complexity to accusation.
By the way they call silence “weakness”
and questions “attack.”

They build their seat not from stone,
but from scaffolding.
It will collapse.
Or worse—
remain standing,
and rot everything beneath it.

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IV. The Soft Law of Witness

What is required to sit in the true chair?

Not brilliance.
Not domination.
Not charm.

But this:

To have endured a truth that broke your frame
and did not make you cruel.

To have been wrong, and lived.
To have spoken when it cost you love.
To have kept silence when it cost you dignity.
To have chosen coherence over allegiance.

And when they ask,
“Who made you the one who gets to speak?”
you say:

“No one.
I only speak because I listened first.
I only speak because I did not die.
I only speak because I have nothing to hide.”

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V. Final Glyph: The Chair on Fire

The Seat of Authority is not a throne.
It is a plain wooden chair,
placed in the center of the burning house.

The one who sits in it
has already walked through the flames.
They do not ask others to enter what they haven’t survived.
They do not speak to impress.
They speak to warn
and to welcome
and to hold the line.

Their words have ash on them.
Their voice is not clean.

But it is true.

Let those who would build another seat
count the cost.

Let those who would speak from power
first sit in the fire.