POWER
Power mesmerizes us, our culture venerates the rich and famous, the people with well-known brand names like politicians, movie stars, and successful business people. We like some and we dislike others, but we are enthralled by all. The powerful know this and use it to their advantage. Power is often defined as the ability to influence others while remaining impervious to other’s influence. Money and power feed on each other, the more you have, the more you can control the status quo narrative and by consequence the world.
We think that powerful people are just the same as we are, except for their wealth and status. It turns out that the difference is not just in their wallet but goes deep inside their brain. According to the two-decade research of psychology professor at UC Berkeley Dacher Keltner, subjects under the influence of power act as though they had suffered a traumatic brain injury in the prefrontal cortex. Such patients can have personality changes that render them more impulsive, less risk-aware, and less empathetic, unable to even consider the validity of other people’s existence.
It is amazing that power acts on the brain as a brain injury, mimicking psychiatric disorders like narcissism, borderline personality, and others. Neuroscientist Sukhvinder Obhi from McMaster University in Ontario confirmed the above findings by using a transcranial-magnetic stimulation machine. His research showed that power impairs certain neural processes like “mirroring”, the basis for empathy.
The action of power on your brain is gradual and takes time. The more absolute power you have, the more your brain changes, the more you see yourself as a special person apart from the rest, the more you believe that your ideas are the law and that you have the right to decide the fate of others.
If we think about people with power, politicians first come to mind. In a Democracy, politicians campaign to get their message across which implies showing or at least feigning some empathy for the plight of the public. In campaign mode, their brain isn’t in the power bubble yet, but once they win, the power goes to their head –literally- they enter the bubble of power and forget about their promises. The power syndrome makes them identify more with their peer group in the same power bubble, and as a result, all the promises made to the corporate elites end up fulfilled, while the people’s needs are forgotten after the pretty rhetoric.
Corporate elites suffer from the same power brain injury as politicians, making DC the center of the power syndrome. In DC, politicians, corporate and Pentagon elites, converge for a psycho-illness feast. The competition for the top rungs of the power hierarchy in DC requires a variety of status fighting behaviors, just like yaks fight for the exclusive right to mate. Their combined impulsiveness, disturbed risk assessment and lack of empathy have allowed the enactment of very detrimental policies. Just look at the foreign policy of the US since 9/11, all presidents have aided and abetted in the destruction of about six countries without showing much for it.
They justify this destruction alleging national security -a euphemism for access to oil and raw materials, bringing democracy or restoring human rights, even when they never achieve what they promised. Just think of the destruction of a well-functioning country like Libya, based on DC’s lies about stopping alleged human rights violations. Instead of redressing any human rights issues, they created such chaos and institutional vacuum, that the country is now rife with slave markets. Libya, the African country with the highest GDP was turned into an economic wreck with no future. Their supposed objectives were not met and yet the powerful people in DC, drunk with power, were impervious to the empirical evidence and since nobody took them to task, their policies are never revised; their decision making is generally marked by rashness, excessive risk-taking, and lack of real empathy; their brain injury precludes any intrusion of facts into the picture.
If any powerless person would make as many mistakes as the powerful in DC make, they would be fired from their jobs. But since the media fauns around these powerful people, they instead get rewarded with future jobs that will allow them to destruct more, and gain more money to control the narrative, while most people continue to applaud them.
DC isn’t the only place where the hubris of the power syndrome is concentrated. Wall St in New York is another hub where excessive risk-taking, impulsivity, and disregard for the welfare of clients and the general public are the norm. This was very evident during the 2007 financial crisis, in which financial entities like Goldman Sachs, were pitching financial instruments to their clients, without telling them that their chances of success were null. Their excessive and irresponsible risk-taking caused the financial crisis that impacted gravely a large portion of the population; instead of being held accountable, they were rewarded for their shenanigans by receiving the lion’s share of the stimulus money. As a result, their power syndrome was not put in check, and their risk-taking and impulsivity continued as though nothing had happened.
The third center of power syndrome is Silicon Valley, which includes all the tech corporations that have become so powerful in this century. Just like Wall Street, their link to DC unifies the power syndrome crowd with common goals. This technocratic power is the one that is impacting us more at this time, but it can do it only because they are enmeshed with the financial, defense, and corporate power that rules DC and the world.
The measures that the powerful have imposed during this pandemic have increased the power of the tech crowd and led them to the top of the pyramid, not just in the US, but in the whole world. One of the most acute power sufferers during this pandemic has been Bill Gates, a technocrat and self-named philanthropist who is admired by many people. During the pandemic, Gates has become the self-appointed expert in virology, treatment, and vaccines, not because he has expert knowledge about those subjects but because his influence on the media has permeated to the people. Bill Gates exemplifies the top of the power syndrome; his word is taken as the truth, though in reality, it is a ‘truth’ told by a man whose brain is behaving as though he had a serious brain injury.
