Saturday, 4 May 1996
Order is based on one thing: the acceptance by the majority of the population that things are the way it should be. Of particular importance is the acceptance of the order by the “soldier”. If the soldier doesn’t accept the situation, the entire order can collapse.
That’s why the 1917 revolutions in Russia succeeded– the soldiers no longer accepted that the czar necessarily had to be in power. The person who has a weapon in his hand is the key to the survival or decline of a particular order. When the czar’s soldiers started ignoring his orders, the whole thing collapsed, and Czar Nicholas II was suddenly nothing more than an ordinary man in his late forties.
Does that mean the pawn is the most important figure on the chessboard? As long as he accepts the order of the “king/queen” and the “bishops” and follows their orders, he is just a pawn in their hands. But as soon as the pawn (or enough pawns) refuses to accept and obey, the situation changes. Then both the pawn and the king are just ordinary people, with the difference being that one has a weapon in his hand.
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