I live as both the powerful and the powerless. I know what it feels like to give power and deny it.
Has any urge shaped the face of human civilization more than the quest for power and unearthing the means to it even as its understanding has alluded us? Power inspires worship for the sun as it brings flora and fauna to life and kills mercilessly even as it’s dying itself. Older than the sun itself, Power has dictated which elemental force succumbs and which one triumphs. Water took to land, eroding, shaping and moving it whichever way it wanted. Power changed the course of history through sheer physical impact as well, à la the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, and reversed the pecking order in the same with only those blessed with flight surviving catastrophe. Power’s intricate relationship with space gave birth to the concept of geographic demarcation and introduced us to the most brutal periods of war. And through many a coup d’état, Power has shifted to redefine the oppressor and the oppressed. Despite Power’s facile shape-shifting, both in form and in semantics, even a feeble attempt at understanding it has resulted in literally illuminating our lives. From the social sciences and economics to physics and mathematics, Power is an omnipresent force, endemic to us as social beings, even as it constantly redefines what force is in and of itself.