THE PEN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD

'The pen is mightier than the sword' was coined by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in for his play "Richelieu; Or the Conspiracy," 1839:

“True, This! - 

Beneath the rule of men entirely great,

The pen is mightier than the sword. Behold

The arch-enchanters wand! - itself a nothing! - 

But taking sorcery from the master-hand

To paralyse the Caesars, and to strike

The loud earth breathless! - Take away the sword - 

States can be saved without it!”

The people which one must be most fearful of are the ones who have intangible powers to move the world. It is not your governments, nor the police or even the army. All these forces do not compete with this force. In fact, those forces I have mention are usually placed to try and curb the rampant effect of this one, formidable force, and the people who have command of this force usually don’t have guns, armour or even an office at times; they are just simple craftsman. They are powerful however, because they are moulders of the human psyche, at the palm of their hand they hold the consciousness of humanity through the simple art of writing.

Often times I get a remark form someone telling me how they don’t agree with what I write or propose, whether it’s openly speaking up for gay rights, or highlighting religious hypocrisy. And what I have often said even in one of my post is that, “I write to provoke thought. I write to stimulate thought and stretch your awareness. You may not be in agreement with it, you may not like it, and that is fine, but one thing you can no longer do is ignore it. You cannot unthink the thought that it has provoked within you. And that is just my purpose.”

The people whom you should be more scared of than the puny government forces are writers. Your poets, you play writer, sculptors of consciousness. These are the people who mould how we see the world. They hold the power of words and if well placed or phrase creates an army that can neither be held back no stopped. A simple idea powerfully express has more force than the finest of armies under that direction of the most powerful man. No amount of army force can hold back an idea once it has been given the power of words. as Victor Hugo put it, "All the forces in the world are not so powerful as an idea whose time has come." And those in control want to stop new ideas from flowing.

You religious leaders and your governments completely understand this which is why they try to dictate, with a more cunning manner, what you read, what you listen to, and what you see. Your churches tell you what scriptures to read and which books to avoid claiming they are “works of the enemy” because they understand the most powerful weakness of the human mind and that is; if you plant an idea in the mind, soon that idea will become a habit, a mode of operation. One philosopher even put it beautifully by saying “once a mind has been stretched by a new idea it can no longer return to its original dimension.” Thus the most powerful people are those who can write and sway, yes sway, others into their way of thinking.

Governments understand this, which is why states want to have control over publishing houses. Even president Robert Mugabe insisted that the newspaper companies be shut down. In South Africa there has even been controversy around The Secrecy Bill  which aims at dictating which material is worthy to be published to the masses regarding the government. In North Korea it is at its most extreme as those who are found “blaspheming” King Jan Jul are held for treason and tortured if not executed. The state understand the power of words and the power of the human mind, which the masses that is being controlled is awareness of. They are led to think that what is being shown to them by the state even  religious institutions is pure and not tempered information.

“A mind once stretched by a new idea cannot return to its original dimension." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The most powerful men in history are the ones who knew how to use the power of words to mobilise the masses, whether for good or bad. Hitler did. Abraham Lincoln did. During the apartheid era in South Africa, Nelson Mandela's letters were read before allowed to be posted to her then wife, Winnie Mandela . And any words of phrase that would inspire a new thought to the people of South Africa who were fighting against apartheid were inked out, because the state knew the power of words in paper. The greatest revolutionaries happened in silence. Through pen a paper countries fell and rose. Cities were conquered and the enemy thrashed by a simple mechanism of pen and paper. An simple idea expressed with neat and precision has more power than the finest and strongest of armies. Whether it’s a scriptwriter, songwriter, or poets, each of these has the power of the feeding the audience, listeners and readers his ideas and philosophy.

In a movie written by John Orloff titled “Anonymous” a political thriller, which was circled around the Oxfordian Theory about William Shakespeare’s “supposed” writings being the works of Edward de Vere, 17^th Earl Of Oxford, set in England during the Elizabethan Era when Queen Elizabeth The First was the ruler, the character named Benjamin Johnson is arrested for being in possessions of plays written by Edward. He is then interrogated and asked “Have you ever been arrested, Mr. Johnson?” which he them replies “I am writer aren’t I? Of course I have been arrested.” Whether  the Oxfodian Theory is true or not, this movie does an impeccable job of expressing the true power of writing and how it can threaten the power of a state. Edward was fascinated by the power a writer has when he went to watch a play by Benjamin Johnson. The power of having thousands of people all listening to the writing of one man. The ideas of one man.

After Benjamin being fraudulently freed by Edward from his initial captivity for having written a comedy play that was declared seditious, Edward saw the political power which the play/play-writing had. However Benjamin didn’t see that power in which Edward then exclaimed, “All art is political Johnson, otherwise it will just be decoration. And all artist have something to say otherwise they would make shoes.”

The pen is mightier than the sword. A writer who can powerfully express his idea in writing has more power than all the government and religious forces. You believe what you believe because of the writing of someone. You scriptures and creeds are firmly etched in your consciousness because of the writings that the churches and the governments had perpetuated ideas of someone else. And them seeking to control your literature is them maintaining control over your thinking capacity, thus the people to fear most are not those of authority but those of indomitable skills when pen and paper meet to create a new world order from scratch.