What does it mean to test a man’s character? People say the eyes are windows to the soul, and even with that supposed advantage, it still does not seem enough to understand the capabilities, identity and intentions of a man. To understand a man’s character, our minds and souls would have to be even further exposed through action and reaction in the physical world, which are things that are tangible enough for other minds to judge, or comprehend. In essence, the test of a man’s character is impossible without the ability to interpret the objectives of the mind and soul.
The Underdog
Adversity can be seen as a relative consequence, and there is no fixed state of adversity that relates to all our experiences. If we could quantify adversity, its form would still not be a constant because it takes the form of perspective from varying experiences. Same goes with power and other intangible concepts.
“poor man hungry,
{Adversity caused by the lack of power}
so, poor man work, or poor man stay, or poor man steal
{test of character, choice}
but whether poor man becomes rich and fed, or poor man angry and do nothing, or poor man kill rich man,
{likely result of test, character is manifested}
poor man still started as poor man”
{recognition of adversity as an initiator of choice}
The short narrative above tries to establish the force behind adversity acting on this particular individual’s chosen character, motive, or unfortunate eventuality. The experience of casualty to a man is ascribed to the birth of an influence and in most cases, power attributed to another individual or concept is behind that influence, and in this case, it’s the power of choice triggered by the power of adversity. If that poor man had decided to work, the power of the result of work (income) would influence his outcome, same goes for him staying, or stealing.
The choices we make are tiny measures of character, and adversity can be an influencer of choice. However, every individual has a certain level of adversity that would likely be enough to influence a man’s true character. Adversity is ambiguous and variably relative, and has the potential to be very powerful due to its patience to influence and be influenced. This basically means that “to stand adversity is to stand the effect or result of power or power itself”.
The Visible stretch-marks
President Abraham Lincoln chose to use his power through Emancipation to prevent the growing adversity of slavery. Hundreds of years before that, slave trade was a legal and accepted stigma of our economic stratosphere, even until the 19th century. Then it all became a numbers game, such that whoever controlled the highest number of slaves was recognized and perpetuated as amongst the elites of power wielders that people revere till this day.
During the time of Abraham Lincoln, there was a great schism between these two extremities (Power and adversity). How then do you test a man that has never known adversity? Or how do you test a man that has never known power? Or how do you test a man that is familiar with both?, Do you give him what he is not familiar with? Or do you give him more of what he knows?.
Abraham Lincoln acknowledged the fact that adversity is powerful, but adversity hides agendas. The true character of an individual in an adverse state forces certain and almost expected range of characters, which are not transparent enough to judge the soul. He knew that the possession of power has always proven to be high in demand and irresistible to man in perpetuity when wielded, and that adversity is the result of a form of power, which he felt needed to be fought against, by a higher power.
“…but if you want to test a Man’s character, give him power”, give him power that can subdue adversity, or fuel the impact of chaos through his intensions, his character.
In our world today, that schism reduces. Our advancement through various discoveries, the responses, happenings and reactions to several acts by activists, communists, and leaders alike, through years and decades are responsible for giving forms of power to more wielders. More people have access to immeasurable amounts of power.
The world is smaller, power is now shared to an even bigger audience on demand, and the power shared to humans, does not seem like the lion share in a literal sense, which is why slave trade eventually became irrelevant and unsustainable, because unlike centuries that have passed, Power does not lie solely on our character, demeanor, family background, fight, age difference, language, slave possession and other natural endowments. It is also not fully in our ingenuity in itself, but gradually shifting more to the tangible result of ingenuity separated from us. That external form of expression and implementation. It’s a very familiar phenomenon, it’s the artificial realm, its money, systems, technology sourcing from our collective minds.
An independent and unconstrained control over a large fraction of the artificial realm is a determinant of the most powerful individual in our time. (Fareed Zakaria, 2016). This is why it is said that Vladimir Putin is the most powerful man in the world. (Forbes, 2017). He is not restricted to access and control to what is at his disposal. A man can have everything, but can he control it?.
Control seems to be our only form of power over the artificial realm, as a matter of fact, it is how we express power over even ourselves humans. Which creates a question of what happens when the controlled seeks independence like humans did?. I know that sounds fictional, so let me be more logical and ask, what happens if we lose control?.
Our control is fed by our search for enlightenment and new discoveries, this is why they say knowledge is power, and the lack of knowledge creates fear, which stimulates instincts of retaliation, and creating more terror, but what happens when there is nothing to be known?, or the thing that can be known is beyond our reach?, beyond the knowledge barrier?. Saying knowledge is endless is like a paradox to our existence, the universe feeds us every second. Saying knowledge is not endless is ignorant by the standards of its assumed possibility.
Ingenuity as we know it, has found a way to share something as intangible as power, to something that its reality was initially almost oblivious to . No wonder, Albert Einstein (1879-1955) had this to say,
“I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots”
Asides from his comical rhetoric, Einstein was well aware of the power and potential threat that our search for knowledge possess, power and threat that can only be expressed through art, science and technology. If a knowledge barrier does exist, the human race might potentially have nothing else to offer except our souls.
This stretch of power through time has had a lot of consequences, with adversity potentially being more powerful than ever, because at any time a new form of adversity would emerge because of the varieties of the characters of the new age power wielders.
As things stand, adversity and power are almost symbiotic, which is the most dangerous statement anyone can make, because our hunger for power is becoming our hunger for our demise. We, humans, are finding ways to make adversity a catalyst formulating, or bringing to existence other kinds of power, which only really reflects our motives. Adversity is selling way more than peace. We have News agencies heightening the level of an adverse situation to control the masses, at the expense of proliferating adversity (ripple effect).
Adversity does not want us to stand her, no, not at all, she loves us, embraces us, as a matter fact, adversity has found a way to make us need her, because we thirst for what she can offer, as she watches us abuse it to the point that all we might have left is her, feeding off of every element of control we can manage to hoard.
“The stretch of power hasn’t weakened power, it has scattered seeds that make us thirst, seeds that have been germinated by the polluted waters of chaos.”
The arrow of time and Age have left power with stretch marks of disorder. What humans have experienced and perceived over time, cannot be devoid of chaos. As time advances, order is losing hold, and disorder is taking control.
The foundation of our character, the sources that build our motives, these are nodal points of our lives that determine the outcome of our existence and the state of our relevance. Power is expressed through the manifestation of our character into tangible and intangible concepts. We can build a generation of power wielders, with the right kind of characters to ensure chaos does not defeat what is left of our control over power. Our hopes are people with roles of responsibility, “Train up a child in the way he should go , and when he is old he will not depart from it” – King Solomon.
This actually made me laugh. It is absolutely fantastic, as in full of fantasy. It ends on a quote by a fictional character – King Solomon. LOL. Also why this veneration of Abraham Lincoln. He did not free the slaves out of any sense of honour, it was a battle tactic. Lincoln wanted to deport them to Africa and even purchased Liberia for the purpose. Ironically, it was John Wilkes Booth whose actions prevented this order from being carried out
Here is the bitter red pill – Power corrupts everyone, and the incorruptible don’t exist.