True power never crucifies others. True strength would rather take a burden on itself than put one on another in moral weakness. But it is a hard road. Do not seek power if your contentment and flattering self-image is the most important thing in your life!
It is a cliche to say that bullies are cowards. It's not really true, though it may make a traumatised child feel better briefly, while mummy says it (along with other implausible slogans about 'words can never hurt me'), before they go back to school for another day's torment. But it is almost true from one perspective. Let's see:
There is no doubt that we live in a post-Christian era. For two thousand years, Christians were exhorted to 'turn the other cheek', love those that hate them, and generally allow themselves to be crucified and beaten up. True, the majority of people throughout history never followed this code, except for a few genuine saints or pious simpletons and a very small number of people so spiritually strong and superior that they had no need to retaliate. However, we were at least expected to feel guilty for our 'sins', our failure to keep the code. We had something to confess, not just to avoid legal reprisal, but through our conscience.
This was a huge potential advance - let's be honest - on the prior 'pagan' codes of Europe which enshrined concepts like vengeance and blood money and where the individual was entirely under tribal ethics. (It is amusing watching contemporary pagans trying to meld revivalist old-time religions with Christian Sunday School morals, but that is another story). But unfortunately the way Jesus' virtue was taught frequently made it a guilt-inducing mind game a true curse on the human spirit
From the 19th Century onwards, thinkers like Nietzche have both responded to and promoted a post-Christian ethos, glorifying strength, individuality and usually materialism. Despite Left-wing vanity, this is no preserve of capitalism or Thatcherism: indeed, the Left distinguished themselves by their ruthlessness perhaps even more than the Right in the 20th Century.
The playground victim finally realises that the fairy tales of meekness and niceness are lies - unless he gets 'teacher' or the 'system' on the bullies. Much of society is a matter of creating the biggest bully of all - the armed State. And after all, the peace loving monks of the Middle Ages could never have survived unless there were others who valued them and were willing to defend their lives with sword and spear. Gandhi's non-violent resistance could only have worked in a Christian imperialist context - imagine Gandhi in Tianaman Square or Soviet Russia!
For we live in the age of the torn out heart; we are all brains with robot bodies, fighting each other viciously yet meaninglessly and sometimes smiling and claiming that we love society! Or is that a bit cynical? No, because those who talk about love and freedom virtually always end up enforcing it either with social pressure or (internationally) with missiles.
As my readers will know, I take social temperatures from ordinary, banal events. For example, in politics, in commerce and personally, nobody apologises anymore. And why should they - nowadays apology is an admission of guilt. You may get sued; or in a relationship, you may get boxed in a corner as 'the offender', your sins endlessly paraded and used against you. So keep that ego good and hard. Call it an 'error of judgement' and don't apologise to the other creep!
BUT - I just can't live that way. I am the idiot who in past personal relationships, spoke better of my partners than they deserved, preserved their honour, while they did the opposite. The fool who gave endless chances; who will never cut someone dead or shut them out.
I can be ruthless with myself and unfliching in destroying parts of my life that are dead, leaving the burning remains of part of my past with nary a backwards glance. But never with people. Never say never is an ethic worth fighting for. To miss that final opportunity to put things straight, to finish on a note of harmony, to think how the other person feels. In short to forgive. To honour the days spent together - days that can never be taken back, the very fabric of your life and soul.
Is it just a musician thing, the need to move through discord to harmony? Or an inner knowledge that what is not resolved in this life must be paid for double in the next?
To return to the bully or sociopath. He can move quickly, seldom slowed down by qualms of conscience; when he is finished with you having either got what he wanted or having failed, he is finished. You no longer exist in his world. Like an impatient tourist asking for directions and then cutting off the person who stopped to help them, the sociopath only treats people as objects. Only his feelings matter and they are not so much feelings as willed intentions. He rises to the top of his profession amassing wealth and power...for a while...and to the detriment of everyone else.
We live in the age of the sociopath. Now that the sentimental falsehood of 'gentle Jesus meek and mild' is believed only by the deeply naive and only taught by the simple or the cynical, we must learn to see patience, obedience, kindness, forgiveness and so on as what the Latin word virtue actually means - i.e. strength. Be gentle through great power, not weakness.
And you will realise that your soul is being built by this practice, memory and emotion unfrozen feeling by feeling. And you will realise that your self-image is a ropy pack of lies at best! This gives humour which in turn gives indomitable spiritual power and initiative.
Neither a masochistic saint nor a Nietzchean ubermensch, you will form the first fruits of the true Aquarian humanity, kind out of strength and character, not weakness and fear.
Go on Go on Go on!
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