What is Power?

 

Today I found an excellent article in the Globe and Mail written by Marsha Lederman.

"We are living in what is increasingly a culture of meanness and bullying. And that bullying is infecting not just the public discourse, but the way government operates." https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-bullies-are-taking-over-our-politics-and-our-culture/

This is something that has troubled me for a few years. We live in a complex democracy and there are interests that seem to want to destroy us. The win-at-any-cost seems to be fascist, authoritarian. And we have had many decades of living under the power of the brutal regimes. Many news reports of life lived under the thumb of brutality. More than destroying the people who are targeted we lose ourselves. 

" To stride into life with confidence and poise. I believed this was my own wisdom that observed these but as these were merely the messages I was fed by popular programming, regurgitating the messages by corporate entertainment." http://jacksonmeadvickers.blogspot.com/2022/11/what-is-success.html

In order to have power you have to play with the "big boys" and win at their game ... was the message I received from the culture I lived in and inherited from my ancestors.

Education, money and appearance is the currency of power when we really haven't examined what it is.  At this point I believe power is an appearance of confidence more than getting the last word, shooting judgement, but still the media is impressed with how things look more than what they mean.

Marsha Lederman raises the question in her article? Is everything we have learned about health, security, science and society under the thumb of the bully? Is power everything?

Does the Professor and the Doctor rule the classroom in order to teach the student? Or is it their knowledge?

In my opinion, power is natural integrity. Knowledge glows from the teacher who brings integrity into the classroom. A fully functioning government needs integrity and to understand the grace of gifts that diversity brings to the table. It's a power each thinking person possesses in a system that values life. 

Infinite Power,  “is not a zero sum game but a journey / a stone thrown in a lake / circular ripples emanating outward” and the danger of our age is that we have lost contact with that power, made it something to possess like a personal bank account. In writing these poems Janet hopes for a reconnection to that sacred universal relationship. http://www.ekstasiseditions.com/recenthtml/infinitepower.htm