Richard Lloyd Jones: Almost everything in life works to their benefit. They influence laws and lawmakers. While the rest of us are out working and raising families and coaching little league teams, they dedicate their lives to gaining direct control over the social institutions. Forget about sex and drugs and rock and roll. The real key to the so-called kingdom on earth is power. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones, and today on Thinking with Somebody Else's Head, we're going to jump right into the fire of one of the most important issues in our society, The Pathology of Power.
Of course, I'm taking a bit of inspiration from those of you who've taken the time to write to me requesting free copies of Norberto Keppe's Liberation of the People, The Pathology of Power. This is a terrific book that really opened my eyes to the psychology of power and why it's often so abusive in our world today. And I have more copies available of that book at rich at richjonesvoice.com.
Feel free to write to me anytime and request one of those books. Dr. Keppe has suggested to me personally that I continue giving away copies to all who want them. That's how important he sees this book to be. When I moved from Vancouver to Toronto in 1995, Mike Harris had just been elected as premier of the province with a huge majority. I was struck by how he used that majority to ram through sometimes controversial legislation that many times was directly against what the majority of citizens said they wanted.
Not to bore you with details, but the amalgamation of the six cities of Greater Toronto is one example. They amalgamated that into one large mega-city, and that was rammed through against overwhelming rejection in referenda conducted within each of those cities. At that point, I began to think about the pathology of power, although I didn't have a name for it, or any understanding really of what that was.
But I began to see it in concrete ways through the opening of my political eyes when I moved to Ontario. Let's explore this a bit more today with Dr. Cláudia Pacheco, Vice President of Dr. Norberto Kebbi's International Society of Analytical Trilogy here in São Paulo. A definition first, Cláudia. The pathology of power means what exactly?
Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco: This means, Richard, when a person that is already pathological by himself, which all of us are, we are all neurotic at least, when a person like us gets a position of power, if we are not conscious of our inner pathology, which is mostly our theomania, and this I would like to go through with you today a little bit more to understand the concept of theomania.
Because pathological power is the power that is linked to our pathology, mostly to our theomania or to the envy that individuals may develop and manifest in society. If we are like normal between quotes, individuals, we will develop some degree of neurosis. If we want to accomplish or to realize our theomania our manias of grandeur megalomania narcissism we can become psychotic. But I can be a psychotic in a position of power and then what would be called a schizophrenic person or a maniac depressive person in the so called normal society.
If you are a rich person, you would be called an eccentric person. So you can see that many people dedicate their lives to achieve means and power to manifest or to accomplish their envy and their delirious ideas of grandiosity. To control the life of people is one example.
Richard: Keppe's discovery of theomania is a continuation from the German fathers of psychiatry and their explorations of megalomania in the sickest people.
But Keppe expands this to encompass all of humanity. We all have a little or a lot of this in us, but it's exacerbated in those who lust for power or money. I remember a quote by William Appleton, a Boston merchant in the 1800s, quoted in a book called The Proper Bostonians, said, I'm quite eaten up with business. While in church, my mind, with all the exertion I endeavored to make, was flying from city to city, from ship to ship, and from speculation to speculation.
End of quote. Showing his total focus on money above all else. Lord Beaverbrook, the famous newspaper publisher, said, A man must feel those early deals right down to the pit of his stomach if he's going to be a great man of business. They must shake the very fiber of his being as the conception of a great picture shakes the artist. And that's very revealing, isn't it?
As Keppe terms it from his book, Liberation of the People, he says, quote, The well-balanced individual is not interested in having power. Only those who are extremely sick become attached to positions of power and command so as to counterbalance their psychological shortcomings. End of quote. Let's explore this further. What does this theomania make us do, Cláudia? How does it show up?
Cláudia: The theomania makes us think that we have to rebuild nature or correct the mistakes of nature.
And so that's what we do. We distort everything, we destroy everything. And we make the earth a place that we cannot survive anymore. So I think you are very right, Richard, addressing this theme of STOP the Destruction of the World linked to theomania because we should learn with nature. And the problem is this evolutionist idea that nature is plenty of big flaws or things to be developed and not that we see already flaws in nature because of our previous actions.
