Pretending
Right now, I hear the Eric Clapton song 'Pretending' in my head for some reason. The fact is that we all pretend. It's very difficult to avoid. It requires the virtues of courage, honesty, and discipline. But if we want to maximize our power, it is required. In today's episode, we begin to look at how we pretend and consider what we might do to move in a more powerful direction.
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Pretending
Our power is a model that helps us maximize our personal power. What are the contributing factors to our power? What happens when we feel more or less powerful? Powers are proclivity and ability to take effective action. Action requires directed force. Force requires energy. This means that fundamental to our power is the level of our energy. If we want to maximize our power, we must become accomplished stewards of her energy. What contributes to our level of energy?
Five of the most major factors are tied to the basics of our physical bodies. Proper optimal levels of sleep, hydration, nutrition, avoidance of degenerative stimulants and fitness. Sleep in these areas and our energy depletes. Get them right, and we're well on our way to abundant energy. There is further to go because these are not the only factors. Our mindsets also profoundly contribute or detract from our energy levels.
As in the physical realm, there are classic mentalities that we can nurture to maximize our energy. Five such examples that come to mind are stress, clarity, focus, connection and creativity. There is a habit we all have in some form or another, at least some of the time, that saps us in all five areas. It's a habit that comes not from our strengths and uniqueness but from our insecurities and the common human traits we share. What is this pernicious habit? It's the habit of pretending.
Pretending is, if not the biggest strain of our energy, one of the guiltiest culprits. It takes a lot of energy to pretend that energy comes with the expense of the other productive and healthy priorities to which it may have more wisely been directed. You may not believe you waste energy pretending. After all, you are honest, a what-you-see-is-what-you-get person. Pretending is an insidious foe. It hides. It works best when we don't even know we're doing it. It takes the disciplined work of a lifetime to truly defeat this powerful foe.
Pretending is, if not the biggest strain of our energy, one of the guiltiest culprits.
As with all positive change, progress begins with awareness. We need to look in the mirror, both literally and proverbial. This gives us clarity in our self-conception imperative for any effort to reduce the energy we waste pretending, but it's not enough. This is not just an internal battle. We're not up against ourselves. To reduce the energy we bleed pretending, we must contend with social forces’ ideals that their roots are designed to diminish our power, our energy. Maybe that sounds cryptic to you. I'll explain.
Human nature can be understood as a power dynamic. It isn't the only such model and it doesn't describe the totality of the human experience, but it's sufficiently broad that it's often used that way. It's the basis of Marxist theory, for instance. This poses those who control the means of production against those who are used to profitably exploit those assets. In Marxism, the inherent inequities are forcibly redistributed by some central authority. Let's further clarify what we mean by power.
There are two basic categories., power over ourselves, which is the power we talk about here in the Eye Of Power community and power over others. That's the power of authority, the power to make the rules to compel others to do as we wish. The ideas that contribute to the habit of pretending are born and serve the second aspect of power.
For those who wish to exercise authority over others, especially to force them to do things or behave in ways they don't naturally wish, the first power, personal power, is the biggest force they can encounter. Taken to the extreme, it's impossible to control someone who possesses all of their personal power. For this reason, those who wish to benefit either directly or indirectly from some manner of authority naturally gravitate towards ideals and notions that, for the person who accepts the idea, erode their personal power.
Chief among those are notions that induce people to spend their energy pretending. What are examples of such ideas? There are so many. It's beyond the scope of this show to give you a comprehensive list. To better equip you to defend yourself, let's look at one of them that is most commonly and perhaps most effectively deployed. The phrase is the ideal can be understood as identity politics. As with all stealth attacks, its true nature is not what it seems at first glance.
Under the auspices of protecting minorities or out-groups, identity politics has appealed to compassionate, unsuspecting people, most especially the young. It feels good to band together and support an underdog, people who are vulnerable in some way. In this happy tune of unity, there is a sour note that far too often goes unheard.
