Browsing in a bookshop the other day I came across a bold little book by a well-known female American author, gruesomely entitled Power Thoughts. The title stood out in bold type on the cover, announcing that here was a serious work, written in earnest – not to be trifled with. I shuddered and left it where it was on the shelf.
Power thoughts… power dressing… power shower… power struggles… power politics… “power corrupts – and absolute power corrupts absolutely!”. A familiar phrase and one often quoted, it’s true, by those who enjoy little of it.
Women, men, politicians, religious hierarchies, bankers, unions, students, NGO’s – we’re all part of life’s power struggle – the survival of the fittest. We’re all at it, just like the animal kingdom, jostling for power, negotiating for limited resources, pitting our wits and sometimes our physical prowess against each other: our partners, our siblings, our children and our workmates. Darwin only described the tip of the iceberg! It’s a cruel world out there. He should have waited to see the 21st century boardroom and the cut and thrust of Parliamentary Question Time. He should have witnessed road rage on the M5 at rush hour.
More and more of us today are searching for answers to our internal and external power struggles. Stress relief is big business. Eastern meditation techniques and new age alternatives of every kind have never been so popular. They are almost ‘mainstream’. It’s no surprise. Life winds us up daily and we rely on meditation, aromatherapy, relaxation colour and furnishing schemes at home, corporate reiki-rich business training courses at work and pre- and post-natal yoga. It’s all about power: power over ourselves and power over each other, but somehow we have to find a way to divert these primeval urges, aggravated out of control by our stressful lives, down appropriate channels. Maybe the law of the jungle can be suppressed if not superseded. Sooner or later our obsession with power will kill us if we cannot find a way to control it and we shall be locked into an ugly fight-to-the-death that will wipe out humanity, or at the very least, every shred of our personal peace of mind together with the harmonious well-being of our communities.
Power thoughts focus us on rights – a worthy topic at first sight: women’s rights, gay rights, children’s rights, the rights of the unborn child, human rights. However, our self-appointed rights frequently conflict and we are back in a power struggle. Something has to give. You first or me? Power – food for thought…
Power thoughts… power dressing… power shower… power struggles… power politics… “power corrupts – and absolute power corrupts absolutely!”. A familiar phrase and one often quoted, it’s true, by those who enjoy little of it.
Women, men, politicians, religious hierarchies, bankers, unions, students, NGO’s – we’re all part of life’s power struggle – the survival of the fittest. We’re all at it, just like the animal kingdom, jostling for power, negotiating for limited resources, pitting our wits and sometimes our physical prowess against each other: our partners, our siblings, our children and our workmates. Darwin only described the tip of the iceberg! It’s a cruel world out there. He should have waited to see the 21st century boardroom and the cut and thrust of Parliamentary Question Time. He should have witnessed road rage on the M5 at rush hour.
More and more of us today are searching for answers to our internal and external power struggles. Stress relief is big business. Eastern meditation techniques and new age alternatives of every kind have never been so popular. They are almost ‘mainstream’. It’s no surprise. Life winds us up daily and we rely on meditation, aromatherapy, relaxation colour and furnishing schemes at home, corporate reiki-rich business training courses at work and pre- and post-natal yoga. It’s all about power: power over ourselves and power over each other, but somehow we have to find a way to divert these primeval urges, aggravated out of control by our stressful lives, down appropriate channels. Maybe the law of the jungle can be suppressed if not superseded. Sooner or later our obsession with power will kill us if we cannot find a way to control it and we shall be locked into an ugly fight-to-the-death that will wipe out humanity, or at the very least, every shred of our personal peace of mind together with the harmonious well-being of our communities.
Power thoughts focus us on rights – a worthy topic at first sight: women’s rights, gay rights, children’s rights, the rights of the unborn child, human rights. However, our self-appointed rights frequently conflict and we are back in a power struggle. Something has to give. You first or me? Power – food for thought…
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