Monday, April 27, 2015

Power: 10 Points

We see many media reports nowadays about the abuse of power across the board. Why?

1. Human beings have been abusing their powers all their human lives on earth. They conquer their surroundings, they conquer other creatures, they conquer other people. But they have no conquered themselves.

Each of us starts by being nothing. We get bullied when young, and we didn't like it. One reaction is to begin to bully others when we have the power. The other is not to bully at all, because we disagree with it and we don't like it.

2. We start being a nobody at first. One goal in life then is to try to become someone. Many try to be someone by associating themselves with well-known people and claiming friendship with these people. They name drop often. They become sycophants. When they manage to get themselves to be recognised by the general public, they start lying about their importance. They can also enhance their importance by lying about other people to their well-known friends.

3. When the government sanctions that a certain section of society or any of its characteristic is privileged. Privileged is taken to be special and exclusive. "I have the right, you do not have the right." This sense of privilege is dangerous because it can be easily taken to extreme. All the massacres in history came from here. It started from lowliness, fear and insecurity. This government-sanctioned right, privilege and exclusivity of a certain section of society is dangerous.

4. Power cannot be bestowed on anyone. This is why human beings are born ignorant, myopic, and short-lived. The Tree of Knowledge is a dangerous thing, especially when it grows in a person without wisdom. Knowledge is power, and that's why power must be exercised with great caution, restraint, discipline and reluctance, together called enlightenment.

5. Power must be accompanied by compassion. So that we can use our power to do good. If you cannot do good and offer power, you do decline the power. Don't acquire power to abuse others or yourself. The whole world is not about you. You are about you, but not necessarily all about you. Pity those who have no power. Help them with the power you have.

6. Fear power. You may not be good enough to handle it for your own good, or for the good of others.

7. Power in the hands of the incompetent is a dangerous thing.

8. Wise people with real power pretend to be powerless. Ignorant people with no real power pretend to be powerful.

9. Don't seek power; seek energy.

10. Don't just seek knowledge, seek wisdom which is real power.

6 comments:

Ahmad Tajuddin said...

That's it!

Love the last point. We need to seek wisdom. Yes, we read, we go to mass, go to lectures and classes for the sake of knowledge, however, knowledge for the sole purpose never make us human. Often, knowledge makes human arrogant and bully the other. Only if we realize the meaning of knowledge, the wisdom within, then we can seek what is the purpose of all of it.

nangka said...

It would be wonderful if the subject of philosophy can be taught as a subject throughout one's school life. It certainly beats doing moral classes if philosophy (which I tend to equate to wisdom) can be tailored for teenagers without it being seen as an impossible subject to many.

walla said...

In science, power is defined as rate of work done, or rate of energy expended, or force times velocity, or even current times voltage.

That said, the faster and harder the worker, the more power is explicated so much so the multiple-tasking flash worker is all-powerful.

But in our politics, the more powerful the politician the less positive work is done in more time. Alternatively one can say they do more negative work in less time.

For instance if they double-quickly blow forty two billion in harebrained schemes whose debt can now only be dissolved by selling off state assets, who would even dare buy those radioactive assets given the horrendous publicity? Indeed their negative work has come home to roost right pip on the national bottom-line which has become a financial time-bomb.

Taxpayers present and future will have to pick up the tab by paying more. And that's what is already happening through the GST. All the pro-tax jokers are now inelegantly quiet who had just months ago said the GST will only raise prices by six percent. Black pepper goes nicely with their shoes they have now to eat.

They should remind but only themselves that power is just a tool. Indeed what should direct it is wisdom given the application of knowledge made humble by the sheen of character forged with compassion.

Compassion can be catalyzed very quickly. All that's needed is to hold fast to one cosmic worldview.

Namely, all living things are in essence just agglomerated bundles of electrochemical impulses so that when they expire, their energies return to the cosmic mother energy field.

Thereby, enjoining both cause and effect as inseparable siamese twins of fate.

If that be so, compassion is the only emotion that should subsist because all are after all part of one so that if one cares for oneself, one should also care for others.

In fact, one should only care for oneself insofar as it enables one to care more for others.

Howzat for an awesome statement?

You find that a lot in nature's fields. Despite the stamp of evolutionary progression, the elements of nature conspire to work together in some symbiotic understanding with a mutual co-dependence that is deceptively fuzzy in outlook but coherently understandable when examined more closely through the lens of compassionate wisdom.

Hence, the sheen of character should be ennobling so that positive work results quickly and efficiently with higher productivity and greater sustainability.

Because when negative work is done, no positive good comes out for long. Amongst many others, that is one law of nature.

Those who continue to do negative work flex their negative vibes onto others, thereby disrupting the cosmic energy field, matrix if you will.

The more bad things they do with the power they steal, the more power they will try to steal to safeguard their own interests and position against the grain of natural laws.

That's when they start making a fool of themselves until the citizens or charges that move in time to make the current which when multiplied by the potential difference of the nation create the power pool start to think more critically and wisely.

Which explains why intelligence has deliberately been made so low in the pecking order of work to be done in this country.

Until people cannot see what will happen to the sum assured of their life insurance or other accumulated savings if the money continues to weaken while prices continue to escalate.

No?

walla said...

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Kamal Salih said...

I just came across your blog while tracking the issue of targeted currency appreciation via @econmalaysia. I like this latest post on "power" and the subsequent comments. Walla's comment particularly brings out the significance of your post relevant to our current situation. It represents a higher-level thinking towards the application of knowledge (ie wisdom) with compassion. This is perhaps the way forward for our country.

etheorist said...

Tan Sri,

Welcome to this little boutique blog. Enjoy and please contribute.