Let us say that power exists and is constant with humans.

And that power is some kind of relation people have between each other and objects. As in I cant have power over a rock unless there is someone else there to want the rock or try and take it from me. Owning the rock only gives me power in light that there is a possibility that someone else can own it. The rock and I dont have a power relation, but due to other people it can. Other more obvious power relations are if I beat or submit another person to my will. They are subject to the power I exert onto them whether it is physical power or mental power (such as manipulation, deceit, blackmail, etc.). Power is created to determine whose desires are going to be made true (there can be power relations where no one gets what they desired). If I want something, how do I get it? Exert power of some kind. But then how do I exert power, and what power should be exerted? Humans use rationality, skills and others to get what they want, and there are many different ways to go about doing any one thing, so humans try to find the best way known to them. One problem is that a lot of the time we dont know what is best, as power comes in many forms and not all are known and not all are useful or will fulfill our desires perfectly. Lets use a couple examples, the first being me trying to get milk, which is the desire, the thing (milk) that power tries to achieve (and in this case the power is not over another person, but only in relation to them). What power should I use to gain this? Well as I am not a farmer, and dont own any cows or any other way of producing milk, I will have to buy it (this is a social situation of trade and as the milk is worth the same as the money, giving a store clerk my money is not having power over them but having power over myself as I am achieving my desires). This is the power; money. Money is a huge power, and it is one that we created ourselves; we put power into money as it is a value that can surround almost anything, and with enough of it you can do almost anything you want. How do I get something? Buy it. That is almost a universal solution now (obviously money does not buy everything but it has the power to grant one access to most things on earth), which is unfortunate in my opinion. So I go to the store, and I decide to use money as my form of power in obtaining the milk from a store that sells it. What other forms of power go on in this simple example? I use my knowledge of the world and apply it in order to gain milk. I use my abilities to gain power. I use my knowledge, reason, my motor skills, social skills, and others. My abilities and skill are not power though. They are used to get power or exert power. I exert my power to walk to the store, listen to the clerk and whats around me, look at the clerk and my environments, think of which store and route I should even take, calculate cost and specific circumstantial outcomes both of money and social interactions, and so on. In the end I have successfully exerted my power onto the world and have obtained the milk I sought for. Since all that was achieved was my own desire and that desire doesnt include submitting another person to your power, then the power is only over myself. It may include overpowering someone if I decided to steal the milk, but with the socially devised equivalence of monetary trade, I have placed no power over someone. The only power over someone would have to been aside from achieving my desires, such as having social power over the clerk, but that is beside me getting milk or not. For a second example I could use a more obvious situation like running a government. Having money, people, and a lot of property can give one more power. Having basically all of this is the government (in many cases, not all).A government also has power because government itself is given

power; that is how society works. A dictator has power over his entire society. Because of his position, he is granted more power. Position is another aspect of power that we create. Think for a second about the things we put power into and the things we use to get power. Money and position (influence and renown, etc.) are automatically given a value that equates to power. The person that has the position of dictator would not have the same amount of power if he was just a senator or regular government official or even if he was a prime minister. Our government system limits the power any one position can have by simply not having a dictator or some position of that power level. It can be seen how many different areas power influences, and it can be seen why we limit it. Too much power has been bad before, so we dont give that much power again. This makes sense to us. However, this is not the biggest problem with having a dictator with a lot of power. The problem is giving power to things that arent people; positions, class, money, beauty, God, societal ideals etc. Now before I get beaten for calling beauty and God bad things to place power on, I want to say that they arent bad, but we use them badly when we give them power. Do we give intelligence, knowledge, philosophy, or any trait that only enhances life unless used otherwise, any power? One may think that we do, but we dont actually give them power. Money and position and God and things that look nice (beauty) are given power automatically. For God it is obvious the power we give, and for the things that look nice we automatically have a bias towards. It will always hold that slight power over us. But is someone automatically powerful just because they are smart or knowledgeable? With no money and position how can they be? The intelligence is a tool used to get those things which then results in power. There is power to a lot of things that there shouldnt be, and none or little power to what should. There is power placed on men automatically, power placed on age automatically, on being a certain race, we all know this. What should we put our power to? This question should be asked, before we just blindly give our power to a crazy religion or to a hypocritical, selfish society. We give power to things so much they end up running our lives. We end up devoting ourselves to getting more money, higher positions, more religious and holy, more beautiful, etc. These things shouldnt have power over us, and we shouldnt put power into them. These things dont advance our society, science and knowledge do. If we didnt have money, ownership and social hierarchies then we could all be equal and allow power to go to only what is right. Now a little explaining needs to be done. For example, using the logic of just because someone is smart that doesnt make them powerful. The same can be said about beauty. The reason beauty has power to it is because of how attractiveness on levels is fairly consistent between humans. There is a generality of what humans find attractive (whether it be symmetry in a face or the mathematical structure of music or the geometrical aspects of a painting). There is most definitely a science behind what humans like the look of. Science shows that humans are getting increasingly more attractive to each other. Moving to an evolutionary state that we will be even more attracted to. This is not what I will talk about though, that is another topic. Instead what will be talked about is the power of beauty, not what is beauty. Since humans find certain things attractive on a whole and personally. There is a general agreement of which celebrities are fairly attractive, as in most men will say Scarlett Johansson is attractive. Statistics aside we all know this. It may be less true for when women view males, but even then there are at least certain body types