And universe has its own perfect laws that only are broken if we interfere in a negative way. So everything in nature leads to normality, leads to balance, leads to equilibrium if nature can work by itself. But when we interfere, then we start creating huge problems for us and for nature.
Richard: Can you help us with any specific examples of this, Cláudia? A
Cláudia: big, a large portion of the United States is already saying goodbye to its bees, you know, this little insect that produces honey, and it's very much important to the balance of ecology and nature.
Because of this, transgenic seeds, this animals are being swept from a huge region of the south of United States. And this is already creating a huge lack of balance because bees are responsible for the pollinization and transporting seeds and pollen from one place to the other. So this is really a crime considering ecological perspective and human life perspective as well. And this is totally coming from the theomania of scientists and economically powerful people who support this kind of researches.
The cloning of trees, Jones, is similar. You see these huge green deserts where they plant the same trees in order to have bigger profits. Those forests, they are totally dead. No life in it, no insects, no animals. So that's why they are called green deserts. And this is also a product of this theomania of individuals. Keppe
Richard: says all problems related to ecology, economics, crime and violence, terrorism, are the result of being unconscious of the primary illness that's within the human being that we're afraid of seeing inside our psyche.
And what is our illness? Well, this is a little difficult to understand for a first time, but let me take a stab at it here. Our real life, our existence, our experience on earth should be based on the laws of nature. Nature has a balance, a harmony, a peace. Everything works together. But almost everything human beings do is opposed to that. We've replaced a conformity to nature with our human will.
But our will is inverted. Our will is often against good things. And this is almost completely unknown to most of us. The discoveries that we're developing here at the International Society of Analytical Trilogy show us that all of this has its roots inside the human psyche. And this is the specialty of Dr. Norberto Keppe. And one of the areas Keppe has really delved into is the theomania that underlies the pathology of power.
And if we begin to understand what he has discovered here, we can begin to change totally our relationship with the powerful people and structures who control society. That's one of the purposes of this podcast, actually. How can this begin to enter our consciousness more, Cláudia?
Cláudia: Scientists should start to think about this. And not only scientists, but the people should become more conscious of this attitude of flattering or seeing scientists as godlike people.
The Eumenia in us and in them. So, we create false gods in our society. President, scientists, teachers or professors of universities. If you have a PhD, then you are very much close to what we idealize being a perfect person. Actors. Actors, famous. And this is the pseudo power. Of course, if you are a capable person, if you did a real, true, valuable work for humanity, then you should be recognized as such.
But if you just have a title or a position or money, this is totally a pseudo power that we create. Not only the powerful create for themselves, but we as people feed in them. And
Richard: let's not forget that the people who get to power often get to power not by being these high values you were talking
Cláudia: about. Yes, they are corrupt and they use the means of corruption.
And normal people would never do that. The majority of people don't do that, Richard. The sickest ones are ready to become powerful since they are young people. They're ready. They already have these thoughts in their mind that they are going to become one day a very powerful person and whatever they do, they do in order to get that, to get there in that position.
And they don't hesitate in using whatever means necessary in order to get there.
Richard: Give us a contrast, Cláudia. How is this different from the way most of us live our lives?
Cláudia: You know, Richard, if you are an artist, for instance, you will not spend your hours thinking how to make more money or how to become more powerful or richer. So you will spend your time creating arts, studying, practicing, bringing beauty to people, being sensitive and having empathy and pleasing people.
A powerful person, he applies all the means, all his energy to become more powerful, to step on people, to use people, to use nature for his own interests. Their only goal in life is how to become richer, powerful, more prestige. A normal human being has his essence based on goodness, truth, and beauty. So it's totally incompatible. There are a few powerful people that accomplish beautiful actions and use their power to do something for the future of humanity.
But the majority of the powerful people are very unhappy because they are too egotistic. The evil they do for humanity turns back to himself. The destruction that we do outside, we do first inside of ourselves. You
Richard: know, when any of us here in Brazil talk about this in our lectures and workshops, we make sure to highlight an essential dialectical point present in all of Keppe's work.
Evil is the absence of good, not its opposite. You've heard me talk about that many times in this podcast, if you've been listening regularly. This means that any pathological theomania, envy, inversion, maliciousness is a deviation from the basic essence of all of life and of ourselves. This essence of goodness, truth, and beauty that characterizes reality. Where did we begin our deviation from this essential nature, Cláudia?
