Dear George,
If you want to control a man, encourage him to make an object of his ego. Granted, this is the great ontological fallacy because a subject cannot be its own object. However, this has not stopped the ego fetish from spreading like swamp scum on a polluted pond.
Once an ego becomes an object, it immediately begins casting about for a label that will establish its identity in the world. The man who gives primacy to the “I” must compulsively state, “I am this,” or, “I am that.” The unlabeled ego is the lost ego.
The labeled ego makes oppression so much easier. The strongest link in the chain that binds it is called “consistency.” The need for consistency replaces the secret police, torture and summary executions. When an ego internalizes a label, it embraces a totalitarianism more pervasive than either Hitler or Stalin could ever dream of. Reality demands nuance; the label rises above that and deals only in absolutes. The labeled ego is the ego of either/or and never of both/and.
This absolutism forces the individual into a drainpipe of if-then linear thinking. Absolutism, as it sloshes through this drainpipe, invariably leads to somebody being slaughtered. In the fantasy world of the labeled ego, one either destroys or is destroyed, is either strong or weak, in the face of other labeled egos.
However, there is a caveat here. Since only the advanced civilization are capable of the intellectual rigor necessary to produce a labeled ego, then it follows that the traditional methodology of oppression must be applied when dealing with more primitive civilizations whose intellectual development is too retarded to label their egos.
A police state does not enslave the labeled ego, reasoning does. The beauty of the labeled ego is that enables you to convince an individual that his belief system is deviant or, better yet, that it is abnormal. Thank God, there’s a pill for that. Medicate, don’t incarcerate.
But, George, beware the man who wears his ego as a loose garment. He is the dangerous one.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
9:14:02 PM 
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