A remastered version of Future By Design’s “No Allies” initially released back in 1998. This dark and atmospheric drum ‘n’ bass track, again features a slap bass which is unusual for this genre. I guess this track sounds like a war in the mind. I wrote it because sometimes I’ve felt that I have no allies in life. There are times when I have a point of view, an aspiration, and it seems like no one supports me in it. I’ve grown to realise that this is normal, even what makes us men. As a man, you are accountable and must have the courage to take a stand for your convictions, either for good to enjoy their fruit, or for evil and pay the consequences of your thoughts and actions.
This track is also about the mental pressure associated with modern living, the fast and unforgiving pace of life. We are often too rushed spend time building real connections, everything becomes transactional with a veneer of relationship. I end up thinking, are we becoming like machines, have we created the kind of society that forces us to work like robots, continually sacrificing our humanity for the sake of money and status?
To put it quite bluntly, I don’t think the mental pressure that work can put us under is calculable. The impact on our health, the loss of time and the draining of our humanity is a massive problem, both individually and as a society. The corporate world only knows profit, and will only pay lip-service to well-being after the damage is done to keep us poor workers in its clutches.
We need a mode of work that puts people first, we are not “human resources” to be used up, like things that are expendable, but rather, we are in the fabric of everything, we are more important than the profit, and our benefit should be the chief aim. I say this because in a world which is exclusively or even predominantly driven by profit, the needs of the people who support the system, and whom the system ultimately serves will be undermined.
This is not just my thinking, it is biblically based. Read Ezekiel 28, it speaks of a ruler who excelled in trade, grew strong and beautiful, but desecrated what is holy. Understand that the kings and principalities mentioned in the so-called “Old Testament” are not defunct, they still exist. However the battle we fight is not against physical people, but against the principalities and the rulers and authorities the front their power (Ephesians 6:12).
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this world’s darkness, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
Ephesians 6:12
With that in mind, “No Allies” represents my spiritual battle about being committed to my faith in a society that is growing more hostile to it, not only because of people’s attitudes to faith, and the general expectations regarding what society regards as norms of conduct; but also because even to live in this system, I am fighting against an ideology that doesn’t value me as being truly human seeing me as merely a resource.
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