For identity politics to have the intended effects, we must abdicate our understanding of ourselves as unique individuals in favor of belonging to this group or that. We're convinced this is necessary because we are being victimized by some nefarious opposing force, often described as hate, bigotry, prejudice and/or exclusion.
These dangers play to our deepest fears as, evolutionarily speaking, banishment from the group was equivalent to a death sentence. It's nefarious because it turns out our strengths against us. The things that make us unique individuals are muted or erased and our virtues are not measured by our individuality but by our conformity to the prescribed ideals and behaviors. The ability to think critically is one of the first and most tragic casualties.
You know you're in the realm of identity politics when the phrase social justice is used in the conversation. Social justice, as it is manifested in contemporary Western culture, is not about justice. Justice is, by definition, a case-by-case moral play that affects people as individuals. Where there is injustice, it doesn't happen to an amorphous group but to individual people. A justice system deals with specific cases. Even in class action suits, the merits are decided upon tangible damage done to individual participants in the case.
Pretending: You know you're in the realm of identity politics when the phrase “social justice” is used in the conversation.
When we zoom out to the group, the currency moves away from justice. It turns to power. In this case, it's about conformity to the system and the players within it who currently hold and wish to expand their power. Their efforts have been greatly aided by the advent of social media which provided an unprecedented channel for projecting and comparing images in a public way. It created a major psychological trap, one that destroyed countless lives. We view the stories of friends, acquaintances, strangers and celebrities and believe they accurately affect the world around us.
They don't. We get caught in a big trap, comparison. We end up with the negative feelings of missing out, not measuring up and other of the tortures that come from the unwise habit of comparing ourselves to others as a means to measure our happiness. This, along with other forces, creates tremendous emotional pressure.
One of the ways we try to alleviate that pressure is to match our perceptions of others. We might try to keep up with the Joneses or we might go along to get along. We want to belong to our identified group. We try to comply with those ideals that give us a sense of belonging. We don't push back if we disagree with something. All of that seems reasonable.Why make waves? Why risk reprisal and rejection from the group? Where we must, we pretend and we bleed energy and we give up our power, which hurts us. It helps those who want us to behave in the prescribed way.
I'll put my mouth where my money is. I'll take a risk and maybe make some waves. Maybe some people will turn away and label me an enemy in response to what I'm about to assert. To show how far this can be pushed, I'll pick something that was completely uncontroversial and obvious until about five minutes ago. Here's the assertion.
It's the simple fact that there are two genders. I expect there will be readers who will label me as a member of the force they perceive opposes them. If this is you before you go, let me say that I don't. If you want to build your agency in this world and do it not at the expense of others but in support of them, we are allies. I invite you to remain in the conversation. There will be those upon whose ears my words fall deaf.
They hear an expression of pure fact. Male and female, that's it, as an oppressive attack, an attempt to diminish them in some way. Possessed by an ideology, they are unable to sense the spirit behind my message. I want them to have more power and not less. I want them to be free of the energy drain of pretending.
I'm here to help them connect to their true potential and express themselves as only they can. As long as they remain captive to the lies they've been sold, most likely from a very young age, they are not independent agents. Whether they know it or not, they function to serve people in power who have no interest in their freedom, independence and agency. Quite the opposite, in fact.
As long as we remain captive to the lies we’ve been sold, most likely from a very young age, we are not independent agents.
This is one of the most dramatic examples I can think of to illustrate how pretending limits us. It's not the only such example of ways we pretend. Marketers are skilled in playing to and profiting from the waves we deceive ourselves. This costs us our money, time and peace of mind. It strikes me as most tragic when it costs us our potential.
That's why it's wise to develop the courage and honesty required to take as unbiased, long look at ourselves as we possibly can. It's not easy, but we need not do it alone. That's what we're doing with the Eye Of Power. We're actively looking at how we gain and lose our agency. My hope is that you'll do the same, maybe even with us. Let's go.