The Emperor and the Revolutionary
Our world today is defined by a global struggle for power, between those who have it and those who want it. Such struggles have occurred time and time again throughout history, but for the first time in hundreds of years — since possibly the Reformation — the modern day struggle for power pits the nucleus of government authority against a small group of people who have nothing but an idea, albeit one that seems to be resonating with millions of disenchanted people around the world.
In one corner sits the Emperor. The Emperor represents entrenched state power, which, since the 16th and 17th centuries, has had the powerful ambition of governing the entire planet. Thus, Spain and Portugal split the world between themselves with the Treaty of Tordesillas; Britain sought to dominate the globe with commerce and trade; and today, the United States rules over billions of people with both consumer capitalism and the threat of force coming from the most destructive military machine the world has ever seen.
The ambitions of each Emperor throughout history have been merely the simple domination and control over as wide an area of the world as possible. It is a lust for power that is a mix of greed and competition, easy to justify but horribly destructive in its consequences. In past times, the Emperor trapped himself with God to legitimate these desires, but this explanation became futile following the Reformation. Instead of using the fear of eternal damnation, the Emperor of today uses the fear of terrorism to justify his continued quest for absolute power. Sometimes the words “democracy” and “freedom” are thrown around for good measure, but it is this appeal to fear which exposes the ultimate goals of the Emperor.
In the other corner sits the Revolutionary. The Revolutionary represents the ambitions of an individual who seeks to upset the Emperor’s hold on power. The Revolutionary wants to destroy the current system of power so that he can take power for himself in some other form. This lust for dominion is thus as ugly as the one found in the Emperor; but the Revolutionary’s ability to point out the oppression caused by the Emperor makes him attractive to the lonely and the dispossessed. While the Revolutionary may claim that his cause is human freedom, at the end of his oratory he will still make an appeal to power, asking those around him to subject themselves to his control, possibly even to die for him and his cause. And depending on his rhetoric, the violence wrecked by the Revolutionary can often match that if not surpass the destruction caused by the Emperor. Lenin was perhaps the most pragmatic of the 20th century Revolutionaries; Hitler was the most ideological.
Today, the Revolutionary who is now commanding an ideological hold over millions of people is Osama bin Laden (along with his spiritual leader Ayman al-Zahawiri). Bin Laden fits the archetype of the Revolutionary almost perfectly. Like every Revolutionary, bin Laden is able to enunciate and explain the oppression of the Emperor — in this case, Western colonial domination over the Middle East — in a simple and easy to understand way that resonates with a ready audience. And just like every Revolutionary, bin Laden preaches freedom from this oppression while also asking his followers to grant him power so that he can establish his own dominion over the globe.
If history is a guide, then a contest between the Emperor and the Revolutionary always ends in disaster for the Emperor. This is because the Emperor always underestimates the allure and appeal of the message of the Revolutionary. Thus, Lenin became leader of Soviet Russia despite the military intervention of the United States, Britain and France in the Russian Civil War; and Hitler rose from his status as a despondent artist (rejected from art school) to Chancellor of Weimar Germany, and eventually Fuehrer of the Nazi Empire. The Emperor is so blinded by his own authority and military prowess, an arrogance born of near-absolute power, that he fails to see the threat posed by a rag-tag group of individuals.
This is especially true today, where every attempt made by the current Emperor to stop the allure of the Revolutionary is hopelessly counter-productive and plays right into the arguments made by this modern-day subversive. By using fear of bin Laden as a way to control the population, the United States made him look like a larger than life figure, an image that no doubt helped bin Laden recruit people to his cause. By using bin Laden as a pretext to invade Iraq, the United States displayed the same arrogance (so characteristic of all Emperors) and lack of empathy with colonized peoples that bin Laden had been railing against in his invectives and writings. In fact, bin Laden’s message seems to be so popular that even Muslims who live in Western societies are finding solace in his words and taking up arms against the Emperor in imperial centers, as the 2005 London bombings made clear.
In denying the oppression that fuels the successes of bin Laden, the United States creates the exact conditions that will ultimately lead to a bloody confrontation between the forces led by the Revolutionary and those of the Emperor. Bin Laden’s message will continue to resonate, and it is looking likely that he will achieve his stated goal of starting a bloody and destructive war between his forces and thosee of the West.
Unfortunately, there is more. Even while the Emperor seeks to maintain control over the planet and stave off the threat posed by the Revolutionary, he also faces a challenge to his throne: new countries, especially China and India, are rapidly industrializing, and the leaders of those countries are avowed and blatant in their own quest for dominance. They seek to remove the current day Emperor and establish themselves in the seat of global power, just as the British did to the Spanish in the 1700s, and just as the United States did to the British in the 20th century. This third source of ambition for absolute power complicates systemic relationships even further, and likely for the worse. These contenders for the throne will sit back and watch the Emperor tire himself out with the Revolutionary, and when the time is ripe, they will strike with a ruthlessness that is characteristic of a plan many years in the making.
Despite the almost inevitable conflict and war that will arise between the Revolutionary, the Emperor, and future contenders for the imperial throne, these various interests are in fact united by their single-minded lust for power and domination. The people who sit in the throne of the Emperor — along with those who seek that throne or seek to overturn it so that they can establish their own holdings — have destroyed their abilities to be compassionate and loving in order to enable a view of the world that sees their followers, subjects, and enemies (leaders and civilians) as instrumental pawns in their own twisted game of ambition.
This psychological insight provides two important ideas that can help those who aware of these machinations figure out ways to avert or mitigate the bloodshed that will be caused by these people. The first is a warning: those who seek to climb ladders of authority may do so innocently, but their quest for power will ultimately corrupt them. It will force them to destroy their capacity to love, and in the end lead to suffering and death for other people.
The second insight is far more important for those who abhor this power lust but find themselves bereft of ideas on how to combat it. It is an insight that has been repeated for thousands of years but has been seemingly forgotten by each civilization and generation who no doubt believed that their own quest for power would be different than those of prior cultures, who saw something unique and special in their blood when in fact they were as human, all too human, as every other contender for the throne. And that insight is that try as it may, power can ultimately be defeated by that which it can never control: the ability of every human to engage in a loving interpersonal connection with any other human. It is this capacity to love that may be this species’ only hope in getting the Emperor and the Revolutionary to lay down their arms and end the pointless struggle that has dominated human affairs since the dawn of civilization.
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