Discombobulation

 

I look around the world and see a fair amount of discontent. This appears to be increasing rather than diminishing.

I look around my personal local world and see a fair amount of discontent. This appears to be increasing rather than decreasing.

There is an important point I wish to emphasise, the local and global are interconnected. Global discontent is just an accumulation of local discontent.

My next point is crucial, the local discontent is added to by my discontent.

As an Engineer I am motivated to identify problems and their root cause. There is a lot of discontent and I have identified the root cause, which I aim to develop and share in this blog post.

Large numbers of people feel weak and this motivates them to gain employment and promotion to places of perceived power. Many of these people like to exercise their power whenever they feel weak which is perhaps whenever they aren’t exercising their power.

I am going to have to stop writing these blogs. The above paragraph is a key ‘ingredient’ of the Nazi rise to power. Give those who perceive themselves to be weak some power over ‘normal’ people and they will become increasingly motivated to exercise that power with ever greater frequency and ferocity.

Normal people, when subject to such injustices will either push back or ‘appear’ to comply. To be fair there will be an ever changing spectrum of responses from ‘normal’ people. A few will go for self preservation and rise quickly up the ranks. These are the truly dangerous.

In the above ‘discussion’ I am suggesting that Hitler was weak and thoroughly enjoyed the ‘power’ he felt when giving his little speeches. Events allowed him to make speeches to larger and larger audiences. Anyway, I suggest this as a framework with which to view just one dynamic of power.

In our current world we have large numbers of weak people with positions of perceived power. It should be noted that this is all relative. A ‘normal’ person could suddenly find themselves with a great deal of power and find it terribly exciting and be unwilling to give it up.

Hopefully, that is enough of an explanation of that. When someone in ‘authority’ announces a new rule or initiative, the ‘weak with a little power’ will be very irritated by anyone who questions this new rule. This irritation is half of the discontent we see around us. The other half is the reaction of ‘normal’ people to a new rule that they perceive as unfair.

This brings us to the title of the piece. There is always some tension between ‘normal’ people and the ‘weak with a little power’. I must also point out that there is a spectrum of ‘normal’ and ‘weak’ people and that nothing is static.

I haven’t even mentioned psychopaths, who in this context can be perceived as spoons who stir the mixture / agitate the ‘ingredients’. (Just to see what happens and to exercise their ‘power’ too.) Psychopaths can get quite bored without a constant source of ‘confrontation’ to create, develop and enjoy.

I haven’t mentioned the narcissists either. A great many of these fit into the ‘weak but seek power’ group.

What about the sociopaths? These really struggle with the concept of a weak person thinking a job title makes them anything other than what they were.

For clarity, let us imagine three characters – someone weak with a little power who we will call the boss. Let us imagine a psychopath and a normal person all ‘working’ together. I suggest the normal person gets a job elsewhere but what generally happens is the psychopath quickly determines the weaknesses of the Boss and the normal person and deliberately preys on both of them for her amusement, creating discontent where there was none.

A less extreme example is where we have a ‘weak with a little power’ Boss and a ‘normal’ person. A ‘normal’ person will question anything the Boss says which appears to be stupid or perhaps unfair. The ‘weak with a little power’ Boss will hate this as all they really have is the ‘power’ and won’t be comfortable with that ‘power’ being questioned.

You might wonder why we have all these ‘weak with a little power’ bosses everywhere? They are easily controlled by anyone above them. They will not question the slightly more powerful than them as that would destroy their own power base too.

As this is a Critical Thought Blog, you ought be imagining this all into existence. This is just another lens for viewing the world. Just another viewpoint and nothing more. When you become aware of an interesting interaction between a few or many people, you can use this viewpoint and see if it helps with your understanding or not. What you should not be doing is deciding if this is true because it is only true from a single viewpoint. Many viewpoints are needed for the full truth and so a single viewpoint will never lead to a deeper understanding or greater awareness.

Should I continue? Have I written enough for you to develop this further?

Let us imagine that our Prime Minister / President announces an emergency measure that ‘normal’ people have a wide range of responses to. Very wide. The ‘weak with a little power’ will be deeply disturbed by those who do not display compliance or question the emergency measure. ‘Normal’ people find injustices troubling, which also adds to the general level of discontent.

Do you feel that the general level of discontent is rising, falling or more or less static?

1) in yourself

2) in your family

3) at work

4) in the UK

5) in Europe

6) in the US

7) China

8) Middle East

9) Russia

What do you think? Please give it some critical thought.

What do I think? Thanks for asking. Imagine a society with a dozen or so very powerful families who deliberately seek to give a little power to the weak. Who create, develop and nurture any idea that gives the weak power. Who fund any organisation that seeks to give the weak a little power over normal people. Who fund any organisation that can and does create fear in the population.

That is exactly what I think we do have and it is called society, also known as the real world.

Now, giving the weak power may seem like the right thing to do and may be it is. It is what we do.

Could we consider helping ‘weak’ people transform into ‘normal’ people please?

At this point do we even know the difference between weak and normal?

How many weak people, especially those with a little power, are aware that they are weak?

So, awareness of self is perhaps important.

May be awareness of others is of interest

Perhaps becoming free from fear and having some awareness might be beneficial?

Or am I simply trying to sell some books that I have published with Amazon?

None of your business