We All Want Power

In the Van Helsing series on Netflix, it is the war between the Dark One and the forces of light. Of course, light wins in the end. It is also a treatise on power – the acquisition, control and maintenance of it by those who participate in the war.

Thinking about our current societal climate, I cannot help but think how this parallels. Each side believes the other is dark while they are the light, and it is the ultimate struggle between both, each side trying to wrest power from the other.

This is the honesty from which we shy away.

We all want a lot of things. After all, we are complex and complicated human beings. We have a dual nature within us, so what seems as polar opposites, nestles quite well within us. We have the ability to hold two contradictory thoughts in one body – even though often we refuse.

We say we want equality. We say we want diversity, equity and inclusion. We say we want equal justice under the law. We say we want democracy, freedom, and sustainability.

But that is not all that we want. We want the other things that create the problems that exist in our society. We want revenge. We want retribution. We want to see others suffer. We want power. Sometimes we want ultimate power. We want power over others, over any given situation. We want the power to control others. We want the power to shut things down. We want the power to exact revenge, and get away with it. We want the power to transform society the way we want. We want the power to ensure that any and everyone who has harmed us – or so we believe – to be punished.

These are the things to which we will not admit. We claim we are not judgmental, yet we do it every day. Sometimes it is justified, for safety and protection purposes. We do not go down certain streets or neighborhoods. We are cautious with strangers. We make judgment calls every day, and for the most part it serves us. But we are also unnecessarily judgmental against others because they are not like us, and we believe we are superior. Yes, we do. We believe our way of life and the way we think and the way we practice is better than others.

So yes, we want the power to force others to submit to our ways. Numerous groups over human history has done this. Rulers, dictators, clergy, warlords, overlords, every empire under the sun, every warring tribe, political and social organizations, and so on.

I find more and more as I get older and see more things, and become more logical and rational and objective – or so I think – about things, the more I see this inherent nature within all of us, regardless of who we are and who we say we are. Even those of us who stand for social justice and human rights, we want power.

We fight for not just presence, but control and dominance of both social and network media. We want the power to shut the other side down. We don’t want to listen to them anymore. We don’t believe they hold any value. We believe they are the enemy. Some of us even believe they should be eliminated. This is ironic, because we are the ones who give the clarion call for harm reduction, trauma informed care, safe spaces, and other such measures to heal and protect the weak and vulnerable, and moreover, our side.

Everyone is fighting for their movement to be the dominant movement, and we want to change and shape the language, discourse, and policies therein.

I think that we have a lot of things in this country, but what we lack is honesty. We will never move forward as citizens, let alone as humans if we don’t engage in that. First it begins with self-honesty, then it extends outward.

For a long time, I derided the other side incessantly. As you can guess, I am talking about conservatives and Republicans. Then I realized how lacking in understanding I had about them. I dehumanized them. I did not know their story, nor did I care. I would protest against them, debate them on college campuses, and spew out rhetoric without any evidence to back it up.

Honestly, I was more filled with emotions than facts. So, when I got into a debate, and it wasn’t going well for me, I would get angry. Their arguments were sounder than mine. It would cause me to vilify them even more. But in the final analysis, I was licking my wounds afterwards, and cursing them for no logical reason.

Whether or not they are right is immaterial. What I became was the problem. I wanted the power to shut them down, but why? The point of a movement is to persuade people to your cause, not to engage in war, for as we know there are no winners. Even though rights have been gained for many citizens over the last 60 years, there is an incredible amount of division. We are all tribal to our core, and we want our tribe to seize power.

The first step in the 12-step program is to admit that you have a problem. We all refuse. We staunchly believe the other has the problem. We finger point with pinpoint accuracy. We are so good at it, we can do it in our sleep. Try to point the finger to ourselves, we grow immediately silent. We clam up.

I have seen this firsthand in my ethics classes. I watch my students point fingers. Then when I ask them what they have done, the room gets eerily quiet. I have rested my case on many occasions.

We have too much dishonesty in our society. We are instructed to be polite, but it does not work. We are crumbling from within. Despite the news regarding interference by Russia and China, we do not need outside forces to destroy ourselves. We are doing a great job on our own.

So yes, we want power. Why? Because we are insecure. If we weren’t, we would have mastered the power within ourselves, and be perfectly content within that. If you notice, ones who embody that power are reserved, calm, peaceful, gracious, generous, thankful. Those that seek such power outside of themselves, are the opposite.

Every marginalized group wants power. They want the same kind of power mainstream society possesses. Some would argue that this is incorrect, that they only want diversity, equality and inclusion. If this was the case, then they would not be about the work trying to redefine society in their image.

As my mother once said to me jokingly, “I may not always be right, but I am never wrong.”

The ironic thing about this is that we inhabit both light and dark within us. This is portrayed by Vanessa, the main protagonist in Van Helsing. As her power grows, she realizes that she has darkness within her, and during the final battle she takes the Dark One into her body to control the darkness.

 Perhaps this is a lesson for all of us, that once we acknowledge the darkness within us, we can control it, and now allow the need for power to control us.