Since he represents the top of this pyramid at the moment, I will use him as the power prototype. Just looking at the track record for his foundation gives us plenty of evidence of his power syndrome symptoms. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation claims to help the world but the empirical evidence betrays the extreme narcissism and lack of empathy of his decisions. I will mention one example -his ‘brilliant idea to help India and Africa by forcing the implementation of industrial agriculture based on Monsanto’s paradigm of GMO patented seeds that require tons of toxic pesticides. In order to justify this very profitable whim (Gates owns stock in Monsanto), he needed the proof from expert advice; this was no problem since he had enough power to convince 100 Nobel Prize Winners to sign a declaration declaring GMOs safe.
The promise of monetary rewards combined with his lack of empathy prevented him from considering the reality of the lives of the farmers he was supposedly helping. The majority is poor, so having to buy expensive Monsanto seeds every year instead of using their traditional variety of free seeds means sure economic ruin. These seeds require the use of expensive toxic products that end up polluting the soil, rivers, and waterways. The project started in India, where millions of farmers have committed suicide after being ruined by Gates philanthropy. He is now trying to implement a Green Agriculture scheme in Africa, but his power-damaged brain doesn’t review the empirical evidence showing the failure of his policies. He remains quite confident about his decisions, reassured by the power of his brand name and the homage of the adoring media.
Bill Gates not only can influence the status quo narrative through the media and brand name. His foundation has invested money in almost everything in the world, augmenting the gravity of his power syndrome. The foundation is the second biggest donor to the WHO, second only to the US, but it ends up the biggest donor if you add indirect channels like his funding for GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, and CEPI (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness). He has become the vaccine deity, his ideas, backed by his money engaged the WHO into vaccinating millions of unwilling Kenyan women with a “tetanus” vaccine that later was found to include a sterility formula. After denying the charges, the WHO finally admitted the truth, but quietly. Similar accusations have come from Tanzania, Mexico, Nicaragua, and the Philippines.
The Gates Foundation also funds universities and research institutions worldwide, like the Royal College in London and John Hopkins University. NGOs like PATH (funds vaccine development), Silicon Valley start-ups, and drug companies, complete the extent of this power. 71 percent of the foundation’s university giving ($4.27B) between 2014 and 2018 has gone to US institutions, the UK is in second place with 12% and Canada is the third with 4%.
A man that has as much money to distribute in all the right places can control the world narrative just by himself. If Bill Gates is the biggest funder of epidemic preparedeness and vaccine research, could a university or drug company do research that doesn’t coincide with his? No, his power is immense. This extreme power inevitably means that his brain is behaving more and more as though it had a brain injury in the Prefrontal Cortex. His influence on the world has made the media trust him, so Gates has been allowed to become the self-appointed pandemic, climate change, and science upholder guru, whose word becomes law. His power is such that he can cause great harm in the world by turning into reality very unsound propositions, with no accountability.
Researchers have found that the only way to help people with power syndrome is by imposing some level of accountability. The lack of self-accountability is already rampant among the ultra-powerful; if the powerless don’t take them to task, they will continue causing harm, and still be applauded. This cycle of non-accountability leaves the general public without any control over their destiny. We are led into wars that don’t benefit anyone but the powerful; we are led into authoritarian emergency measures like the lockdowns declared for this pandemic without any proof of their effectiveness; we are told to accept the ‘saving’ vaccines without mentioning that these have not gone through the correct process of trials and quality control; we are told to be grateful for stimulus money that goes mostly to the same culprits who cause a financial crisis. We accept all this just because the powerful tell us it is the right thing to do.
The catch 22 is that powerful people’s mental illness is inversely proportional to the accountability they experience and that same power and influence preclude the cure that they desperately need. Thanks to their power the public is laden with disinformation preventing any accountability. Most current information is peppered with vague stories about wars, mysterious viruses for which the world has to be turned upside down, and nice rhetoric about stimulus packages that aren’t explained so the people can’t criticize them. Most of the so-called ‘information’ is a self-referring narrative that ends up having very little substance in it.
Our situation as 99 percenters is that the 1 percenters are the creators of the global status quo narrative and this gives them control over our lives. These power elites suffer from brain damage symptoms but they are not accountable for the gross errors they commit and the suffering they cause around the world. This power syndrome is a health crisis! These people need help!
They remind us of King Midas who had the power to convert anything he touched into gold. After a while, Midas noticed that this was not a gift but a liability; it became like a curse, making him miserable and painfully accountable for his hubristic desire. Unfortunately, unlike king Midas, the powerful people now don’t experience their power as a liability; their unbridled power causes extensive damage to the powerless and voiceless people around the world while the powerful remain completely unaware of their collateral damage. The lesser world elites can benefit from some of the powerful clique’s delusional projects, so they are prone to agree with their policies, without noticing that by doing so, they greatly contribute to the lack of accountability that the powerful suffer.
We, as powerless people have only one way of helping these power syndrome patients, we have to unite and bring some accountability to these elites, provide some humbling lessons that would allow their prefrontal cortex to reach and maintain some level of normality. This, in turn, will automatically turn the world more equal! Just imagine if the powerful were accountable for all their errors and would receive a merited humbling often? Their brain injury syndrome will disappear and the world would be much happier.
