Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Response to Power

Response to Power

In response to those who responded to by last blog on “Power”.

I don’t allow for open responses to my blogs, because being such a nut-job I have a tendency to overreact and react improperly and just plain weirdly.  It other words, it takes me a while to understand.  Just kind of dense that way.  I’m a very tolerant and open-minded person, but I also process criticism and comments very slowly.  I have no idea why.  It just takes me while to understand other people, unless I am looking directly into their face.

That being said, I always welcome responses and the opinions of others.

Now when I said, “The powerful fall – they always fall …”.  I meant it.  But so many people place different values on what is success or even the definition of power.  So the matter of falling becomes academic – or semantics.  (?) The concept being is it based on money (wealth) or control of other peoples’ lives?  Or is it quality of life, a.k.a. happiness. 

Stay with me here. 

Is it possible for a person to live without fear of loosing whatever it is that person has placed at the pinnacle of their own value system?  Let’s say they become extremely wealthy.  Do they live in fear of loosing that wealth?  I would postulate there does not exist an extremely wealthy person who does not live every day in a constant state of anxiety about loosing that wealth.  I have known many, and the paranoia they display on this matter is obvious.  Plus as their wealth builds and as they age, it appears to become worse.  The same thing is true of those who unethically work the system to achieve power over others.

The assumption is made that since they appear to be enjoying this wealth and power that they are de facto happy.  The powerful who do fall – generally – do so in the public eye and we are made aware of that fall simply due to that fact alone.  To be in a position of separation from the common members of a society as in having far greater and thus distinctive wealth or power is to be, almost by definition, in the spotlight – center stage, as it were.  When they fall, they do so in front of everyone.

A view I have had for many years is that, “If you have little to loose, you rarely live in fear of loosing it.”  I would rather have so little of value in my house (domicile) that burglarizing it wouldn’t be worth it to anyone.  Breaking into where I live is obviously – and I mean obviously – not worth breaking (a door, window, etc.  that I then would have to fix) anything.  The same is true of my car and my motorcycle.  Small, cheap, if either one is parked next to any other car or motorcycle; the one next to it is worth more.  I can walk away from any of these possessions and just not think about them.

What does this all mean?  What am I getting at?  What, then, is my definition of falling as it relates to power or wealth?  In short, I would say I am referring to happiness.  To me the loss of the state of happiness is the fall from either of these conditions.  Whether the public at large is aware of it or not.  As the number of body-guards increase, the height of the barbed wire increases and the self imposed isolation becomes greater and greater until the actual quality of life diminishes, the fall becomes a greater and greater likely event. 

We all truly live within our own minds.  That place, the stratification we feel in the deepest parts of our soul can be a true one or it can be a fictional one with which we have replaced reality.  Wealth and power are external and assumed positions based on temporary holdings. And since every life at the end is stripped naked taking nothing at all with it into the void beyond (or whatever – there is no factual evidence for anything else), that which is external and assumed is by direct comparison fictional. 


The swiftest might be able to outrun the wolf, but only as long as they keep running.  If they ever stop running, the wolf (reality) wins.

Thanks for reading - 
Love, dance and do jazz hands.
Dp

http://dalepeterson.us

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