“I am one man, I have no power, no influence, there is nothing I can do”
You may have heard this phrase or something very similar a thousand times, you may have said it yourself out loud or said it internally when there is something you may well disapprove of but feel you cannot influence. It’s too big, the forces behind it are too powerful, I don’t have time, I can’t do anything about it so…..So you don’t.
In this article we will look at the anatomy of the innate power every human in the world has to influence the world around them, perhaps even the world as a whole.
But before you run screaming for the door expecting some new age metaphysical, spiritual explanation of how your inner power will mystically come to the fore for the good of mankind, relax….That’s not the message. The power each one of us holds is far more down to earth than that.
The Inner Desire for Personal Change
The desire for positive change appears to be to be an integral part of the human condition. One look around you will see that those who seek to improve life for themselves and their families, maybe their community or perhaps on a larger scale with goals such as to change their country or even the world, are everywhere.
The seekers of positive change come in many guises, sometimes the changes are personal or internal, such as wishing to make a positive changes in one aspect of life. Health, personal income, education or fitness all being examples of the areas in which people desire positive change.
The problem starts early
It is my view that in modern times, the fundamental reason people so often arrive into adulthood with a feeling they have a string of inadequacies is perhaps the simple fact that as children we are rarely taught the skills needed to survive and thrive in our society. The philosophy that permeates one of the seminal films of a generation, Fight Club (1999) sums it up perfectly:
“We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”
Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
Society after all is a construct. In times past you were taught the skills required to exist seamlessly in the society into which you were born, remember the early scene of the movie “300” ? Brutal yes, but a perfect example (if somewhat dramatised) of children being taught exactly what they needed to be successful within their society. You might argue that this way of thinking encourages low expectations or perhaps limits the idea of social mobility, but in many ways this is more realistic to what is likely achievable given the social circumstance of a child’s birth.
The exceptions will be exceptions, regardless of their education.
It is my opinion that those who are destined to transcend the circumstances of their birth will do it without requiring society to “give them permission” to do so, and whilst the idea every child can be whatever they want to be, might be a lovely idea, it is on the whole totally unrealistic. Which brings me to my next point.
Albert Einstein, John Lennon, Margaret Thatcher and many others all shed their family backgrounds to fulfil their destiny. The world is full of such examples. It simply did not matter what they were taught in school or by their socio economic background.
An Abbreviated Autobiography.
When I was a kid all I wanted in life was to be a rock star, I hero worshiped bands such as Kiss and Motley Crue and as a result I spent every waking hour I could studying the electric guitar. Within my peer group this was a highly unusual preoccupation, I was seen as an outcast, someone different, but I guess they were right, in many ways I simply was not your usual kid.
I did not have average expectations and wanted something different to my peers. This forced me to test my resilience to the derision and scepticism of both the other kids around me and indeed many authority figures such as my own parents and teachers. This desire to want more than what was seemingly on offer by the society I was born into, in itself was a lesson that echoed through to later life, allowing me the inner strength to walk my own path without fear of derision or failure.
No one believed I could make it, I was bombarded with the idea of having a safer plan B, almost every adult around me wished to build failure into the equation.
Whilst the desire to temper my youthful horizons with something seen as more realistic was out of concern for how difficult a goal I had embarked upon, when I reflect upon it, for me the idea of a safety net was a dangerous one which does little other than to encourage failure, and fail I did.
Yes, I became a professional musician by around the age of 18 but I never really reached the goal I ‘d set. After all it was not my goal to be a professional guitarist, it was my goal to be a rock star!
When I look back the problem was not the goal but the side issues illustrated by those close to me of the requirement not to follow my dream with 100% determination, but to keep an eye of the consequences of failing and to make a living day to day over reaching the goal I’d set. In the end the distraction and the mixed message killed my ability to focus on my goal. Doubt in my direction was what stopped me, However there was a silver lining.
My experience of following a different path, to reach for what was both an unusual and difficult dream, gave me the exact same skills and resilience I needed to later reapply myself in an entirely different field. In fact those skills and the mindset I developed allowed me to be successful in any field I chose. The ability to overcome the many obstacles life threw in front of me time and time again, to reset, research, rebuild and realign.
Throughout my life I have utilised the same mindset I learned in following my childhood dreams to be successful in my adult life, often against the odds of doing so.
The one thing I had throughout that time in my childhood was a very clear direction and a very clear focus. Later if things didn’t turn out the way I wanted, I would learn to spend time to assess where I was, to re evaluate and choose a new direction.
Focus is something horribly lacking today for so many people, children and adults alike. It is this direction and focus that I believe is the key to unlocking the feeling of fulfilment and ultimately happiness in life generally.
Setting the Right Goal
Money usually comes with success but when you look at truly successful people, Mostly they did not set out with the goal to make money, it was a byproduct of being successful at the goal they did set. History is full of such examples and when you look at the worlds most revered success stories they are often musicians, sportsmen, artists and creators.
If your only goal is to make money and to acquire meaningless trappings then I would argue you are setting yourself up for a life of general emptiness.
It doesn’t really matter what the level of that wealth is, or the amount or quality of the trappings, because if they have no real meaning other than a trophy to show to the other hunters in the tribe then these things will be as empty as the thousands of days spent acquiring them.
