Power corrupts

Sir John Acton, 6th Baronet. He is perhaps best known for the remark, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”

Pages of history are crimson with blood, shed by such tyrants under  absolute power they usurped.  Tyrant kings, like Pharaoh of Egypt, Julius Caesars of Italy, Invaders like Alexander the great, Tamur Ling, Ahmad Shah Abdali of our own times. The absolute power in the hands of British Raj, Hitler, Massolini, Stalin and the murders of Nagasaki and Hirosheema , have seen ruthless massacres.. Power in the hands of a few, created a crazy aspiration for the fledgling nations to  require Nuclear power.  Tragedy will be  insurmountable when this nuclear power, no matter how crude, falls in the hands of Muslim terrorists. The day is not far off, when Countries like Pakistan and Iran will  openly support and supply this powerful weapon to their allies, no matter how much they torment them . It is not that Muslim nations and their political theology has flaws, it is flawed  already. Sure they will use this absolute power for absolute destructive achievement.

Surprisingly, out of all 57 Muslim countries of the world there is not a single country that has functional stable democratic government. There is not a single Islamic country that is not poverty stricken and where human rights are not violated, blatantly. Apart from the tortures over their own Muslim brothers, these terrorists have unleashed murders and rapes over Christians and other minorities. Power in the hands of powerful theocratic Islamic states is unbearable for all races of this Globe.

Such tyrants were not only destined in the old annals of history. Today, our slogan for democratic system, in itself has vested enormous power in votes, voters and institutions such as parliaments and assemblies. Most of the times, this system in itself has become dysfunctional under the abuse of power. Rightly, did G. B Shaw calls it ” A government that buys the people, far the people and off the people”

Under these veered circumstances, a great number of powerless people are born in this democratic set ups. New democratic systems are turned into new parliamentary power houses, leaving their voters powerless and insignificant.  The instability in this powerless vacuum is one of the major causes that all newly born Nations have  experienced hunger, disease, unemployment and instable governments. Wretched shanty towns and slums are the fertile field for sedition and a nursery for thr growth of terrorist activities.

Not going in countless details, you will find these people walking and roaming in millions as real Zombies. Powerless, wretched, without hope for any future. They have no belongingness anywhere. Self prestige and  self respect are the phrases, they have never heard. It reminds me of a chapter of valley of dead in the Bible by prophet Ezekiel  37:1. Power, honor, dignity and privileges are denied to them. They have convent with death and hell. Self impotence, self insignificance and self alienation is their boon of life. George Gurdjieff a great Greek-American mystic, teacher and religious man once remarked-

A considerable percentage of the people we meet on the street are people who are empty inside, that is, they are actually already dead. It is fortunate for us that we do not see and do not know it. If we knew what a number of people are actually dead and what a number of these dead people govern our lives, we should go mad with horror.

The people who make wars, the people who reduce their fellows to slavery, the people who kill and torture and tell lies in the name of their sacred causes, the really evil people in a word—these are never the publicans and the sinners. No, they’re the virtuous, respectable men, who have the finest feelings, the best brains, the noblest ideals.( Aldous Huxley)