I have to apo­lo­gise. I have been absent for a long time and ded­ic­ated a lot of my time to other things than keep­ing my web-log up to date. Today I wish to rec­tify this by try­ing to explain how I per­ceive my dominance

Who I am

Developed in Japan between the Heian and Tok­ugawa Ages (9^th-12^th cen­tury), Bushido emerged as a code for Samurai. I believe many of the key ele­ments are import­ant to under­stand­ing how to per­ceive ones own dom­in­ance. Apart from the many ele­ments explained much bet­ter in the link above there are seven key principles:

1. Gi tak­ing the right decision, with equan­im­ity, the right atti­tude, the truth. Rectitude.
2. Yu bravery, almost heroism
3. Jin benevolence
4. Rei the essen­tial qual­ity, courtesy
5. Makoto truthfulness
6. Melyo glory and honour
7. Chugo devo­tion and loyalty.

I relate to those key prin­ciples as they reflect very well who I am try­ing to be. I think they can be true for any­one, but they help even more when you take on respons­ib­il­ity for another being in your life, such as a Master/slave rela­tion­ship usu­ally devel­ops into. I did not arrive at being who I am through learn­ing what this life­style has to offer and then mak­ing a con­scious decision whether I wanted to be sub­missive or dom­in­ant. I simply drif­ted into it and found out very quickly that I am not suited to be on the receiv­ing end.

My Dom­in­ance

The way I react in my every­day life is not gov­erned by a learned beha­viour. I react almost always uncon­sciously to my slave and the envir­on­ment I am in, usu­ally people will per­ceive this as dom­in­ant beha­viour. My dom­in­ance stems from an inbred fear of loos­ing con­trol. There is noth­ing more ter­ri­fy­ing to me than to sur­render con­trol over my phys­ical exist­ence to another per­son. I do not show com­puls­ive beha­viours nor do I come across as a con­trol freak, but this built in fear or need­ing to con­trol my own des­tiny is what makes me effect­ive at being a dom­in­ant per­son. I like to con­trol the envir­on­ment I am in and I like to make con­scious decision of how I dis­trib­ute not only my trust in a third party, but what I am will­ing to have them do to me. There­fore I am very con­scious about my pri­vacy and what people do with my per­sonal data, I am very pas­sion­ate about my employer and how that envir­on­ment treats me and I am of course very con­scious and pas­sion­ate when it comes to my slave and what she is allowed to con­trol while being in my pres­ence or away from me. Most of my time is spent mak­ing decisions on how to give up con­trol, what I can be happy with when I am not in charge. Most of that hap­pens auto­mat­ic­ally, is very depend­ant on the situ­ation but some­times I have to take a step back and make that decision con­sciously. I believe that is a key ele­ment in identi­fy­ing how much your own dom­in­ance means to you, how ingrained it is or whether your dom­in­ance is a choice, some­thing you learned to apply to a cer­tain situ­ation. My dom­in­ance is not a choice to me, it is who I am, it defines me.

Strength and Dominance

I have never related phys­ical strength to my dom­in­ance. What you will often find in a sad­istic rela­tion­ship, between a sad­ist and a true mas­ochist, is that dom­in­ance is mainly or mostly, expressed through phys­ical action. If I am strong enough to tie you up, restrain you, use you in a phys­ical man­ner, that then means that I am more dom­in­ant than you are. I think that is a very spe­cial case of inter­ac­tion and I think it is valid in such situ­ation. One should never infer from that, that the abil­ity to phys­ic­ally pun­ish someone makes them auto­mat­ic­ally dom­in­ant. Often a release in con­trol will sig­nify best when you are being most dom­in­ant. A very simple example would be, when you make the decision to buy a cof­fee or not your slaves decision. If she knows that you dis­like her intake of cof­fee, because you believe that it dam­ages her body, which you con­sider yours, she will most likely not choose to have a cof­fee, but drink some­thing else. In express­ing a free­dom of choice, I still dom­in­ated her decision mak­ing pro­cess. This has little to do with my phys­ical cap­ab­il­ity of hand­ling her flesh. Fero­cious­ness and determ­in­a­tion can eas­ily out­weigh phys­ical size or what we are cap­able of doing with our muscle’s power.

Pun­ish­ment and Dominance

Ima­gine your­self in a situ­ation where you think that pun­ish­ment is neces­sary, because your slave did not act in a cer­tain way. Can you ima­gine your­self pun­ish­ing her without being phys­ical at all. Can you ima­gine to pun­ish her without con-sequencing her in a tit-for-tat manner?The way you choose to pun­ish can tell you a lot about the inner work­ings of your dom­in­ance. This is true for me, I do not know whether it applies to every­one else, I have to make that assump­tion. Any type of pun­ish­ment can be seen a fail­ure to exert your dom­in­ance over your part­ner or slave or even a given situ­ation that you are in. If you choose to look at a quick fix, you will usu­ally opt for a phys­ical pun­ish­ment, which will inflict pain and thus allow the receiver to quickly draw a con­clu­sion that her decision might have not been the smartest. How­ever such cap­ital pun­ish­ment is usu­ally inef­fect­ive, because the long term learn­ing effect is ques­tion­able. I feel that true dom­in­ance, if there even is such a thing, stems from the abil­ity to pacify your emo­tions, exert self-control and ana­lyse what the best course of action might be. Incid­ent­ally these vir­tues are also two you will find in Bushido.

In Con­clu­sion

I would like to make a request. After read­ing this little art­icle, ask your­self how much of what I exper­i­ence on a daily basis applies to you and then decide whether you are dom­in­ant or whether you are try­ing to be dom­in­ant. I would not want any­one to des­per­ately try to be some­thing they are not. Some things come to you very eas­ily, oth­ers can be learned and some take a long time to learn and only determ­in­a­tion can get you there. One thing is for sure though, if you lack the tal­ent to be a great skier you will never become the next Her­mann Maier. I believe that every slave deserves a great Mas­ter and someone that embraces his Dom­in­ance every day, try­ing to under­stand it bet­ter with every passing hour. Ask your­self, can you be that person?