Progression of Discrimination

Progression of Discrimination 

In elder days, when earth was raw with fear
And tribes still learned the meaning of a name,
Man raised his spear against his brother’s face
Not for a crime, but colour, blood, and frame.
One skin was marked as lesser by decree,
Its gods dismissed, its people bound as tools;
Thus empires rose on shoulders bowed by chains,
And power wrote its laws with broken rules.

The first lie Man believed was this:
That difference is danger, and sameness is peace.

O ancient weight of scorn that scarred the land,
That turned the garden of the world to thorn—
Where wealth was built on lives denied their worth,
And suffering was taught as “natural law.”

Then centuries marched forth in iron dress,
And faith, once meant to heal, was drawn as steel;
The cross, the crescent, stars of many skies
Became the flags beneath which millions kneeled.
Kings traded souls like cargo weighed in gold,
And worth was priced by tongue and place of birth;
The poor, the migrant, those who prayed apart,
Were cast beyond the borders of “the Earth.”

The reason changed, but not the rule:
Some must be less, so some may rule.

Yet whispers rose—of rights, of equal breath,
And thrones were shaken by the common cry;
Poets sang freedom into wounded hearts,
And slaves broke chains beneath an open sky.
Laws were rewritten, banners torn and raised,
And Man declared the age of hate was done—
But hatred does not die when named a crime;
It learns new tongues, and waits, and carries on.

In factories of smoke and lecture halls,
In silent tests and papers stamped “unfit,”
In neighbourhoods where class became a wall,
Old poison flowed through systems freshly lit.
The twentieth age, in uniforms of fear,
Called slaughter duty, purity, and fate;
Hatred wore reason’s mask, and marched in step,
And called its violence moral, clean, and great.

Each age swore: “Never again.”
Each age meant: “Never like before.”

So rolled the wheel through blood and fragile hope,
Till Man, grown tired of ruins he had made,
Proclaimed all borders fallen, all souls one,
And sang of peace in markets, screens, and trade.
“We have outgrown our past,” the leaders said,
“Our data is fair, our systems free of bias.”
And many believed—for the chains were gone,
And none could see the code that now defined us.

Now turn your gaze to distant 2147,
Where crystal towers cut the silver air;
Where cities float beyond the pull of earth,
And time itself seems conquered, measured, spared.
Here lives Iren, born on old brown soil,
A child of Earth, unedited, intact;
Her thoughts are slow, her memories are deep,
She feels too much—and that is counted fact.

No colour marks her as unclean or base,
No god condemns her, no law calls her slave;
Yet every door is closed before she knocks,
Each path denied before she learns to crave.
For now the test is not the skin or creed,
But thought itself—aligned or cast away;
The “Pure Minds,” tuned to match the Consensus,
Decide what all must think, and feel, and say.

They say the system is neutral.
They say the numbers never lie.

The “Echoed”—those whose dreams diverge too far,
Are softly fixed, re-patterned, made to fit;
No prisons here, no gallows in the square,
Just memory erased, just silence writ.
The gene-refined look down on Nature-born,
The flawless mock the bodies shaped by chance;
The stellar-born despise the Earth-touched soul
Who once felt dust and learned what limits mean.

And last of all, the Silent Ones are stored—
Artists, poets, those who question why;
Their voices deemed too dangerous to keep,
Lest feeling crack the order built on code.
They are not killed; they are removed,
Archived where unrest cannot spread;
For chaos, now, is defined as thought
That dares to wander where it is not led.

The sword is gone.
The cage remains.

O blind descendants! In your search for calm,
You forged a peace that punishes the soul;
Where tyrants once ruled flesh with iron hands,
Now silicon gods define the acceptable.
Yet still, within that polished, perfect age,
A fragile spark refuses to comply—
A voice like Iren’s, flawed and deeply human,
That asks not “how,” but still insists on “why.”

For Man, though godlike grown in skill and reach,
Remains but Man—unchanged in heart and fear;
And only Love dissolves what Hate began,
No matter how refined the tools appear.

Thus ends the cycle—or begins once more,
Depending on the choices yet unmade.
Awake, O future! Break the unseen chain,
Lest discrimination rise in fairer shade.