When did we begin to leave this?
Cláudia: So this starts since the beginning, I think, of human civilization or human... Since the two first human beings were created. And they did not want to obey the laws of nature, the laws of ethics, statics, goodness. They did not accept reality they wanted to create or to recreate life according to their own imagination to their own wishes and this capi calls theomania and this is present in all of us.
Theomania mania of being a godlike so you want to do things or to create life according to your imagination, to your ideals, to your will, and not to follow reality, not to conform to truth, goodness, love, beauty, the natural laws. So this is something that it's like an evil seed inside all of us. Keppe calls this inversion too, because we see reality as bad and fantasy as good.
We see reality as restraining and fantasy as liberating. And this is a big fantasy because if you think like that you you start creating impossible ways of living. And you start make people slaves. You start exploiting people so you can build a kingdom of yourself for yourself in this planet. Every human being would like to have his own kingdom. So when a powerful achieves this, dreams, any citizen admires this because any person would like deep down to be as powerful as that person is.
Well, I
Richard: think we've outlined the problem quite clearly, Cláudia. It's clear in the psychopathology of human beings. Solutions now, or the beginnings I think that
Cláudia: we should become more conscious of our inversion, first of all, and to realize that powerful people depend on the people and not the other way around. That we provide richness and everything the powerful need in order to be powerful even, and we support power for them.
And if they are evil against the people, if they are creating evil laws, it's because we are giving them the power to do so. And this is based in our inversion, our theomania, which is unconscientized. It's still not conscious to us how we admire, we see them as gods in our society. We don't see them as dependent, weak, sick individuals and very dangerous.
And if we want to do something for us, this will never come from them.
Richard: Keppe says in Liberation of the People, which I'm giving away when you email me at rich at richjonesvoice.com, says, At the moment, our social system is inverted, and the people have begun to believe that they depend on the capitalist, the banker, the entrepreneur, and the businessman. They fail to realize that it is these powerful individuals who live off of what the people plant on the farms and produce in the factories by means of their own labor.
End of quote. It's a complete inversion, you see. Keppe goes on to say that society is organized in such a way that the people are under the dominion of the social powers, strengthened by a pact among them, the powers, that is aimed at securing all possible advantage for themselves alone. My idea, says Keppe, is that the people should control such power through their representatives so that economic power cannot crush them.
Wow. We really do need to begin to disinvert our relationship with power, don't we, Cláudia?
Cláudia: Exactly. Exactly. And not allow anymore this to go on and on and on, how it has been for thousands of years. Otherwise, a person who gets power will do the same as the previous one. And that's what we see. One powerful structure being torn down and then the other one that comes after establishes a similar kind of dictatorship of repression.
Because of this inversion. Don't you see humbleness as weakness, for instance, Jones? Don't we see arrogant, prestigious people as powerful and strong? It's totally the opposite.
Richard: You know, I was struck earlier in our interview, Cláudia, with your allusions to false power. And I thought maybe a consideration of true power might be a fitting conclusion for our podcast today. What do you have to say about that?
Cláudia: When Keppe speaks about what is good and bad, he places that bad or evil is the absence of goodness. So what exists is all good beautiful and truthful by itself. What exists by itself imagination of man. The value we add. The fantastic importance we add to things. This is fantasy. This is pathological. And I understand that the prophets and Jesus and the huge wise men that humanity knew in the past, like Buddha, like Gandhi, they placed a value in what is really valuable.
But we are deceived by our own fantasies and the fantasies that is like this structural pseudo-power in the world. When we understand the power that we give to presidents, to first ministers to judges this is a power we give them or we vote for sometimes for laws that are totally against ourselves. What is the value of Other than a pathological, false, pseudo-value, if all of this falls down, what will be left?
The true and real value and power, which is the real power, the power of nature, the power of God, the power of true values. And this you don't buy with money.
Richard: I love to imagine a world based on true values, disinverted from how it is now. As Vigard Halverson wrote recently from Norway after listening to our new economics podcast, one cannot help wonder what the world could look like.
Couldn't have said it better myself. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones.
