Ahmet Özcan
The Desire for Power and the Feeling of Powerlessness
The first tool used by the human was the another human being. Domesticating animals, selecting and growing plants, tilling the soil, processing forests, mines, water, and fire in order to use nature has required human labor since the beginning, and somehow a group of people, inspired by the domestication of animals and plants, domesticated other people and made them their servants, thus initiating inequality among people.
Furthermore it was learned that just as a man could domesticate a woman, another human being could be domesticated. What follows is a discussion of the unequal division of the humanbeing first into (owner) master and (owned) slave (peasant-laborer-worker-civil servant-employee), then into ruler-ruled, strong-weak, superior-inferior people, and the relationship between them, that is, how and to what extent the slave’s needs will be met, how the slave will use his body, the rules of this dependency relationship, and its consequences. Property, law, the state, and institutional religions arose from this relationship, either to organize and institutionalize it or from a need to restrict and make it more equitable. Wars, conflicts, invasions, and conquests all have their roots in these historical contradictions.
But the most terrifying result of this historical tragedy is that people internalize it, maintain it as a universal law, and, in order not to be the weak, powerless, passive side of this dialectic with genetic inheritance, imitate the master archetype, that is, encode the desire to be a master, as the main purpose of life. Every child is born into this genetic legacy and grows up searching for formulas to escape these unjust, normalized relationships within the family, society, and the world. The most familiar formula is escaping slavery by becoming a master and living like master. The slave no longer belongs only to the master but to the master-slave relationship itself. ‘You are a slave of what you need in your soul.’ (Carl Jung)
The desire to become a master is the will to have power. It is to have power. It is to accumulate power. Questioning this historical-universal tragedy and designing a world without masters and slaves has remained a characteristic of very few and the contrarian people. The Abrahamic-Hanif religion’s call to worship nothing but God, its belief in tawhid (divine unity), is not a theological subject or a matter of choosing a God, but a call for the descendants of Adam (pbuh) to return to their esence, to an equal and free character. The mission and message of Moses (pbuh), Jesus (pbuh), and Muhammad (pbuh) were the rejection of servitude of the human to the human… While masters were terrified of this message, slaves pretended to accept it but ended up worshipping God as they did a master, tainting this revolutionary call with the irresponsible expectations of the slave mentality, dragging it into a metaphysical level.
The effort to become a master in order not to be a slave and to escape slavery is the dramatic choice of people with weak characters, that is, genetics that have internalized slavery. Because such a character lacks the essence of Adam (pbuh), the capacity to choose and bear the consequences, i.e., the sense of responsibility. A person’s internal barriers, the mental blocks in their mind, are often greater and stronger than external ones. For this reason, they prefer the easiest, most irresponsible way. The life depicted in the most common heaven-salvation-wealth-sultanate-power narratives in mythological and religious legends, fairy tales and epics, and in movies and TV series inspired by these is living without labor, effort, or responsibility, but with absolute pleasure and debauchery. The slave assumes the master lives like this and strives to attain that glory and splendor either in this life or the next. The belief in the Indian caste system, which is the most ancient, most organized and institutional form of the master-slave relationship, in coming back to the next life and living like the upper caste, called reincarnation, and the paradise imagination that has settled in the interpretations of Christianity and Islam under the influence of this Indian samsara belief, has fed the belief that this unjust world will come to one’s turn, not through concrete action, but through the turning of the wheel of fate and destiny. However, most of these believers realize over time that there are examples of how to obtain your desires in advance without postponing them, that is, how it is possible to live partly like in heaven with a little effort in this world, and they devote their entire lives to this.
Humanity’s dream of living in paradise has produced the confusion of seeing the reason for being banished from paradise as the path to return to it. For such people, eternal life like that in paradise is attainable through possessing power; therefore, they strive to overcome their weakness, make up for their deficiencies, and achieve their goals by accumulating power. This is the result of a misinterpretation of power. However, this external conception of power is deceptive, and every person who becomes alienated from the essence within; their core, mind, and heart, becomes weaker by pursuing external means to satisfy their desires. Divine teachings that try to explain that everything ultimately happens within the human, within their mind and heart, and that knowing oneself is the beginning of everything, cannot hold up against the harsh demands of the cruel world created by concrete injustices and suffering. For the majority of people with weak character and a slave-like spirit, the call to return to divine essence, to attain spiritual purification, to mature in essence, and to know oneself, one’s Lord, and one’s limits, is merely a backup source of strength, used only when needed. Throughout history, very few people have been able to sincerely respond to this call and most of the people, tired of the race for power, retreat physically or spiritually into their own world.
