Believing as I do that human beings need each other, I am always interested to know why there is such a constant battle for control. We are social animals and yet we are capable of, and even driven by, extreme acts of violence in order to obtain or retain power.
Though it may be obvious to many, I wonder what exactly power is, what its source is and why it is so coveted. It is not at all physical and yet those who possess it know they do, and those who lack it seek it. It plays out in the most normal of relationships between individuals, to the more complex ones between nations. As we can see this current seems to underpin all aspects of human relations. Perhaps one way to look at it is to look at the ways in which the struggle for control arises.
On a basic level we have ownership. For thousands of years people have felt that they are entitled to certain things mainly through repeated and sustained usage, like property. In a way the object then becomes an extension of the person using it, it is theirs, it is personal. This feeling is extended to our own selves, that is; I am my own master, I know my own mind. A clash arises when one feels that another is infringing on that ownership, that right. We can see this in land or property disputes, and even human beings. Good examples of these are conquests, colonialism and slavery, where the notions that human beings could also be property, arose.
In all these examples, we note a violence almost as ancient as ownership itself. Perhaps the ‘problem’ of ownership arises from the motivation of ownership. For example, many indigenous peoples knew that land belonged to them through usage over many years, handed from generation to generation (even some of them who could be classified as nomadic). They used what was enough for them to live on, the motivation here being that the land is necessary for their existence.
However, outsiders coming to claim land which belongs to another come with an almost necessary aggression. Perhaps they come because in order to survive more land is needed; perhaps it is for power and glory, maybe both. But if they conquer, the result is the forced removal of the owners from their source of existence, their source of power. They are left lacking. This is turn fuels a need to be replenished. How does one replace the original source of their existence? They have now been drawn irrevocably into the fight for power in an effort to regain what was lost.
In this light, it seems that the need to conquer is also a need to consume. It is a cycle and it is produced on many levels. Further more there are different ways to do it. We have already seen the violent approach but there is also a more insidious approach which is equally, if not more, dangerous. Another method of subduing another human being is to make them dependent. Remove their understanding or reason for existence and the victim is left feeling helpless and powerless.
In extreme cases where every aspect of live has been engineered to reinforce that lack of power, the victim’s sense of self is removed because even that belongs to another, there is no sense of ownership of the self.
Copyright©Lesani, 2007
