What determines power and where should it reside? However one feels about the ending of Game of Thrones, there was an intriguing piece of dialogue thrown into the mix. “In a room sit three great men, a king, a priest, and a rich man with his gold. Between them stands a sellsword, a little man of common birth and no great mind. Each of the great ones bids him slay the other two. ‘Do it,’ says the king, ‘for I am your lawful ruler.’ ‘Do it,’ says the priest, ‘for I command you in the names of the gods.’ ‘Do it,’ says the rich man, ‘and all this gold shall be yours." I feel the show under-thought this concept with the interpretation that power resides in the people whether they know it or not. A decent point, but power is often much more complicated. Pertinax was the emperor of Rome, but fell at the whims of the Praetorian Guard. Unwilling to fulfill his effort of restoring discipline; they assassinated him and auctioned off the title of emperor to the highest bidder, Didius Julianus. “Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.” — Jean-Jaques Rousseau Despite titles of power you are a prisoner of the institutions and civilization that surround you. In this sense, power is an illusion, a means of deception to organize society.
Power is power —the mantra of the authoritarian. With no justification, they believe their authority is divine. Such systems collapsed ages ago, and lack the ability to hold anything for long in our current world. The vacuous allusions to power by the hipster world of the internet are built on a foundation of quicksand. Nincompoops don’t know they are suffocating until their last breath.
Power resides with those that can get others to follow them. Pure and simple. I heard a great line in a movie once, some B movie about the apocalypse or something and anyway one guy in the group starts giving orders and taking over as they are marching their way through zombies and some guy asks him who put him in charge. He replied, "you did when you decided to follow me". I that that was the most excellent answer and very pertinent to this thread. They kept following him and listening to him. Then he died.
