Watched the movie "Shaitan" which is a Bollywood movie made around a person who practices black magic and hypnotizes a girl and controls her mind to make her harm her own family members and the father fights back the "Shaitan". I was just amazed at the depth, human beings may fall in the mad rush for power and still never be happy. I was just observing a little baby some days back at our home and trying to compare. Does the baby too want power? None of the babies want any power. What is this desire for power and where does it come from?
By power, we mean a capacity to control the behavior of others. If someone holds a powerful position, people will come and bow down before him, invite him to their functions, will give money and expensive gifts, and will do whatever he desires. There is always a quid pro quo. The powerful person gives certain favors and the others give money, "respect" or followership. A bureaucrat drives power by virtue of the positions he holds and the discretion he exercises while performing the authority exercised by him. A politician holds power partly because of the position he holds and partly because people follow him and consider him to be representative of themselves at the Parliament or Assembly. He gives promises of a better future in order to be the representative of the masses.
On the other hand, power also comes naturally with the actions. Buddha just left his powerful position as a prince and yet grew a more powerful person than probably any other person on the earth who is creating an impact in the lives of millions even thousands of years after his death. This power comes naturally. There is no quid pro quo. An author carries the power to influence the minds of the readers. A social worker has the power to reform the society. A Guru has the power to change the lives of his disciples.
Thus, there are two types of powers: The first one is self-centric, and the second one which is others-centric. The others-centric power grows naturally. As a person connects to his core and gains freedom from his fixations, that freedom gives immense joy and such a person can see clearly the suffering and sorrow all around the world. He develops an intense desire to help others get rid of their sorrow because he knows that all sorrows in this world are due to ignorance and mental illusions. He shares his inner realizations with the world rather than leaving the world like Buddha, Ramakrishna Paramhansa, Paramhansa Yogananda, Sri Aurobindo, Christ, Mohammad, S. N. Goenka, J Krishnamurti, and many others. Alternatively, he tries to work on social issues like Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Raja Ram Mohan Rai, and many others. That makes such a person influential and he is able to make a difference in the lives of many.
On the other hand, there are people seeking power. That seeking seems to arise from the intense feeling of weakness. They have been made to feel weak and powerless, or exploited in their early lives. Many things happen to us in life: some have desirable and other undesirable outcomes. Since we are so fixated on the desirable outcomes (due to our misunderstanding of life, mistaking the temporary to be permanent) we start attributing the fault to different people and systems for whatever goes wrong in our life. Due to this continuous faulty perception in our lives, at some point in time, we develop an acute desire to control the systems and people. That makes us power-hungry. In fact, hunger for power is nothing else but the creation of a perverted mind, at best a psychological disease. Otherwise, for a healthy mind, power is nothing else but just a responsibility. He is always concerned as to how his actions do not harm anybody and that requires a lot of effort on the part of the individual working against the system.
The problem is the social acceptance of such concepts. The evolved societies do not have such power structures. They treat everybody as equal. Primitive societies have strong and visible power structures and VIP culture where certain individuals are considered to be superior and others to be inferior. These societies fuel the ambitions of individuals to gather power. It's socially accepted in such societies to make active efforts to gather power. That is why such societies have a lot of pretensions and falsity. Rather than challenging the power structures, people just want to become a part of these power structures.
People do not realize (due to their disconnection from the inner world), how painful this huger is. It is like taking drugs that give us immediate pleasure but give us pain forever. I can't imagine a situation where a person can be happy when people around him are unhappy. Power, by its very name, implies inequality. How can a person feel happy in an unequal society unless he suffers from a psychiatric disorder? We all have the inner desire to play in this world and explore the same as babies. There is no power structure there just a collaboration. I wish that human beings understand it fast before it's too late
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