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The Role of Power in People’s Lives
The following lines – regardless of the problem of violence – are meant to encourage and tie in with Albert Camus and his passion to revolt against injustice. Camus’ justice dared to engage in the necessary struggle with the unjust world – here on earth and not only in heaven. His great love for the world and for humanity outshone the bleak depictions in his dramas, novels and philosophical essays.
Current events such as the proxy war in Ukraine or mass terror and dictatorships give us a thorough visual lesson on the historical significance of violence in the lives of individuals and communities. The flood of legalised crimes deprives us of many illusions; in the question of taming violence, humanity still seems to be at the very beginning of humanisation.
The striving for power in business and politics leads again and again to catastrophes in which the wealth of our culture is squandered and the harvests of our civilisation are destroyed.
But our lethargy means that we do not allow ourselves to be shaken up by this, but continue to lull ourselves into security. We prefer the comforting self-delusion to the thought of danger. Violence brings down all our cultural efforts.
By not fighting it, we condone it in the hope that it will spare us. No one can escape responsibility, we are always complicit, even when we are victims.
The path of the individual in a violent culture inevitably comes under the influence of the desire for power and domination.
All the role models and ideals of this culture are coloured by the will to power. To be great, to be powerful becomes the goal that weakness sets for itself in order to become strong.
Already at the beginning of the last century, the individual psychologist Alfred Adler wrote:
“The poison of imperiousness (…) creeps into parental love. It becomes the children’s task to outgrow their educators, to come to terms with them. It is no different with the teacher. (….). Modern psychology has shown us, however, that the traits of imperiousness, ambition and striving for power over others, together with their abundance of ugly concomitants, are not innate and unchangeable. Rather, they are inculcated into the child at an early age; the child receives them willy-nilly from an atmosphere drenched in the thrill of power. (…).
The parents’ lust for domination, service relationships in the home, the privileges of the small child irresistibly direct the child’s mind towards the attainment of power and dominance, making only this position seem enticing to it. It is only some time later that feelings of community flow into his soul, but they are usually subordinated to the already developed desire for power. (…). (1)
War and Social Order
The development of a culture, however, consists in the voice of the human conscience making itself heard more and more and in the spirit of responsibility taking the place of violence. The ethical achievement of the future will be the growth of the human sense of community, the knowledge of the togetherness of all those who bear humanity’s face. We still suffer from the fiction of power and the self-importance of the individual.
What matters everywhere is a sense of community, a feeling of belonging together, of being with one another. That means we have to stick together and join hands. The reduction of the lust for power and the desire for violence is an urgent necessity for communal life.
Because of the peacefulness of human nature, it is a mistake to attribute war to human nature. Only the lust for power of those who function as authorities within the peoples and are imbued by their social position with the spirit of violence, drives time and again to warlike conflicts in which the peoples bleed to death for the benefit of their masters and exploiters. While it is possible to suppress the admonishing cries of the human sense of community, they can never be completely eradicated. For the gift of evolution consists in the moral consciousness of the individual, in the insight into the responsibility of all towards all.
That is why it is surprising when one looks at the evening television pictures and sees that great differences are made with regard to the nationality of the soldiers killed. Isn’t every dead soldier in Ukraine or any other part of the world one dead man too many? No matter whether he is of Western European, Russian, Ukrainian, African or US nationality? Is it not always a fellow human being who is killed? How can we forget this and still live and sleep well?
Wars Are Good Business
To conquer the other nations, to dominate the others, that is good business. The horrendous profits of the German armaments company “Rheinmetall” or the internationally active US investment company “BlackRock” with over 10 trillion US dollars in assets under management are just two examples among many.
Where we look is profit. There is nothing where that does not play in our social order. Another example is the drug problem, which is killing an enormous number of young people. If there wasn’t a lot of money to be made from it, parents wouldn’t have to worry. Young people would not be able to get hold of the drugs, the market would be empty. But this is not taken into consideration. On the contrary: the release of certain quantities of narcotics is now not only discussed but already practised in many countries.
It is still the case in our capitalist countries that a tiny minority of people live at the expense of the majority. And this gap between rich and poor is widening.
While national wealth is invested in the production of armaments, hunger and poverty are a reality for millions or even billions of people in the world. While capitalists are getting richer and richer through ruthless actions, numerous people are getting poorer and poorer on the other side.
A quote from the German playwright Bertolt Brecht expresses this sentimentally:
“Rich man and poor man stood there and looked at each other. And the poor man said pale: ‘If I were not poor, you would not be rich’.”
Will New Confederation of States (BRICS) Manage Without Violence?
The BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) are an association of emerging economies. Because of the economic stagnation in the industrialised nations, investors are now turning to these five countries. Against the backdrop of the Ukraine war and the conflict over Taiwan, the new confederation is striving for more political weight and trying to position itself as an alternative to the G7 countries.
For critical observers, the question arises whether this new confederation of states wants to and can manage without violence.
Why should the powerful leaders of these five states [as well as new members ++] be seen in a different light than the leaders of all other states? Why make a difference?
Will the new confederation use the same methods to force people to go to war and wage war? And this is because our whole society, all our institutions, all our ins and outs, without exception, are permeated by the idea of violence.
Even if the West is obviously fighting the East with all permissible and impermissible means, one should – if one is against every dictatorship and violent society – not take sides. Already during the Russian Revolution one could see that something was happening there that had nothing to do with liberation, freedom or socialism.
The experiment in Russia failed. Those who had the say did not grasp the people, did not assess them correctly.
They did not associate with the workers, but placed themselves above them.
The principle of violence, of oppression, of conquering the people has finally led to disaster. If this had been conducted properly, there might not have been a Second World War. The socialist, anti-military idea of peace and freedom, the hope of the proletarians of the whole world have been destroyed.
The idea of socialism can only flourish in peace and freedom, whether in Russia, in China or in another BRICS state. Psychology is still missing today – and people are not satisfied.
Without Psychology, Humanity Will Not Progress
Humanity must embrace the results of psychological research in order to create a life worthy of human beings. When we recognise ourselves and our fellow human beings, our view of state conditions, the entire social order, also changes.
Since history is a work of human beings, the change of the world must come from within them, from the community of mature citizens. People must get to know their own nature, their mental make-up, their conscious and semi-conscious prejudices, as well as their own ways of reacting and also those of their fellow human beings. In this way, they should be able to assess how they themselves and how their fellow human beings will react to conflict-laden crises and emerging wars.
Humanity does not yet seem to be able to live together, to associate, without violence and wars. But this can change at any time. In this context, enlightenment, the purification of human consciousness from individual and collective prejudices is of great importance.
Even more important than enlightenment is the problem of education. Depth psychological research has made its immense implications clear. Thus we know today that people are to such an extent the product of their early childhood education that we may hope that psychological methods of education, which dispense with the authoritarian principle, will produce people who will be immune to the entanglements of power madness.
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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel is a school headmaster, educationalist and qualified psychologist. After his university studies he became an academic teacher in adult education. As a retiree he worked as a psychotherapist in his own practice. In his books and professional articles, he calls for a conscious ethical-moral education in values as well as an education for public spirit and peace. For his services to Serbia, he was awarded the Republic Prize “Captain Misa Anastasijevic” by the Universities of Belgrade and Novi Sad in 2021.
He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Note
(1) Adler, Alfred (1928). Psychology of Power. In: Grasenack, Moritz (ed.). (2005). The libertarian psychotherapy of Friedrich Liebling. Lich / Hesse, p. 139f.
