Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Sweetness and Power

This one is probably going to ramble a bit.

In the most recent episode of “Once Upon A Time” we got Cora’s backstory. Cora is the mother of Regina, the Evil Queen, thus making her the mother of all evil, and she was certainly a key factor in Regina’s development.

Cora was humiliated by a princess, and a king, and that seems like something you should be able to get over. However, as she was learning to do magic, which was going to be necessary for saving her life and for revenge, part of her process was going back to that moment of humiliation over and over again, and her desire to turn the tables on them, and draw strength from that. She almost gave it up for love, but still wanting revenge led to a conversation where she decided to choose power, and that love was a weakness, so she removed her heart. 

My vacation reading included a Smithsonian and a Psychology Today. The Smithsonian (January 2013) had an article on scientific studies on infants and toddlers conducted at Yale that showed a clear preference for altruism, both in terms of observing others and their own behavior.

(The article was by Jill Greenberg, and actually, if you are into that sort of thing, the article was fascinating, for the results but also the discussion of the methodology and the variations. It’s a recommended read.)

Now, I thought I read something in the Psychology Today indicating that where this may start to change is around the age of four, where children start to get drawn towards power. I could not find that again. It may have been a reference to a book about how scary stories help children work things out and build stronger selves (Killing Monsters by Gerard Jones), and then extrapolating that with other things I have read.

One reason I am thinking about it is because of bullying, and especially cyberbullying. I do not understand why you would tell anyone to kill themselves. At the same time, I have at times wanted to emotionally hurt people. Usually they had hurt me, and I was frustrated that they were not hurt or bothered. I guess on one level I was looking for power over them, though it was a passing thing, and I’m glad of that.

I could keep focusing on my wounds and on the way I was wronged, and I could become very cold-hearted and miserable, and probably cruel. Maybe I would hurt others who were not involved, but who were easier targets. I read something recently where a girl who had been bullied confronted one of her attackers. He stopped bugging her, but also he killed himself a bit later.

Obviously he had his own issues going on. It does not justify any cruelty he committed, but you can see how a lot of people hurting each other can lead to even more people hurting each other, and nothing good comes from it.

In addition, when I am studying sexism or racism, one of the constant threads is the dehumanization of the other party. Objectification is especially overt when it comes to sexism, but it happens in other –isms as well, and what it keeps coming down to is power. Exert power over them, and it’s more power for yourself.

This is important because these power struggles are used to divide those who should have shared interests. Referring back to Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, slavery and then Jim Crow laws were used to divide poor whites from blacks, and keep the poor whites feeling like they had the same interests as the wealthy whites, though they did not, and the wealthy whites absolutely did not have the same interests as the poor whites.

Look at Half the Sky, by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl Wu Dunn, and there are so many examples of how greater opportunities for women improve the lives of the entire society, but the societies that aren’t there yet have the men feeling threatened by it. The power over women is all they have, but it ends up only being a power to cause and prolong misery.

Paul says that the love of money is the root of all evil, and there are a lot of ways in which that seems true, but it is starting to feel more like the real root is actually the desire to exert power over others, and maybe money is just a convenient way of getting there.

So, I think I am just going to throw two other points out there, and let you draw your own conclusions. I mean, these topics are going to come back up.

I believe I read this in Daphne Rose Kingma’s work, but somewhere I read that with controlling personalities, that behavior often started when they were prevented from developing a talent. Think about that. You are starting to develop something beautiful, and it is cut off, and the reaction is to want to do the same thing to others. So perhaps something that we really need is more opportunities for self-actualization, with children and adults. Take up with the violin again, or start to draw, or do something to cultivate yourself and let others bloom.

The other point goes back to my “Three Keys to Happiness” post that I keep referring back to, where one of the keys is serving others, and part of why that helps is that it shows that you have power. You are capable of doing some good for someone, regardless of the things you can’t do. It’s an important reminder:


There is appropriate power. Development of power over one’s self is huge, as we establish good habits, and follow through on goals. Interest in power over others, though, that leads down a dark path, and a lot of evil comes from it.

He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city. Proverbs 16:32

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