The Snark | The Prophet Speaks

“I Must Create a System or Be Enslav’d by Another Man’s”

William Blake, cranky poet-prophet of the 18th century, gave his character Los the line: “I must create a system or be enslav’d by another man’s.” Blake was never one for understatement – this is the man who saw angels in trees and Satan lurking in the Enlightenment’s obsession with Reason. But this particular line feels like it could be scribbled on a sticky note above your monitor in 2025, right next to “unsubscribe from Netflix emails.” Because Blake nailed the basic choice: either you build your own system for living, or you end up marching in someone else’s parade, handing over your money for the privilege of being crushed under the tuba section.

The Modern Chains

Fast-forward to now. What are our “other men’s systems”? Debt, obviously. The American Dream has been downgraded into the American 30-Year-Mortgage. College is less about higher learning and more about shackling yourself to Sallie Mae for life, praying that your philosophy degree magically transforms into a job that pays more than minimum wage. Work expectations? Forget the noble labor of Blake’s visionary blacksmiths – our forge is Slack, and the hammer blow is another 9 p.m. email with the subject line “quick question.”

And what’s the prize for this endless treadmill? A car you don’t own, a house the bank mostly owns, and an Instagram feed where you pretend you’re enjoying either. Materialism, status anxiety, workaholism – this is the new plantation. We’re not living so much as maintaining subscriptions to the lives we’re told we should want.

Enter the Pirates

Which brings us back to Blake’s remedy: create your own system. The modern pirate doesn’t need a ship; they need the guts to walk away from the scripts. They’re the people saying no to the nine-to-five shackles, yes to the weird van-life, the artist’s garret, the absurd Etsy store that somehow pays their bills. They’re not saints – they probably owe taxes and forget to return calls – but they are free in a way most cubicle-dwellers will never be.

The modern pirate’s treasure chest? Autonomy. Their flag? Anything that signals “not part of the herd” – tattoos, thrift-store fashion, a Substack no one understands but everyone subscribes to out of curiosity. Their crime? Refusing to play the game of status markers and debt-fueled “success.” These people look reckless until you realize the real insanity is the polite obedience of the galley slaves rowing toward retirement.

Why Pirates Matter in Fiction

So why should writers care about this? Because your story desperately needs a pirate. Not necessarily a literal rum-soaked buccaneer, but someone who lives outside the system. Readers are bored of characters who obediently go to work, pay the bills, and collapse in front of Netflix. The pirate figure – a main character or even a scene-stealing sidekick – is the one who says: “Nah, I’m not doing it your way.”

They bring chaos, comedy, and dramatic punch. Suddenly the straight-laced protagonist is stuck with a roommate brewing kombucha in the bathtub, an aunt who ditched accounting to build puppets in Prague, and an ex who really did move to the woods and now rehabilitates injured squirrels. These characters don’t just break narrative monotony—they crack it wide open, reminding us of the thing most readers secretly want: escape.

The Pirate as Catalyst

The pirate doesn’t have to be the hero – they often work better as the character who jolts the story off its rails. Think of them as the dramatic accelerant: the person who questions the job, the marriage, the polite dinner party. They’re the ones who walk in with rum on their breath, or a manifesto in their pocket, or just the audacity to say, “Why are you people living like this?”

Even if you’re writing comedy, the pirate character is your license for absurdity. They can lampoon the system everyone else is enslaved by. They’re the cousin who insists that working 60 hours a week for a company that sells artisanal paperclips is modern indentured servitude. They’re the friend who refuses to use Venmo because it feels like “a surveillance state in your pocket.” They can be irritating, yes – but irritating in the way sand irritates an oyster: they make pearls out of plots.

Blake’s System or Yours

Blake wasn’t handing out lifestyle tips; he was issuing a warning. If you don’t forge your own worldview, someone else will hand you theirs, complete with user fees, hidden interest rates, and a long commute. Fiction writers should steal this warning, dress it up in pirate clothes, and let it swagger through their stories.

Because in the end, readers don’t just want to see characters survive inside the system – they want to see someone break it, mock it, or gleefully sail away from it. That’s where the drama is. That’s where the comedy lives. And that, Blake would say, is the only way to avoid enslavement: invent your own mad, dazzling, inconvenient system, and live by it – even if it means hoisting a ragged flag and steering straight into the storm.

The Snark