Purification and Divergency
Virtuous people, in separating themselves from the meaningless chaos of this human garbage dumps, are in fact cleansing themselves of this historical deviation in the human genetics, from unequal relationships and the false modes of existence they produce, from counterfeit paradises of mastery, and from false desires and cravings for power. Purification is achieved through faith, piety and morality, that is, by limiting and chastening oneself with one’s own will and effort, and by always renewing oneself.
People with slave-like spirits, however, undergo a similar separation not to become freer or more authentic individuals, but to live more like masters. Most people, instead of purifying themselves of the traits they hate, despise, or scorn, strive to separate themselves from the people who possess these traits. This is both easier and less costly, and also more selfish. Truly knowing oneself, striving to change and improve oneself, requires a high level of character and virtue. That is the real greatness. But separating oneself while degrading others, and imagining oneself rising by moving away from others, is one of humanity’s most tragic mistakes. “People in this world value whatever rises quickly. But nothing rises faster than dust and feathers.” (Horace Mann)
Power, that is, the tools that free humans from dependence on nature or other causes, is seen by these weak-charactered individuals as a way to rise and distinguish themselves. Authority, money, property, weapons, certain talents, knowledge, even sometimes just being different, are all sources of power for them. Or more accurately, they are means of social ascent for those with weak character. And these powers serve as equipment for separating from others, feeling superior, and controlling others. Because this is already the case for the majority of people with a slavish spirit, and they actually do the right thing in their own way. Because the current world revolves around this demonic perception of power.
The master-slave dialectic has encoded mastery as possessing these powers, and slavery as serving those who possess them. But as Hegel attempted to explain with the concept of unhappy consciousness, the masters are actually more miserable than the slaves because they are condemned to sustain this dialectic. “The jester is wiser than the king because he knows he’s playing a role, whereas the king believes he is real. The wisdom of the fool reveals the foolishness of the wise. Therefore, the jester’s power lies in his weakness. They are free in proportion to their helplessness.” (Terry Eagleton)
This perception of power, namely the material wealth, status, fame, and knowledge that elevate one above others in an unequal world, places a burden on every character. It forces what is inside to the surface. Whatever lies within someone is revealed. Because authority, rank, property, money, influence, knowledge, and violence are not power itself but rather litmus tests that expose a person’s essence, lineage, and strip away their masks. When undeserved and unmanageable power is given to a weak character, shallow personalities implode into themselves, those with traumatic pasts seek revenge, weak and repressed characters become intoxicated, and the ambitious become tyrannical. These power-holders gradually lose, dull, and make unappealing the very qualities that made them truly human, the Adam (pbuh), their character, talents, virtues, values, and moral compass. The light in their face dims, the human sparkle in their eyes fades, their spirit loses vitality, and their hearts harden. They become blind, deaf, and uncomprehending. As the saying goes, “The value God gives to money is measured by the people He gives it to.”
Those who hold power are often unable to manage the excess within them. Therefore, they act more and more, putting on exaggerated performances. Eventually, those performances become their identity. Dostoyevsky said, “I exhausted my strength while wrestling with the weakness inside me.”
The most tragic part is that there is no way back from this point. Those who substitute power for character within themselves can no longer return to normalcy or become a more authentic being. The only thing they can do now is to concentrate even more power to ensure the perpetuity of their current power. But at this stage, balance, consistency, authenticity, and sincerity vanish, and they turn into a walking bundle of lies, deception, and plunder.
A professor once called a student to the podium:
—Give the lecture, he said.
The student began to speak.
—Now stand on top of the podium and continue.
The student climbed up and continued.
—Place a chair on the podium, climb on it, and go on.
The student obeyed.
