Since the beginning of time, we have been conditioned and programmed to follow powerful individuals, leadership and feel that we can rely on someone's else's experiences to learn something, to master a new skill or simply to survive!
It is ingrained in our primitive nature, nevertheless during the pursue of power we can be biased to poison our mind to believe that we can control, influence and manipulate others to do what we want in spite of knowing that the final outcome is just our wellbeing and not the wellbeing of the community or society!
It happens everywhere in the world and during this season is seems more infectious than any virus or climate threat!
But why are human beings so addicted to the power equation?
In recent years, researchers have shown that the human brain is exquisitely tuned to the perceptual and cognitive demands of processing others. One reliable finding from this work that appears to be important for human social perception is resonant or vicarious activity, whereby perceiving an interaction partner automatically activates neural circuits that would underlie their experience. For example, with respect to action observation, neural circuits that are related to action execution become active when the person observes someone else making the same action; in other words, the observer’s brain resonates with the model’s motor behavior (1).
Just as children replicate the actions of adults, they start acquiring skills, moods and ways of expressing very similar to one or both of their parents we are lured to do the same in a higher scale. This is why is extremely important to pay attention to the regulations or guidelines of society that government impose on the population.
However, humans also possess the amazing skill of questioning measures, behaviors and impositions. The new generations of children are more of that kind, they from a small age question everything, think more about what they enjoy, like and are more attuned to their intuition than ever.
Which is a great sign of wisdom that we can take advantage of, if we really want to start turning the future of the human race to a different outcome, allowing them to follow more what they feel, to adapt more to the conditions of the environment but highlighting the amazing traits of their brain, body and emotions.
Additionally, inspiring them to be amazed by nature's way of fixing things, giving them more content where they can appreciate the real power of the earth to balance, heal and trust in the flow of life!
The psychological literature on power indicates a reliable relationship between power and information processing style.
High-power individuals are able to ignore peripheral information and focus on task relevant details, thereby improving goal pursuit, cognitive flexibility, and executive functioning. Therefore, when powerful individuals ignore peripheral information during a nonsocial task, it may improve their performance. Conversely, when the powerful ignore “peripheral” information in social settings, the outcome can be quite negative from the perspective of the powerless (1).
One of the greatest discoveries in terms of how our brain structure, scaffolds and innate nature can drive us to do evil things without even perceiving that "others" are suffering! Which is exactly what we are witnessing more transparently and is being spread since the last few years.
The high-power individuals are just trying to redesign our structure, the way we interact, the way we behave and even transgressing our human rights to the point of enforcing toxic technology manipulations to ensure the profit of the same kind of high-power individuals.
To the point where they can't even discern and see all the damage that is being performed to the vast majority of people, the ongoing damage performed to the planet and of course the inevitable consequences that we will have in just a matter of decades if we don't awake to the truth!
Similarly, socioeconomic status (SES) has been linked to empathic accuracy, with high-SES individuals making less accurate judgments about others’ affective states than low-SES individuals. As a result, the powerful often form a relatively shallow understanding of others, compared to the less powerless (1).
Something that is also being replicated in lower spheres of power but with still high economic capacity. And as mentioned before spreading faster than a pandemic state promoted for the same kind of individuals!
Therefore, what can the rest of the society do to start turning the mindset of people towards creating a community wellbeing that allows to join forces and work together to heal and rescue what we still can save of our beautiful home?
First of all, recognize that we have a huge universal advantage that most likely descend from a higher power! And of course, by advantage, I mean the opportunity to give birth to this new generation of individuals that is trying to find their way in the chaos and turmoil!
The 2010's generation of humans was born with an innate ability to perceive more the emotions, pain, compassion and freedom values than the previous generations.
Hence, the task is up to us to give them the right tools, the information that allows them to understand more what is happening outside and how to simply direct more their own huge ability to listen their inner voice, trust more in themselves than in any other stereotype promoted to program them into the soldiers of the high-power people and eventually install in them the low values of obtaining what they want in spite of the damage that they can perform on others!
Conversely, is not about dividing the population more already is, but trying to expand the truth, install pure values based on love, compassion, cooperation and empathy. Which, in ancient societies were prosperous, allowed the development of a higher intelligence as well as balancing nature’s ability to impregnate them with the right dosage of peace and curiosity to interact in a healthier way with it.
If we have that incredible ability to develop plasticity in our neural connections, to prune the toxic wiring connections, to clean our senses and to detoxify our bodies! We certainly have that higher power to recreate a society based on the mission and vision of achieving that fusion with nature! Expanding the Earth into the great home that it can be and balancing the diversity to respect each other’s space, uniqueness and freedom to choose what we can develop into our own purpose in terms of cooperating, serving and enjoying each other’s connections with a new soul power.
If influence skills, the ability to develop leadership and impregnating others with positivity is in our hands, then we just need responsibility to discern a major purpose to elevate the people around us to use their abilities, to recognize their beauty, to appreciate what they have already acquired and achieved and start spreading a healing community that eventually will balance the other misdirected behavior by simply replicating an integrative model in the mirror neurons of people that still have and want to pursue a different end result for everyone and not just for themselves!
Our emotions are always the guidance system telling us what is right or wrong for us and for our loved ones, therefore what you should start doing is listening more carefully to them, developing an awareness system that lets you know that you are in tune with what you can give and in alignment with the values that you want to foster and inspire in others!
That is also the power of being human, the self-reflective ability to analyze your behavior, balancing the toxic influence that at some point you just develop due to unconscious patterns, or simply adopting the beliefs of your own family nucleus which in many cases also has some toxicity that has been passed on generation after generation.
We are not prone to be drifted away from our core beliefs, we are also not designed to follow the same destination as others but certainly we are created to pursue our highest values, to give the best in the sense of our abilities and to even the compass of our emotions, alignment with new core values that we are able to develop with the experience of our own life events.
After all, this is our biggest classroom to learn new ways to improve as human beings, this is our one-time opportunity, in this lifetime to leave a legacy of the emotions, behaviors and vision that we want to extend to our loved ones, our community and if we are lucky serve a greater purpose to impregnate the society with a mark that leaves positivity, love, compassion, empathy and freedom to future generations to have a path to follow!
References.
1. Hogeveen, J., Inzlicht, M., & Obhi, S. S. (2014). Power changes how the brain responds to others. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(2), 755.