Imagine someone so above you that you'd make it your life mission to serve them. Just imagine it, it's quite difficult to actually get yourself to feel that humility, servitude, and submission. We want feelings of power instead.
This is what imagining God is supposed to do. It's a thought experiment. You have to get past the kneejerk reaction to dismiss the thing as trivial or frivolous. God can only be imagined.
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Powerful humans can be far above you. You can admire them, respect them, fear them, but they'll never be infinitely above you. You need Infinity as your concept. You are the only one who can humble yourself. Everyone else can only force a mask on you.
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When you imagine this and really feel it you have calibrated your compass towards power. You can now more accurately sense how power should be distributed. Instead of greedily gobbling all you can, you save some in case someone better comes along. You gain the ability to empower.
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Ironically it's giving up power that gives you the greatest power. That's the power of leaders, the power to empower.
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Leadership is a draining job because you are in a position where you are constantly asked to empower others, including very difficult ones like empowering through providing meaning, an interpretation of life.
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Bad leaders divvy out gasoline, fuel for others to burn, bring your own spark. Natural leaders are like flames, they easily empower without much cost to themselves.
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Leaders become corrupt because they get moved into positions where they have no one else to empower but themselves. If they don't believe in something even higher they start to look down on the world and everyone in it.
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Should be an easy "fix". Just imagine God. Imagine a reason that everything is perfect in that there's no better way. You're not at the sky but the highest mountain peak. Most people can't. They're afraid it's irrational, or dumb, or that it supports murder and violence.
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The point is not to believe it, the point is to imagine it. Doing it once is enough because it's enough to calibrate yourself. You understand dominance, submission, power, weakness, a lot more intuitively.
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Love is another feeling that often goes a long time without accurate calibration. Religion has been a source of this calibration as well as an "anti-calibration" as well.
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Strangers or one night stands can calibrate this as well. Love is whatever pushes you beyond your limits because it redefines them. It's normally a slow arduous process.
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Families (or any social unit) that repeatedly survive disasters widen the lower bounds of Love. Feeling that "Another" wants you for you widens the upper bounds. The former requires the experience of tragedies the upper can be quite drastic.
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It takes a long time to actually understand someone. You can only fall OUT of love because you started with such a perfect ideal. "This person really understands me!" No they don't, you don't even understand yourself.
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But just for a moment you imagined it was true and your compass was calibrated higher. (though perhaps not correctly and sometimes so high that everyday values feel like depression)
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The world currently doesn't understand a properly calibrated feeling of dominance. "Divine" dominance is similar to the feeling an owner has to their dog or cat.
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This is done by not training people to progressively manage higher degrees of power. What perversely happens is that because no upper bound is taught, power seeking becomes infinite.
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The effort to prevent the rising of power corrupts power. You block off the rising of the power and it just accumulates and festers.
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The story of Jesus is a great way to calibrate power and responsibility. You can turn water into wine, you can walk on water, you can help so much, and people will still misunderstand you and kill you in one of the worst possible ways.
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Do you really want that kind of power & responsibility? How much do you reallllyyyy want to be like Jesus?
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Without a source of such figures and symbols power becomes a positive feedback loop rather than something self-limiting.
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When you put out the flames of others you also put out your own and your world gets a little bit darker.
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End of conversation
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