that are highly favored in general. Slim and curvy for women and muscular and athletic for men. When we encounter any person in society we encounter their beauty. Whether we like it or not we have that natural bias, whether it is towards or against. Lets say a guy meets a girl at a grocery store. When the guy sees the girl he may be a decent person on not judge people by how they look and he might not be shallow. Being this way is an argument of morals which I will not go into; either way when that decent, pure, not shallow guy sees the female there is a level of attraction. This is because no matter what, one will have a certain physical feeling of attraction or repulsion, or maybe neutrality to everything. If we see a desk and it looks nice we feel that, we know that it looks nice to us. Who denies this about themselves? If that girl is hideous the guy may just ignore it and not care but he still has that physical feeling of the girl being bad looking- what if she had snot coming from her nose and she looked like a homeless witch? Even if you didnt care that someone may look that repulsive there is always that physical feeling; there is a certain level of attraction to anything we sense, it is just kind of neutral most of the time. Why is it neutral a lot of the time? Because we see and hear the same things over and over again. We go to school, work, eat, sleep, etc. all in the same places everyday basically. These normal things are just that; they are so regular and constant that there isnt a high or low level of attraction to them. Some people may find their home and work beautiful, but I think most people would say that it is fairly neutral, and possibly never even considered. Who wonders what their attraction level to their toaster? It is just a normal appliance that we dont really think much of in terms of how beautiful it is. I hope this shows that we can be said to have some level of attraction to anything we sense, it just so happens that a lot of it may be a very neutral level, not positive or negative (think of music that you just find ok, or meh). Since there is a physical level of attraction to everything we sense, we will always have some influence from it, as it is present always. The influence can be changed, increased or decreased, but it is still there. Some people just like to sleep with people they find hot, while others will not have intercourse with someone just based on that physical sense of attraction. I know I wouldnt just want to have sex with people for that reason; I would want to be less influenced by that feeling. Im not saying one is right and the other wrong, Im just showing that the influence can change, but it is still there. This is the power beauty (synonymous with attractiveness in my use) holds; it influences you constantly. If you let it influence you too much it will have power over you. This is the same for money, position, God or any other thing that we gave power to. I dont mean to sound like some hippy saying to be completely free and not have power on all authorities and religion and etc. That is not what I think. I simply mean to say that we put a lot of power on these things, and it would be better if we didnt, and I will draw the conclusion that a middle ground is most likely the best option with giving these types of things power. For example would it be best to not be influenced by beauty at all? I would say no, as would most, I assume. Attractiveness/beauty is natural to us, and is very important. It shouldnt be grounds to disregard people in anyway, unless it is just personal preference. I can disregard someone if they are unattractive only in cases such as making a list of the people you find attractive. But in a social interaction sense, they should not be disregarded or treated worse than others. If I said being attractive automatically gives you a little more power than a person that is ugly (regardless of position and wealth), would I be wrong? If a person looks beautiful to most people, they

