Philocracy: Love & Power
Here’s a 2-minutes essay I wrote on 2nd December 2022. Enjoy!
On Power and Love (or: we can solve the world, but nobody cares)
There is a practical, actionable, and even simple solution to turn the world into a better place virtually overnight.
Paraphrasing Confucius: the most powerful people should be the most loving ones.
That’s it, really. But I’ll emphasize the concept just a bit more.
From Rectification of names - Wikipedia:
[…] righteous, considerate, kind, benevolent, and gentle treatment should be applied by the former [usually higher in the hierarchy] to the latter.
The idea is: we should regard the weakest as privileged and place most of the (metaphorical) burden on the shoulders of the strongest, as they can carry it.
Or, in other words, with great power comes great responsibility.
We have known this for at least 2.5k years (if not even more). Spider-Man showed up a bit late to the party – oh well, better late than never, I guess.
Even Jesus approves (Mark 10:43-44):
[…] whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.
Words like servant and slave may come off a bit too harsh nowadays, but I hope it’s not too hard to put them into context.
It means that the strongest are not those who subjugates the weakest, but those who are willing to put themselves at everyone’s service.
Basically, an aristocracy where the criteria for the áristos (best) is love. Let’s call it philocracy – from philos (love) and kratos (strenght, power).
I want to close with a famous quote by Augustine of Hippo:
Love, and do what thou wilt.
What if we measured people accordingly? Based on their capacity for love rather than status, money, success, intellectual prowess – or anything else, really.
Wouldn’t it be great to live in a philocracy, under the government of love?
If neither Confucius, Jesus, Saint Augustine nor even Spider-Man was able to convince humanity, I’m not so sure I will. (Well, you never know…)
Truth is, I’ve said nothing new. We could have saved the world already.
And yet, here we are. Nobody cares, apparently.
But I do.
And you?