John Duncan

After eighteen more months I started working on them, and a couple of weeks afterward send him the results. Asmus liked what he heard, said he felt it was already finished — and since he hadn't participated directly in the composing process, he couldn't accept credit for involvement in it. We still disagree on this, but it's useless to insist that someone accept what he doesn't feel he's earned. So although I remain convinced that Asmus deserves to be acknowledged as an equal, we've agreed that this project would be credited to me alone.

"For thousands of years, the appetite for power being dispersed in countles tyrannies, great and small, which have raged here and there, the moment seems at hand when that appetite must finally collect and concentrate in order to culminate in a single power, expression of that thirst which as devoured, and still devours the globe, last word of all our dreams of mastery, the consummmation of our hopes and abberations. The sattered human herd will be united under the guardianship of one pitiless shepherd, a kind of planetary monster before whom the nations will prostrate temselves in an alarm bordering on ecstasy. The universe brought to its knees, an important chapter of history will be closed. Then will begin the disintegartion of this new reign and the return to the primal disorder, to the old anarchy; the smothered hates and vices will reappear and with them the minor tyrants of the bygone cycles. After the Great Slavery, mediocre ones. But as they emerge from their monumental servitudes, the survivors will be proud of their shame and, incomparable victims, will celebrate its memory."
— E. M. Cioran, "Learning from the Tyrants"