The beggar's cup is empty. Hardly anybody cares about him. Despising side glances hurt, still hurt every time. A squirrel runs up the tree and goes for the best nut. Suddenly a calm understanding replaces the beggar’s bitterness. He walks into the mall where he usually steals, but today, he does not steal. He eats. Today, they care again, care about him, even give him respect. Today, he rejoined society.

All agree on whether to punish or not is important. This comes from our fear of being innocently punished or otherwise hurt undeterred, un-revenged. R holds that the complementary issue of rewards is one that sorts itself out efficiently and sufficiently. L disagrees and points to different examples, as numerous or otherwise important. R likes to conserve established social structure, holding on to an extend that leads to blindness about how much it changes nevertheless. L is no less conservative, but counts different aspects toward the “natural” and “good” (e.g. “nature”) rather than natural and bad (rape), perhaps bad enough to be denied the status of natural after all, which is where R at times employs “natural” as if it is an excuse. R hopes that the distribution of power justifies itself much like the allocation of goods, which it is inescapably entwined with. L may think that this is denial and that such utopia may hold at most in a far future, while now, although power fundamentally always justifies itself, it somehow is not yet justified, not absolutely as good power.

R and L can disagree in various ways about “absoluteness” of power; the absolute/relative distinction is relative (!), even in physics. Both L and R in some ways and especially publicly agree on that the good is not set by power as such alone. Of course, this hinges on that the validity of certain distinctions are not to be doubted on punishment of removal from the discourse. But power is fundamental. Even the refusal of the good/bad distinction, being meta-good “beyond good and evil”, is my power not only over what distinctions to refuse but more importantly, over what to focus on in their stead, what other labels to attach and thus attach our focus on.

The beggar never left society, but today, he plays another role. You can play a different role today. Ask yourself: Do I enjoy my role play, this role? Do I enjoy playing roles this much at all? Do I believe my role? Am I a better actor if I ‘play hard’ at the popular play-hard-work-hard role rather than taking it easy? How much do I sustain from the appreciation by the other actors, usually for being support roles for their facades? May not they also suffer just as me and would welcome my coming out?

Classical philosophy wants to find out how it should be as seriously as how it is. The modern philosopher claims to tell only how it is, not how it should be. Postmodern philosophy realizes that saying how it is is a form of saying how it should be (described). Postmodern philosophy tells how it could be told. Nietzsche ranted also about how it should be told, but that was the conclusion of his embracing his own idea about that philosophers’ descriptions are their ways to reach for power; he made himself to be such a philosopher in this way.

Postmodernism does not say that all is equivalent but rather describes the powers which break that symmetry. Language games are power games. Wittgenstein kept to writing about chairs and tables, and thus is labeled the great philosopher who transcended modern philosophy. Foucault or Derrida said often much the same but mentioned power structures and their construction, facilitating the deconstruction of their justifications, and so they count often as “pseudo-philosophers”. [1]

Whether belief constructs reality or you believe in absolute reality un-constructed (however that can be made meaningful): Power and beliefs are central, have always been.

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[1] S. Vongehr: Rational Suicide and Global Suicide in the amor fati of Modal Totality. In Press (2014)