 
If suddenly you were granted one wish, to be Powerful or to be Great, which would you choose?
To answer this question, it's important first to see the difference and understand the distinction between Greatness and Power, so ask yourself, how is greatness different from having power?
Isn't someone who has power, by definition also great, and vice versa?
Power is at best thought of as a kind of energy, something ephemeral, whether - political; personal; kinetic or potential; soft or hard; social, cultural or economic; dynamic, diffused or focused. .
But all too often we mortals are intoxicated by the trappings of Power, and once we have had a taste of success and feel powerful, we are awash in pride and we let that pride and sense-of-power dictate our decisions so that we are no longer making decisions to serve the Highest Good, but rather we turn our attention instead to the challenge of impressing our fellow mortals, whether by building great, glorious structures, or by attempting to destroy others - whether friend or rivals, whom we would do better to embrace - for no other reason than perhaps because they wound our vanity, or take away our glory.
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER
True Power - I would venture to say - is unadulterated by pride or vanity, and prefers to remain in the shadows as an observer, learning and gaining wisdom and perspective. Former President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel explains it best here in his 1991 speech On the Temptations of Political Power.
As an illustration of this idea of True Power, we will be featuring a review of the just released film Ip Man about the Great Grand Master of Chinese Wing-Chun style martial arts, and the teacher of kung-fu superstar, Bruce Lee.
Power alone neither contributes nor insures that civilizations thrive. Notorious men like Saddam Hussein, Adolf Hitler, Idi Amin and Robert Mugabe wield enormous Power in their milieu, but these men are not Great men, no, the title of Greatness is bestowed upon people like Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa who may not have wielded the sort of hard power that employs an arsenal of threats-and-fear, negativity-and-destruction as weapons, but who instead have attained the stature of greatness by virtue of their ability to draw upon the positive emotions of love-and-compassion, forgiveness-and-peaceful-resistance, where most of us would likely have resorted to the doctrine of an eye for an eye just to appease our human nature, our need for revenge, retaliation and punishment.
Who said, "ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY?"
Joseph Campbell tells the story of the "Indra's Lesson" from the classic Upanishads in his book,The Power of Myth (1988), in which a God-of-Men is taught a valuable lesson by the God-of-Gods, that earthly power is fleeting and finite, evaporating in the cosmic blink of an eye, no matter how many statues have been erected, but yet we are still meant to do the best with all with which we have been blessed in this life - whether in abilities, or wealth, or position - but to do so with humility and the knowledge that we are but-part-of-the-whole mystery of the Universe - no matter what heights we attain - or else to suffer the reputation of being lacking in wisdom, even if brimming with earthbound glory.
"Indra's Lesson" -from Joseph Campbell's THE POWER OF MYTH (1988)
The Wisdom of "THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE"
In his books Third Wave (1980). and Powershift (1991), futurist Alvin Toffler wrote that there are three main kinds of power - violence-based (tribal, agrarian and feudal), wealth-based (industrial and financial) and knowledge-based (collaborative) - and that we are now in a period of transitioning from an era where power was wealth-based to one where power will be knowledge-based. (Toffler is considered by some to be one of the three most influential voices in the business community, in the same league as Bill Gates and Peter Drucker. LINK )
It seems important once again to revisit the wisdom of separating the powers of Church and State, which was important in feudal times because leaders had a tendency to declare themselves to be Gods, as a claim to the legitimacy of their reign, and the immutability of their edicts. We may think this is not a risk in our modern world - because we have "evolved" or we've learned from our past mistakes - when in fact we do still see state politics being advanced under a Islamic religious platform, acts of terror being called "God's work" with promises of earthly honor as well as rewards in the eternal ever-after. Toffler wrote, "change is non-linear and can go backwards, forwards and sideways".
We'd like to believe that these spiteful messages of hate-and-destruction could not appeal to rational, educated, "GOOD" people, but not so according to the groundbreaking work of Professor Stanley Milgram - "Milgram Obedience Experiment(Yale, 1961)" and Professor Philip Zimbardo, "Stanford Prison Experiment (1971)". Professor Zimbardo had to stop his experiment 6 days into the full 14-day study because of the reported cruelty displayed by those given the role of prison wardens.
The point is this - it doesn't take much to turn "good" people into autobots willing to act unconscionably, whether in blind obedience to authority, or because they actually don't have, or haven't developed an "individual conscience". The actual reason two-thirds of "normal" "good" people can commit atrocious acts doesn't matter because we know from the Milgram Obedience Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment, that "good" people turn Bad very quickly. Only 30% of people have the strength of character, the morality or ethics to act according to a clear sense of what is Right and Just, the other two-thirds of those tested in both experiments - that's a clear majority - will doing something that is clearly bad, immoral and unethical, when given authority to do so.
Professor Zimbardo believes we need to groom people to be "heroes", to act uncommonly - maybe even against human nature - and while the great religions of the world may have an important role to play in effecting this sort of conditioning of the human spirit, the danger of permitting Earthbound Power to be mingled and mixed-in with Spiritual Authority is to once again allow Power to be mistaken as Greatness.
It seems to me that we in the free world need to be extra vigilant about NOT taking the easy path, but rather to always remember to lead by example, highlighting the importance of "individual conscience" to be kept independent from government authority, if only as a check-and-balance against the ability of Power to corrupt. If developed conscientiously, our "individual conscience" and our understanding of The Social Contract by which we are governed, is what will ensure the survival of the sort of civil society that is fundamental not only to the appreciation of, but also to the preservation of, a truly free society under which humanity can flourish and thrive.
If Power is defined as what makes it impossible for us to say NO; then, Greatness can be defined as what makes us want to say YES. So, to return to the question posed at the beginning of this editorial, which would YOU choose - to be Powerful or to be Great?
In the free world, the CHOICE of who you want to be is in your hands ... Protect freedom. Develop your "individual conscience". Choose wisely.
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