| Muse – Supremacy Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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First thing to take into account, this song was written by Matt Bellamy, frontman of Muse. Second, his personal view is that government should be decentralized, corporation size limited, and that influence of lobbyist on politics is unfair and detrimental overall. He is in favour of Noam Chomsky's views, and is anxious that the world might some day become an dystopian, Orwellian, authoritarian place. That said, my view is that the meaning of this song is not just about the fall of western civilization, or energy shortages, or influence of religion. The song is in fact a subtle criticism of the current politics in UK and US. The meaning is deliberately subtle, because Matt wanted to make the song timeless - not tied to the current state of affairs in the West, but instead a message that is applicable to any time. [ Wake to see Your true emancipation is a fantasy ] There are two possible interpretations of this verse, possibly a deliberate choice. First, human race is not truly emancipated from nature. Any action we do results in a reaction from our environment. Second, that the belief that any individual, male of female, can be dissociated from the society he or she lives in, is naive and a fantasy. All of us depend on societal structure in which we live, and cannot emancipate ourselves. Emancipation in this second sense is something that is frequently sold to us as a good thing, but it leads to the destruction of the classical family structure, higher divorce rates, difficult childhoods, decline of responsibility as a value. [ Policies Have risen up and overcome the brave ] With "Policies", he's referring to social policies that are collectivist in nature - any policy that mandates that something must be done "for the good of the society" even if it harms an individual. By "brave", he is referring to the previous generation of people who built the modern western world on traditional values such as strong family, hard-work, freedom of expression, striving towards excellence, competence, taking risks, and in particular, on US - often referred to as the land of the brave. The connotation of "brave" is positive in this verse - had it been negative, he would have chosen a different word, such as "vain", which would rhyme slightly better with "mean" in the last verse. [ Greatness dies Unsung and lost, invisible to history ] Again, "Greatness" has a positive meaning here, not a less common meaning of "self-esteem" or "arrogance", "force" or "pride". It's unsung and lost, and erased from history, because the current policy-makers write and teach history, including different values. This takes us naturally to the next verse, which hits the mark. [ Embedded spies Brainwashing our children to be mean ] It's a common tactics to sell your ideas to young people if you want your ideology to catch on. People who want to force their ideology therefore strive to inject themselves into schools. As one example, the snitching system in USSR was quite effective at turning children against parents, and turned children against their parents. In the recent years, we've been witnessing something similar from left-wing politicians in the west. It's become popular in schools across UK to ask children to report on parents who use "inappropriate speech" in their homes. As another example, in the last several years, it has become quite common in US schools (and California in particular, where Matt Bellamy lives) to encourage children to define sexual identity when they are young, and get them on hormone blockers, without saying anything to their parents. He deliberately uses the adjective "embedded", because the people who vigorously advocated for such policies and practices are very embedded into the political structure and institutions in US and UK. It is therefore hard for a single person, or the brave, to counter or challenge their policies - any opposition from an individual results in the immediate perceived reputation loss of that individual, hence the few brave are unable to do anything about it. [ You don't have long I am on to you The time, it has come to destroy Your supremacy ] But, Matt ends the song in a positive note. He states that this sort of erosion of western culture and the transition into an authoritarian, policy-driven, brainwashed culture, will not last for long, and will eventually fall apart naturally, or be destroyed in an uproar. Also, recall that the title of the album of this song has, as is common with Muse, scientific roots. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is a physical law that states that the amount of entropy (disorganization) of a closed system only raises with time. This means that if you start with a perfectly organized set of particles, eventually their positions and movement will become extremely chaotic and unpredictable - it is just the matter of time. While the law is meant to describe physical systems composed of moving particles, or information systems, many have used entropy in a societal context. Loosely applied to human societies, the 2nd law would state that no organizational structure, whether libertarian or authoritarian, can last forever, and will eventually erode and collapse. And so is the case with any supremacy movement, be it sold under the ideology of favoritism towards a particular race, religion, or more recently outrage against anybody who challenges the ideas of "inclusivity", "gender"-fluidity or "equity" - it doesn't have long, and will eventually burst. |
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