Playing the Game of Power to Achieve Peace?

People want peace. They just want the power first.

In the Indian horror movie Ludo, two young people open a box that contains a dangerous and evil board game called Ludo that transforms them into bloody thirsty murders, essentially quasi-monsters. They invite strangers into the game for the purposes of eating their bodies and drinking their blood. Therefore, no one who plays will win. This stems from the pair not having a sense of power within their own bodies, a sense of place within their own family, and using this game to tip the scales. Ironically, their father, a sort of shaman who forbade them to play the game, curses them for opening it, rendering them to an immortal life of savagery. Through a turn of events, the game is reproduced and distributed, and with devastating consequences.

We would like to believe that if we captured more power than what we already have within our bodies, and the influence we have in our families and communities, that we would use such power for good, and we would not want more than what we can handle, the caveat being that we have mastery over our emotional states. How many of us have this? How many of us really know that the acquired power will not corrupt us, will not taint us in any way? We would have to not only be firmly grounded, but continually train ourselves to stay that way. Like in the first century BC in the allusion of the Sword of Damocles, later used in the 21st Century Marvel movie Spiderman, “with great power comes great responsibility”. How many of us lost our way at times with the power that we currently have?

This is a turbulent climate. All one must do is to turn to the media and it is evident. There has always been turbulence in civilizations since its conceptualization thousands of years ago, and as with all civilizations, they rise, they peak, they fall, and then become humble nations.

This is the same case with humans. We struggle, we ascend, we peak, we fall, and then seek to become more humble versions of ourselves.

What has been a constant is that within our storied arc, we have sought power as a means to create the peace that we want. This occurs with all marginalized groups, that the key to cease marginalization is to gain power. This also means going to battle with all real and perceived threats and/or adversaries.

The problem with going into such battles, is that eventually practically everyone becomes an adversary, because it is believed that they are in the way of attaining power. In fiction, it is the antagonist that is getting in the way of what the protagonist wants. This is also predicated on the notion that the protagonist is a good character. As inherently flawed and complex, this is impossible that we are as good as we believe we are.

In this process, we adorn terms like anti-racist to indicate that we are against oppressive systems. But then we create ultimatums: if you are not anti-racist, then you are a racist. It sets up a very stark us vs. them mentality, pervaded by groups who engage in subjective thinking. Who decides who is anti-racist, and who is not? Who decides that to be not racist, you have to be anti-racist? What exactly does it mean to be anti-racist?

Another example is those who are not religious are labeled as anti-religious. This is also predicated on the notion that one must accept religion, otherwise one is against religion. These groups do not consider that people can be opposed to practicing religion and still accept and honor those who do practice religion as their human right. I, as someone who is not religious, and have serious issues with how religions are practiced, advocated, as an example, for an interfaith center at the University of Baltimore so that people would pray and meditate in a welcoming space.

Here is what concerns me. We often speak about what we are against, but fail to articulate in detail what we are for. I know this intimately as someone who was involved in a number of social justice movements, could speak a lot about systems of oppression and how we must take them down, but could only speak in broad terms about how and what we should replace it. I had great ideas, but when it comes to the actual mechanics of it, I fell short.

Simply put, it is those who have been placed on the margins, in the second class, on the fringe have used power to create equity. This in of itself is not problematic. However, as power grows, the desire is to attain more of it for the purposes of tipping the balance in one’s favor. The dynamic never shifts to truly creating the kind of society, the kind of civilization where there is universal acceptance and equity. There becomes this penchant for swinging the pendulum in the completely opposite direction, so that those who had power have no power. It is our human need for vengeance that propels this, and as we have witnessed, no group, no entity, no organization, no movement that has swung such a pendulum has created universal equity.

So, in this turbulent climate, people are using media, particularly social media to collect and exact power and influence. Many people point to the Arab Spring in 2011 as the beginnings of such social media revolutions, following that with the Occupy movement, which was influenced by the Arab Spring. Then came Black Lives Matter. Then came the variety of social and cultural movements that have used the technology platforms to advance their cause, a mighty long way from the mimeograph machines that the civil rights workers used to promote the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955. The digital mechanisms have allowed rapid fire information and rhetoric. There have been positive outcomes such as increased awareness of individuals and groups, increased engagement and advocacy of human rights, and the exposure and punishment of bad actors.

But if this were the game of Ludo, there are also the ways in which certain people have become consumed by the dark side of it – trolling, canceling, doxing, bullying. They lost their way, abdicating their responsibility to be balanced activists, and making anyone in their path who slightly disagree with them their targets. Where are the checks and balances in all of this?

Do we want peace? What would peace look like for us, for our communities, for our society? Do we want peace only for those like us, or do we want it universally? Do we, or will we use our power to create such peace? We need to do some soul searching to come to the truth of this, otherwise, we will be operating like hamsters, looking for another wheel to run.