I’ve been contemplating the power structures humans build and the limitations of man-made power. The news tells us that people at the top of their organization or country have the most power over us. This mindset also supports the idea that these human-designed systems (political, corporations, oligarchs) are the only force that matters in our world. That subtext invited me to consider a question from a different perspective.
What systems are more powerful than human command?
Nature eclipses all human-based concepts of power.
Nature came to mind immediately. For example:
- It doesn’t matter to Nature that the phrase “climate change” is erased from government websites.
- Nature doesn’t care if people believe in climate change.
- Nature isn’t watching a newsfeed to see what it should do.
Instead, Nature will continue to create once-in-a-thousand-year weather events to rebalance the planet’s ecology. An executive order demanding that Nature stop catastrophic weather will go unheeded and unrecognized.
Beyond our planet, the cosmos is mightier than our human systems and actions. If the moon can influence tides on Earth and the dynamics of fish, life, and ocean plants, then the cosmos is a much stronger system than humans. Gravity and magnetic fields also operate on their own principles. This makes something very clear.
Nature, the cosmos, and energetic fields don’t respond to executive orders.
Seeing the Seen and Unseen
I live outside the major urban centers in Minnesota, and I often drive on two-lane roads at night. The lights of an oncoming car can shine brightly, but I know that I need to drive my car to the side of those lights for safety reasons. In this metaphor, the lights are the seen, and the act of driving toward the darkness beside the oncoming car is the unseen. To avoid unnecessary accidents, we learn to drive toward the darkness.
Nature, the cosmos, gravitational and magnetic fields are unseen, potent systems. Sometimes they get lost in the bright lights of our “leaders,” stating they have all the control—the rest of us have none. Understanding natural systems gives us a critical perspective on how humans construct and use power. If I expand my worldview to include this perspective, I can immunize myself to the virus of conceiving a political or corporate figure as “all-powerful.”
In fact, when I put all these systems into a larger picture, human influence looks tiny.
Of course, how people use—or abuse—power can and will affect our lives and the state of our communities. But it’s not the only way power and powerful systems are present in our world.
Influence and Human Nature
Thinking about this made me reflect on the pull of influence in human nature.
- Is human nature a powerful unseen system running in the social domain of our world?
- How often have you noticed that human beings have a mind of their own?
- How frequently do you see people choosing a different path than their positional leader?
- When have you chosen to behave with devious yes-man-ship, malicious compliance, or active resistance?
I have seen and even participated in some of these behaviors. That is the nature of being human.
When we are conscious, we actively choose who to follow, who to ignore, and who to resist. Let’s continue to evolve our individual and collective consciousness. Then we can lift our eyes and see what we see.
For deeper exploration, my post Service and Power explains the role of power in our worldview.
