Our Shackles ...

Enlightenment, they call it
man’s emergence from immaturity,
a self-imposed prison built of cowardice and laziness.
How sweet the yoke of docility,
how warm the embrace of guardians
who feed us thoughts pre-chewed,
who guide us with the steady reins of convenience.

Sapere Aude! they cry.
But courage falters when fear looms large
fear whispered by pastors, tax men, and officers.
Do not argue, they demand,
as if reason were a sin,
as if obedience were salvation.

Books think for us,
pastors believe for us,
physicians eat for us
and we, content in our mechanized stupor,
trade our birthright for comfort.

Rules and formulas,
chains dressed as wisdom,
bind our minds with their silent weight.
The leap to freedom
is an uncertain stumble over ditches
too small to justify our terror.
Yet we cling to the familiar yoke,
fond of our immaturity,
trained to fear the very light
that promises liberation.

Even the guardians,
those architects of complacency,
cannot escape their own machinery.
Prejudice, like a loyal hound,
turns and devours its master.
New chains replace the old,
new dogmas leash the unthinking mass.

But freedom lies not in revolutions,
not in shattered thrones or scattered crowns.
It hides in the fragile flame of reason
the courage to think,
to question,
to speak against the tide of quiet conformity.

The age of enlightenment, they claim.
No, we dwell in its shadow,
its distant echo,
fumbling toward a freedom
we barely dare to imagine.