They say power corrupts, and absolute power
corrupts absolutely. Truer words have
not been spoken. If you have ever had the
opportunity, or rather, the misfortune, of trying to be a leader and then
finding out that you were merely a puppet for people who were working behind
the scenes, you will know what I mean. I
was once promoted to director of a large group of individuals, after a
succession of leaders, and directors, all of whom stepped down for various
reasons. I had the best of intentions
and ideas, the truest values to bring to the table.
But as the months went on, it became clear
that none of this mattered in the slightest, because the former leaders and
directors were still running the show. They along with others that never actually
held titles but never the less were rich powerful people whose influence were
valued by the former leadership, were in the true seat of power. All the real decisions were made by this
select elite group, and I and the current leader were nothing but puppets, just
icons of power that really held no power at all. The truth was that the former leaders and
directors wanted total power and control but without having to do the menial
task of governance. This task, along
with the paperwork and dealing with issues that arose and of course the blame
for anything that went wrong, was placed squarely upon our shoulders. Secret meetings were commonly held without
our knowledge, making agreements and arrangements with special interest groups
to forward ideas that put into motion events that were cleverly spun in order
to increase their own hold on power while at the same time employing a form of
propaganda to ensure that these ideas were considered the best course of action
for the whole group, and the leader and myself had no choice but to go with the
consensus of the majority. In the eyes of the group, these were our decisions,
and the elite group were free to wipe their hands and be content that should
anything go wrong with their plans, the fault would fall on those they had
chosen to be the new leader and director.
The hypocrisy of these elitists was unimaginable, with words used to
gain trust and confidence, spoken to ease troubles, then my words given in trust and confidence
later used against me in slander, used as weapons and twisted to portray to all
how terrible of a director I was. The
elitists, pretending to be the voices of concerned individuals within the group,
incited rebellion and distrust of authority while secretly they smiled, knowing
that at the end of the day, they would not be the ones viewed as the bad
guys. Eventually, with defeat in my
heart, and powerless to stop anything that happened, despite any of my efforts,
I resigned. To some this was a joyous
moment, for I was now surely hated by most whom had formerly been my
friends. All of the failures the group
had endured had surely come from my ineptitude as a director, or so they were
led to believe. And without the wealth
and influence to rival the elitists, even telling the truth would have been
pointless and likely turned around and twisted to expose some weakness or flaw I
had.
This experience has taught me a powerful
lesson; people given enough power and control see themselves truly on a higher
level than everyone else, and hurting or manipulating others does not factor
into any sense of morality. Belittling or ruining someone’s career means
nothing to these individuals if it means retaining that control and history has
shown us that these types of people, given enough power and control, will stop
at absolutely nothing to maintain that control, even if it leads to the deaths
of thousands of innocent people. And
when you look at the people in power around you, ask yourself, are they just
puppets? Perhaps they too had good values and good intentions, at the
start. Then some perhaps fell into the
role and accepted their fate as puppets, better to serve with some pretense of
power then to be just one of the flock. . I preferred neither. Eventually I left the group altogether.
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