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Powerless, part two

I have already written about the Cassandra Syndrome and that I'm powerless about the big things, so now the whole thing from a much more personal point of view. It is also a very good example of how the time in school can shape a child. I had the misfortune to be enrolled as one of the youngest children of the year and was always very weedy and already weird at that time, all in all an unfavorable combination. Back then the term was not as popular as today, but it was classic bullying. One outstanding example were my shoelaces set on fire. Or earlier the almost exemplary: Take-the-cap-away-and-then-throw-it-in-a-circle-around-you. Now there are several ways to deal with such a situation: Either you swallow it all and it breaks you, or you are going to fight through. I did the latter and maybe that's why I'm standing where I am right now. The people who have not learned to fight for themselves - maybe because they never had to - they had it more comfortable, but then are quite helpless if such a situation actually occurs years later. For me that's an old hat: I'm used to fighting for what I want and biting through even if it hurts.

But the whole thing also has to do with power: I can still remember very well when I have wished after an humiliation that I can someday stand on the other side and then have the whip in the hand, to be able to just force others under my will. That's what power is. There was an interesting documentary about a notorious criminal, almost a master criminal, who was damn close to INTJ. As far as can be seen from the documentary, he was also mistreated in various orphanages and there the second scenario happened: he has swallowed everything and then enjoyed his power as a criminal. That is when you arm yourself and then impose your will on others (that is, hand over the money). Just as exemplary for INTJ was that he always had problems with his accomplices. As good as his plans were, he has been betrayed again and again.

But back: I'm still waiting to get my 'hands on the whip'. Anyway, I've always only had two-sided relationships in business where you have to meet in the middle. Or I have to make very big concessions - for example, my employees do not do a lot of what I assign to them. Only I can not exercise my power because then they would possibly escape the pressure as soon as possible, ie. quit. And then I just have more problems than before.

And even if I have the opportunity to write an invoice in my favour - then my pronounced sense of fairness and "doing the right thing", the objectively acceptable solution for all sides, prevents that. I can not stand it to make someone bleed if I feel over-privileged. Even when I separated myself from someone, I always did it in such a way that the relationship remained basically intact - burning down the bridges behind me is a very silly way to do that. Therefore, retaliation is also off the table.

Unfortunately, I am pretty much alone with this assessment and that is also the reason for this diary entry. Once again I was forced under the table, this time by my previous fitter. As written in a previous article: He got a lump sum, which ensures that the surpluses at the big orders compensate with the additional expenses for the small ones. Now, however, it was that there were only sporadic orders after the end of the sustained cooperation: a large one I had to pay lump sum and the small orders were charged by hourly wages - the effect was that i had to pay € 1,000 more than necessary. If that is not converse to the original agreement, then I do not know what is. When I asked him cautiously, I got a full broadside of exercising power: he has so much to do that he could easily leave it be and in his opinion, that was perfectly fine. And then I was again forced to find that great. In such a case, you feel really powerless like back in school.

If you then consider how to reach the top - if you can not reconcile the "good deals" à la Trump with your conscience and have to accept a lot of bad deals. The secret is probably in the squirrel method: Forget a small nut here and there and in the long run get a stately forest out of it. This is definitely tedious and requires that enough comes together to compensate for the losses and in the end still have something left over. Anyway, it does not look good for this year, so there's only hope for the next one.

Now I can once again circle back into the wide world of politics: It is precisely this temptation of power that corrupts most of the politicians. Exactly the awareness that your own word is law and other people have to do what you proclaim. There are of course gradations and in a democracy a lot should be built on compromise - but in principle, people who have the power seldom relinquish it. And in most cases, power is also used for one's own benefit. Because my source of fictional reading is again exhausted I read more of DIE ZEIT, and there was an article about Africa. In almost all states of the continent, this principle has either destroyed wealth or even prevented it from emerging. Corruption (Nigeria) is arguably the most well-known principle of the exploitation of personal power, in addition to dicatory family clans. In other cases (Sierra Leone) power was exercised from the outside, in another it was the US market power with subsidized cotton that brought the peasants to their knees. Only in Botswana did people come to power in a completely poor, uninteresting country at the time and then used the later found wealth of the diamonds for the common good, let themselves not be corrupted by the power. But that's the one exception from over 50 countries.

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