I see it every day, genuinely financially successful people so miserable with their existence because they have absolutely no meaning attached to the success they have. On the flip side we also constantly see people who are so desperate to propel the fake idea of their fake success via social media. Images abound of their fake tan and botox lipped model girlfriend, the Mercedes or BMW bought or leased on eye watering finance deals, their steroid built muscles and immaculate £200 tracksuit that was made in China for $6.
When their youth wanes and their creditors start to choke their finances soon they’ll join the herd of others who worshipped a false god and realise they needed something else all along…..I guess the Fight Club theme continues here.
In our society the focus of a child’s education appears abstract with a never ending string of guesses as to the direction of where their efforts and energies should go, all in the hope that it all works out in the end….. The whole focus is one that solely supports that you will find some form of employment, little thought they may think for themselves and maybe do their own thing. What’s worse is there is little or no focus on development of the child’s inner strength, their understanding of the world around them, what is suited to an individual character, the intelligence level of the individual, their motivation, interests or otherwise.
The system is a one size fits all solution with little focus on the reality of the fast changing world or the ability of an individual to focus and adapt.
Many kids feel this as they reach teenage years, their education lacked direction which often leads to a similar lack of direction in later life and almost as soon as they land into adulthood they know something is wrong.
Grander Designs
Those who seek more wide ranging societal changes, often appear as guides, preachers, activists or similar, they then in turn become leaders of men.
History is full of examples of such, men and women who successfully brought change for a group, a society or even the whole world due to an inner desire to share their vision of how life could be better if the changes they wished for could be made on a larger scale.
Whether that change was for good or for ill depends on how the realisation of the goal was versus the original intent of its architect. It might be argued that the corrupting influence of power once attained distorted an original desire to do good.
Even across the most evil tyrants of history, it might be argued the intention of these men was originally to bring forth a positive change for themselves or their own people, no matter how perverse this later became.
Whether they were ultimately the purveyor of good or evil, historical figures such as Oliver Cromwell, George Washington, Emmeline Pankhurst, Hitler, Chairman Mao, Martin Luther King, Malcom X, Nelson Mandela and many others brought forward their vision of the change they wished to see, a change borne out of a deep inner desire and worked tirelessly to see it realised in the world around them. It is ultimately history which judges the conduct of such leaders and whether the changes they brought were for good or for evil.
The External Corruption of False Prophets
The current epidemic of weak willed, conviction-less leaders, who sell their corporate sponsored truth to anyone who will listen via the equally corporate controlled media is like a cancer of society. Let me explain why.
The idea of weakness in leadership being a cancerous growth in society is a wholly reasonable analogy when you look at the mounting effect it is having on almost every echelon of our civilisation.
In a time of unbridled corruption, the blurring of fact and fiction, the general fracturing of many aspects of society and a general sickness that seems endemic is down to the fact that the vast majority of people are followers not leaders. They look for guidance, meaning and purpose.
One look around at what people find their meaning or purpose in today should be ringing alarm bells everywhere. Think of the tribal insanity that games such as football evoke or how people now identify themselves as “Gamers, Gym Rats, Cyclists etc” or any number of identities solely linked to a pass time. They no longer identify with strong links to the society that raised them, but to hobbies or visions of how they present on social media profiles.
Why is this? Simple, because the majority of people in 21st Century Western culture have no clear moral, spiritual or ideological grounding on which to base the decisions they make in their lives, They have no leaders, no philosophy, no guides, they feel compelled to follow other than those they see on social media or TV. They feel no connection to a culture, job or politics which does not represent their needs, they are left with a chasm to fill so they fill it they do.
A Free man is one who lives under the guidance of reason, who is not led by fear, but directly desires which is good”
Baruch Spinoza
Whilst modern leaders usually profess a wish to improve what they see around them, more often than not in todays world, they lack integrity or genuine desire to do whats right, they play games whilst lining up their future, making the friends they require to become part of the mega wealthy and most of all simply have no real desire to represent those who elected them.
This mix of a lack of vision, integrity and moral willpower creates a conflict which in turn makes our leaders easily corrupt by the allure of power, wealth and false adoration of their many media sycophants, who themselves are often corrupt to the core, little more than paid supporters of a corrupt system.
The keen socio-political minds of our time whether they sit on the left or right of the political spectrum such as Noam Chomsky, Nassim Taleb, George Friedman, Douglas Murray, Jordan Peterson and others all point to this being a fundamental issue in modern society, some even pointing to a complete collapse on the horizon in line with the demise of past empires such as Rome.
So what is the Answer?
In part two we will examine how we can take back the power so many people believe they never had in the first place, but truth be told they did, they just didn’t notice when they gave it away.
Whenever you hand a responsibility or a task to someone else consider you have also handed control to that person. If that person is an organisation or government then that power may be harder to win back but each one of us can do so, however like so many other things, the results will not be instant because the first change must start within ourselves.
As I said at the start this is not a new age philosophy, in fact if anything its a very old one but if each of us learn to engage it we will create the change we desire in both ourselves, others and in the society in which we live
UNBX 