The Abuse of Power

"With a great power comes a great responsibility" That's the famous line from the movie Spider-Man. We are familiar with the statement, I assume. Yet, it also true that with a great power comes a great temptation. Jaap Van Ginnekan in his work the Psychology of Power argue that the abuse of power is a  syndrome that tend to affect top leader. We can easily agree with the theses for logically, the possibility of abuse of power is higher for simply, those who do not posses great power cannot abuse power greatly. This is the logic that can be empirically verified too. Apparently, the activity of the world today can be summarized with this, "struggle of power". We can see for instance on how the wealthy country spent much money in nuclear weapon. The great investment in  nuclear weapon by super-power country seems to set a silent stance and convey a subtle message for others, "we are powerful, do not try to mess with us." In the classical book Sun Tzu Art of War stated that subjugating the enemy's army without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence in war. 

 This is precisely what a powerful country can achieved as they owned the largest and advance nuclear weapon. Nobody dares to pick a fight againts those who owned nuclear weapon. Although nuclear is not exclusively used for the purpose of war, many people afraid about the catastrophic possibility of nuclear war caused by leader who used their power for a wrong end or wicked motive. The global crisis and tension between country could create or escalate a conflict which involves nuclear weapon usage. We hope that history won't repeat itself as we know how the Atomic-bomb dropped at Nagasaki in 1945 bring a very devastating output. The bomb killed around 200,000 people and formed 92.000 Hibakusha (persons who are affected defectively by bomb radiation). Nuclear-bomb will create a bigger catastrophe toward the entire civilizations more than an atomic-bomb could. The undesirable scenario of the war is probably not matter of "if" but "when". 

Talking about power more, there is a recent book wrote by Phillip Barlag (2021) on how the exalted Romans emperors in the past did various heinous things through their power. They kill, they burn, they torture. What was interesting that often, when the vice emperor claim themselves as God somehow, the abuse of power is evident and yes, it could be happened vice versa. The emperor believe in gods but they also wanted to be one. Such an irony but we can say the tendency to proclaim self as God happening in some form or another, even in the actions of countless religious people around the world. Moreover,  the threat of the abuse of power in the post-truth of our day is also evident. Media which are owned by large corporations and government can shape the perspectives of crowd unfairly. To know objectively whether the leaders behind the corporations are riding the media to vest their own interest or not therefore is not easy. In Western World, in the world of media there is the theory we called as The Four Theories of the Press, developed after the Second World War. The theories are these: libertarian, authoritarian, social responsibility and communist's model. Among the four, the libertarian model has been on the top and recognized as a good model on how the media should perform  and present their case in public. One of the characteristic found in the Libertarian Media function model is this, "Media encourages pluralist truth both sides of the same story." But let we think by our own self. Is it what happening right now?  Or does media  subjectively gives the rise of disinformation, intolerance and divisiveness caused by the abuse of power, instead of the plurality of voices that will paint the whole picture for the crowd? Maybe Ralph Keyes is right, "in the post-truth era we do not just have truth and lies bit a third category of ambiguous statements that are not exactly the truth but fall short a lie."

Most people seeks power. They think that through power, they can counter their insecurity inside. But power offer only a false promise of peace either in heart or in mind. Power can drives people crazier even more. Thus, everyone need to be reminded that there is always another side of power for power can blind people. In the story of The Lord of the Ring we know that no matter how good we are, the ring can influence people to be evil. Power can be like that Sauron's ring. This is also true for the case of knowledge. Bacon have said previously in the past that "Knowledge is power." The more we own a knowledge, the more we can  archive our desire. Hence knowledge as a power can also potentially to be used to build or to manipulate and destroy people in fact, many great villains' and terrorist's are the one who owned the brightest mind. They are smart and also quite intelligent to plan the terror, they used the technology, satellite, and could interrupt telecommunication. To make this visible, our pop-culture have been producing films which can show how the terrorists cleverly using their power or their knowledge to abuse the society. This is the blessings and the curse of owning a great knowledge. Edmund Burke best to conclude what we have already said previously as he says "the greater the power, the dangerous more the abuse." Are we ready to owned a great power? How can we do to prevent the abuse of power when we owned great power today or in the future? Is there things we need to change right now: our attitude toward power? Our fond toward power? Our  thought toward power? Or maybe perhaps in the case of responding with the possibility of the abuse of power, we can just ignore the possible outcome and believe to change something is to make things worst as we repeat the motto of Jean Luc-Goddard,  "Ne change rien pour que tout soit différent", change nothings so everything will be different!"