—Now put a tabouret on top of the chair and keep speaking…
As the student struggled to maintain balance, inconsistencies began to emerge in his words. The professor concluded the lesson: “As a person rises, inconsistencies in what they say appear, because at that point, brain prioritizes not falling over what is being said.”
‘Give Me a Slave’
The excessive desire for power is actually an outward reflection of deficiency, weakness, deformity, and incompleteness. The lust for power is the habit of narcissistic characters, and behind narcissism lies a loveless childhood and a fragile sense of self-worth. Those who have this deficiency cover up the deep emptiness within themselves with exaggerated arrogance, love of authority and wealth, imperious authoritarianism which is ultimately a manifestation of hatred of humanity, selfish cunningness and the effort to always win and excel rather than succeed. All these desperate efforts, when looked at carefully, are the source of the false and fake idealism of a helpless, powerless, poor and weak satanism and hypocritical religiosity. This endless desire for dominion, always seeking to reaffirm itself, reproduces itself until death. “Much of what is perceived as idealism is really hatred in disguise, or a disguised love of power,” said Bertrand Russell.
The most notable trait of power-hungry people is their desire to dominate, control, make decisions on behalf of others, and crush or eliminate them. They use the power they possess more for this purpose than to satisfy internal desires or passions. Because most of these people carry the gene of the slave. They reflects their hatred of slavery, or rather their own slavery, by hating other slaves. The feeling of inferiority is the root of all cruelty. In every relationship that makes one person a slave to another, there is a trace of past or present inferiority, of hatred and lovelessness that feed on this inferiority, that is, of hostility towards others and, in fact, towards God.
As a reward for the slave who was freed by his master for saving his life, his master said, ‘Ask me for anything you wish,’ and the slave said, ‘Give me a slave.’ A slave may be freed and gain power, but not knowing how to manage that power that is, not knowing how to live freely, drags him into another pit. The inability to manage power is the result of not understanding freedom. Most tyrants come from among those who are slave-born and have acquired power. “Absolute power derives the tyrant who holds it insane. The reason is that he does not know how to use it. There is no greater cruelty than the imbalance between unlimited power and limited skill.” Michael Tournier/Kızılağaçlar Kralı
Neither Master Nor Slave
Today, the master-slave system is sustained not only by the masters but also by the voluntary servitude of the slaves, all of whom strive for their turn in the race to become masters. While Marx advocated the mastery of the proletariat, he did not heed the anarchists’ objection. However, equality and freedom are achieved not by the slave becoming the master, but by the destruction of slavery. That is, the reign of the slaves, and the desire for that reign, must be destroyed first. Only then will there be no masters left either.
To eliminate the master-slave order, we must first, as a principle, avoid assigning excessive power to any individual. No one should be burdened beyond what they can carry. The fundamental aim of all states, governments, law, trade and religious systems should be to prevent this unjust and unfair distribution of power and to save people not from slavery but from the master-slave dialectic itself.
Intelligent people never shoulder a burden they cannot carry. Those with strong character are not concerned with power. Because there is no power greater than having a solid character, that is, being a true Adam (pbuh). Virtue, morality, and faith are what make a person human, and being a real human is the real power. Everything should be destinated towards increasing the possibilities and opportunities that will purify the human from his historical destiny that has condemned him to slavery and from his habits based on unequal relations to help him attain a strong character. The world, nations, societies, and humanity are corrupted by those who possess power with a slave mentality. Those with the essence of Adam are the ones who restore it. This rule never changes. Whatever the problem, first of all, people who have preserved the essence of Adam (pbuh) should come forward and be the decision makers and controllers, not logical solution formulas, perfect theories, religious or philosophical rules.
If all the rules, ideas, theories and advices are implemented only by people with Adamic essence, law, justice and freedom will be ensured, and if these are provided, security and peace will be provided. Otherwise, the lunatics run the asylum, and slaves become the master, and beggars on horseback steal, the liar pretend to be the intellectual, the ignorant pretend to be the scholar, tyrants incite hatred and enmity, and the children of Satan imitate humans. Religion, science, philosophy, law, the state, everything becomes a means of re-enslaving humanity, of exploitation, of condemning people to degenerate relationships.
Today, this is the situation in the entire world and in our country.