I’m starting to confidently believe that the blinding force of certain forms of power causes a lot of the world’s problems. I remember how in my junior year of college I was so intrigued by power that I obsessively researched its historic and present functionalities. In particular, I read a book titled The End of Power by Moises Naim.
In the book, the author shares his viewpoints on how power works, how it has changed, and how it is decaying. I purchased the book on Kindle and skimmed parts of it instead of reading it whole. Most notably, the chapter (or sub-chapter) that really captivated me was titled “Celebrating the Decay of Power.” As is usually the case with me, I skimmed the book, was captivated by particular sentences or words, and then engaged myself in my own thought-process. I wouldn’t really call that “reading a book,” but it’s frankly the closest I get to reading a book. It’s telling of my self-education methods and personality type.
My obsessive search for a better understanding of power has up to this point not been significantly attained from reading or listening to other people’s viewpoints; rather, it has been more directly observational. I sometimes feel as though I’m innately always on the qui vive for subtle behavior that I can directly observe. I’ve been lucky to be around respectively enormous power, and I’ve been studiously discerning that power since childhood.
I didn’t like it then, and I don’t like it now. As a matter of fact, I find myself absolutely repulsed by it. I have written numerous journal entries in which I demanded of my future-self to never seek out that kind of power, and to abandon it if it somehow creeps on me. Coming to better understand power has caused spells of significant sadness and regret. I was stuck between two opposing viewpoints that I held. On one hand, I saw power and macho dominance as necessary, and on the opposing hand, I realized the ills of power and saw it as unnecessary and counterproductive. As I refined my knowledge, I began to see power as the cause of many of society’s ills, instead of having been caused by society’s ills.
It’s massively difficult to accept and promote this perspective of power. We are bombarded by the contrary viewpoint, as successful entrepreneurs, military persons, politicians, and religious figures commonly preach power and dominance as necessities to triumph. In college, I took it upon myself to learn from the works of well-known writers, philosophers, scientists, etc. Take Machiavelli and Nietzsche, for example.
Machiavelli’s understandable belief that it is better to be feared than loved resonated with me, even though I did not want to accept it. Nietzsche, a proponent of aristocratic society, was an ardent believer in hierarchal rule and passionate power. He talks extensively about how aristocratic rulers, in growing up, acquire a deep understanding of the need to have societal rankings; that ‘complete men’ have the physical and psychical power to act on the will of power.
It’s a mind-boggling topic if you go too deep into it, and as mentioned in my previous journal entry, the setting does not allow for proper reflection. This journal entry serves as a quick jotting of thoughts, rather than a proper, academic reflection. I don’t want to succumb to the evils of some forms of power. The kind of power I’m thinking about shrinks people, rendering them hopeless. It inhibits growth in others and results in a lot of resource waste and redundancy; beautiful, mind-blowing ideas are downgraded just so the person in absolute power can validate her/his improperly and inaccurately inflated ego.
I’m reminded of this excerpt from Carl Sagan’s book, A Pale Blue Dot:
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”