Five Images, One Story.

Instead of power, let us invest in potentiality?

Power as a process. Human beings need power or wish to attain it. One can view power, in two ways or antonyms. Autonomy if it’s positive, Tyranny if it’s negative. As the two heads of the Greek god Janus, of “transitions and dualities”. Or as capability, capacity, function, influence, potential etc. We seek power by attaching ourselves with a powerful organization, religion, philosophy or technology, technique or just some unreal notion of it. Centuries ago we lived under secure aristocracies and now we have a class of people who are referred as “power elites” or “plutocracy”. Those in power will set all our goals, big or small, real or artificial. Or try real hard, benevolently or violently. Power of a group increments, based on the deprivation of the other. Man’s power and dominion has grown continuously, but at the cost of Nature. As a species we have always been at war and yearning for peace, like perpetual duality, wanting more capacity and autonomy while enabling ever new forms of tyranny, domination and forthcoming problems.

The effort to do a job can be tremendous or just minimal, in terms of effort. Most often in terms of Power, the underclass does the ‘minimal’ and the higher elites take on the ‘tremendous’. Ancient or medieval or modern empires are based on that power sharing maxim. And during the last 100 years, superior technology has come to rule the entire range, of ‘tremendous jobs’ as well as ‘simple no-brain jobs’. Everything can be turned into an assembly line and or set of predetermined sequences. Hence, it does not matter if one is a clerk in an bank or astronaut in space or a housewife making food or a music producer making tunes or someone writing away stories or what-job-have-you, we are most often pressing buttons. Receiving or giving orders. To the system or to each other. Eternally switching on and off, as the given job demands. A species pleased to press buttons of every type, size, color, real or virtual, day in and day out. So, where is the power button?

One big threat with megacities, which almost never shows up at international summits, of climate change, global warming and energy is the possibility of collapse. Ask the Chinese, who are discovering the impact of living in megacities. The impact on fertility, property prices, incarceration, cases of suicide, rise in cancer and respiratory diseases. The ‘empire’ did free it’s people from the one-child policy, but that did not cause any of the expected ‘Baby Boom’. What is happening is the other way around. Shanghai, Beijing and Tianjin have among the lowest fertility rates in the world, one-third of the replacement rate. Should population experts rejoice? Chinese megacities are witness to big industrial accidents, killing over 1500 people, injuring several thousands more during 2020-23. But any megacity is a “testament to extravagant delusion” (Joel Kotkin). In many megacities of the West, especially America, more people now die of suicide than in car accidents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

We can generally do what we please. We are free, to take on the widest range of activities that money can buy or just with our imagination and sheer will. As long as it’s unimportant. As long as it does not interfere with the smooth functioning of systems. Industrial society by construct will narrow down human freedom. Up to a point where the word itself looses any dialectic purpose. Power wielding itself via several technologies, defines the ‘general purpose’ of modern people that it considers useful. The rest are chased away, hunted down, jailed or worse taken out. Yet in this context, I prefer to be the Rat, and not the Owl. I believe both can wield power, for the same objective but in totally different ways.

In a crude sense, freedom equates to having some power, but not to control the lives of other people (or devour them entirely) but manage the circumstances of one’s own life. In wild Nature there is no fixed concept of freedom outlined by ecology, biology or ecological bounds. However the whole world, is not merely ruled by “survival of the fittest”. Not as seen in wildlife documentaries or a game show. We may thrive and feel free only as long as the ecosystem gives us the opportunity to do so in the first place. To survive and also to flee, to abandon, if need be. That capacity or skill is not based on technology, economics and reductionist laws.

His charismatic personality, active impression on the elite and penchant for making bold and ridiculous statements, lead the way to endless wars, extending empire while killing millions of people. But, where are the super wealthy, the divas, the high-end goods, the posh restaurants, private mansions, the beautiful institutions, the lying media, and all the corrupted images of the “golden life”? All swept away! Again and again, by an eternal desire for dominance. Over other fellow men, women and children and over the entire living planet.

The specter of war, almost as culture, that we have waged against ourselves and against all that gives life. This war to the death, against the unholy, the unruly, the barbarians, the monarchy, the rich, the left, the right, the x or y. But did we win? Certainly not. Worse, human ambition only grew, alongside human ingenuity, technology, violence and extraction, as a precursor of the horrors to come. Power unchecked is eventual Tyranny and often wields itself in ever new and lethal ways. “Women are nothing but machines for producing children” (Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor Of France). “Take away my gun… take away my Liberty” (Charlton Heston). “America is a country founded on guns. It's in our DNA.” (Brad Pitt)

Instead of power, let us invest in potentiality 🐿️