On a new topic, I've been having a lot of discussions about the meaning of power in one of my classes and have begun thinking about it a lot.
One particularly interesting concept I heard was the notion that human beings are entities driven solely by the desire for power and though at first that might be easy to disagree with, upon further thought it really seems true. Even concerning religion.
The aspect of religion seems like a really grey area, but the more I thought about and argued about it, the more I started to see it. Most religions, either have an iconic being that holds complete power, or serve as a source of upliftment. Either way, that can be interpreted as people attaching themselves to a source of power or attaching themselves to something that will release them from feelings of oppression and fear.
My teacher even said something about evolution with got me thinking. It was about the theory of survival of the fittest and it made quite a lot of sense to me.
He cited the fact that most people get either jealous or angry when someone around them succeeds or is elevated to a higher position and how people also secretly delight in the suffering of others. He argued that this behavior isn't just one of the usual things that bad people do but is a manifestation of our primal instincts of survival of the fittest, that the success of others makes us feel intimidated and the suffering of others makes us feel like we're in higher and better positions. In a nutshell, it all comes down to power.
