Power Power

They say the business of America is business, but that’s just our particular version of the truth. The business of Man is power. We, in the West, choose business as our favored garden, and it is such fertile ground. Business brings money, money buys influence, and influence is just another synonym for power.

Not that there aren’t many roads to the Emerald City. Every aspect of our existence is colored by the pursuit of power. Politics. Business. Social issues. Religion. Art. Ethics. Sports. Morality. Music. Love. Saturday morning TV. Food. Medicine. Sex. We struggle to gather influence. We jockey for power within our families. We consolidate power in every organization, from couple to conglomerate to the United Nations. And, the bigger the organization, the more complex are the rituals and construct of authority. “Any time two people come together,” my Mother says, “There’s bound to be a power struggle.”

No wonder we keep killing each other.

We hold love, respect and cooperation in the highest regard. Then, we use them as a cudgel to shape our affairs. We create complex rituals and organizations to maintain amiable relations. Then, we use those same organizations as an instrument of control. Is there anything more influential in the UN that it’s Security Council, a small body of select member-nations that holds disproportionate sway over the military affairs of all other nations around the globe? Yeah – like that. We speak of peace as the ultimate gift we can offer each other, and forcefully deny the operations of our baser impulses, all while clutching a big stick off-camera.

We almost instinctually reach for power the moment someone (presumably more powerful) dangles it before us. Surely, the population of people who have rejected an offer to wield influence is not legion. And, when challenged and cornered, we spout high-minded motivations for wanting, chasing, grabbing, guarding power, and for seeking to mitigate that held by the “other”: We are protecting our own. We are guardians, stewards of the light. We rage against the darkness. Evil will not win on our watch. They wanted/needed it this way. We have every reason in the world to exercise our strength, our talents and authority in a manner that naturally – hell, even accidently – allows us to land on top of our fellow man.

Sometimes, we have no good reason at all. Sometimes, pure desire is enough.

We seem to have a hard time appreciating the perspective of those who land on the lesser end of our big wins. We avoid power-sharing as if it is blasphemous. We never envision a solution that does not involve our winning and others losing something, unless it is in pursuit of a deferred, yet greater, glory. And, we certainly have no capacity to see a time when our power wanes and Destiny propels us downward. If we ever did grasp any of these realities, we might lay down our sticks, and reach out in the sort of comprehensive cooperation we have not seen since Kindergarten.

But, hell! Then the other guy would just smack us in the face, and grab the cudgel for himself.

Power up.