will gain a certain social power. People look at them, people become attracted to them, and they have that power to pull people in more so. The ugly person gets ignored more so and will not have such a pull. The only way an ugly person has to pull is by other means, such as humor, intelligence, charisma, etc. But when it comes to just attractiveness, the one with that is more attractive is better off. Its unfortunate, but that is the nature of things at this point. Does intelligence grant this power? Is someone that is smart automatically powerful? No, in fact in some cases if you are smart you have power taken from you. If you are just some smart, nerdy kid that is bullied, what power is intelligence given? People bully you because you are a shy, introvert and an avid reader. Just because you are intelligent and different from those that arent you are specifically chosen to have power taken from you. What about examples like philosophers and professors and scientists? They have power, which should show that intelligence has power. It does have some, but what about a person who is just as intelligent as those three and is just home alone and doesnt have access to an audience that will hear them out? The intelligent are only powerful when they have money, or position. Should intelligence be given power then? I think it should be. But I dont think it should become idealized like beauty, god, money, ideals. It shouldnt be all powerful; it should just be given power to a point that it suits itself. What I mean by this is that intelligence should only be powerful enough to grow intelligence, not to have authority over people and property and be able to rule the world. Nothing like that. I feel the government should include intelligent people but it would include giving some power to many more things other than intelligence, and all of which would have limited power. I am not going to speak here about what the best ideals to give power to would be for a government, but I will say that I feel a general regard for science, humanity, advancement, philosophy, contemplation, and skepticism is best. All of those things are integral to humans either personally or on a whole, and giving some power to those will by definition give power to humanities rise if done properly. (If we give power to advancing and we decline then we failed). Intelligence is a tool that can be used in any situation to gain more power, as understanding the world more allows one to make right choices (at least more right) and can allow one to know how to get power. This is one way some people would say knowledge/intellect is automatically power just as beauty is, because in any given situation the more intelligent you are about it, the greater ability you have to get power. The difference is that intelligence cant just be seen so easily, unlike attractiveness. If someone is doing or saying something intelligent then others can know, and what they say or do can gain them some power. My position is that the intelligence itself will not give you power, but will only help. If I am an amazingly intelligent person sitting down in a Subway eating my sub and not doing anything other than that, then my intelligence will not be known by others and will give me no power. If I were beautiful (attractive), I would definitely gain power as people could see and know and feel attracted to me. And even if I did something intelligent a lot of people look down upon it. They feel it is out of place, or that Im showing off. What power do I gain at subway by saying things that are smart? Not really any. Some people may like it, but most would probably either not care or rather me not talk about Descartes in Subway (also it would be kind of weird if I was talking about Descartes to myself while eating a sub). What about the power given to money? It may be thought of as a necessary thing to give power to as having a value system based on property is needed. Well this is my dispute: money, property, and

position should just not exist as they do. They are universal, and this is a problem. I feel that if we are going to have a monetary system and ownership and classes/status then they should at least not be so powerful. Position should be more of occupation rather than something that grants you authority over others. We need some hierarchy as we start off ignorant and need people higher than ourselves to remove us from the ignorance (childhood). There will always be people that know more or are better (assuming there isnt any person that is the best at all things). With this in mind there will always be a certain power that scientists will have that English professors will not, and vice versa. The prof doesnt have the power to use the scientific equipment that the scientist does and the scientist doesnt have the power to have access to all the books the prof does (now does he have all the linguistic power, most likely). As you can see the powers people have in these positions arent all powerful, they are very limited. All positions should meet these criteria. Some positions will have more power than others (government vs. store clerk) but even the highest shouldnt have the power to ruin or control lives. It should only have the power to better those lives and to advance society. This is just my opinion of course. I even disagree with myself in some occasions. I feel that a government can have that much power if they are only using it for good, such as a working example of communism if there was such an example. A society devoted to bettering humanity, increasing scientific understanding, increase happiness and well-being, you know all the good stuff, could have immense power, but it only betters the lives of others even if they are conformed to some extent. I am not arguing for communism and I wont argue against it, this is merely an example where I feel a lot of power isnt bad when its in good hands. We cant trust people to have good hands though. People get corrupted, people are irrational, people are always changing and we are all so different in our own ways. It is known that power corrupts, but it is because of the things we put power into. Power is put into things associated with greed and selfishness and so on. If power was placed into things such as intelligence and advancement then the tables turn. People create power. Dictators are only powerful because we allow that position to exist. Money is only powerful because we make it so universally valuable. We decide who owns something based on if they acquired it with those money values or through social values (winning the lottery, doing something worth rewarding, etc.) These are all devised by us over the course of our history. What if money didnt give you ownership? What if money was like a secondary reward, like gift cards at work? What if money was just these points we used to rent only unnecessary things? There is still a sense of ownership (the people you rent from), but money wouldnt be needed, it was just a bonus. Just by having an occupation you get all the things you need (housing, food, recreation, water, information, education, health etc.) Money would just be the bonus, and wouldnt be gained for doing a good job or anything; it would merely be just a small bonus everyone got for working. Not giving power to this means not giving power to greed. If anything greed would be in the form of wanting to know more or help more or be smarter. Does it make sense that someone with a lot of money, a large numerical value that doesnt even have to be physical anymore, can just kill a person and buy people off to not be jailed? Why should having that big number grant you such enormous power (power that goes well beyond just killing one person, we all know this)? I dont feel anything should give anyone so much power. We shouldnt give those things that much power.