Daily Times

In 1818, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Horace Smith challenged each other to write a poem with the same title, form, and theme. In 1817, the British archaeologists had discovered the remnants of a funeral statue of Ramesses II, known to the Greeks by the name of Ozymandias. The discovery inspired the two friends to pen a poem titled Ozymandias.

Shelley was not as flamboyant as he is usually taken to be by his biographers. He was more of an impatient politician who challenged the norms of the society with his erratic conduct. In his letter to John and Maria Gisborne on November 6, 1819, he laments the unstable political situation in England and ends his letter with the famous quote “it may last my time … though in the event, the ruin is more complete than in the case of popular revolution.”

Shelley’s critique of power in this poem is in line with Stoics. “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings/Look at my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains.”

Marcus Aurelius was the first Roman emperor to embrace stoicism. For this he is known in Roman history as a ‘philosopher king’. Power he believed, produced malice, cunningness, and hypocrisy. He noted that people from ‘good families’ often showed a peculiar ruthlessness. Machiavelli considered Marcus Aurelius one of the “Five Good Emperors”. This simplistic view about power had a backdrop of belief in the eternal good and later ‘only God can have complete bliss, for His is the kingdom and the power and glory.’ So, power was considered a curse. The rulers were expected to follow the path of propriety. Articles 62 and 63 in our Constitution formalise the same expectation from our rulers. What these provisions have achieved is heightened hypocrisy among our politicos. We have become accustomed to judging human beings in the backdrop of eternal good, hence, the concept of Mard-i-Momin or Murd-i-Kamil. Unfortunately, we can’t grow out of it without realizing that every age has its own diktats. The emotions of the people have to be respected. Our times call for respecting the feelings of animals as well.

The great achievement of human history is to bridle, for the common good of the people, the impulse for power

Writing in 1938, Bertrand Russell called power an impulse. In his essay The Impulse to Power; published in his book Power a New Social Analysis, he calls power the fundamental concept in social science. “It is only by realizing that love of power is the cause of the activities that are important in social affairs that history, whether ancient or modern, can be rightly interpreted.” He says that Marxist and orthodox economics misconstrued the events of history.

The great achievement of human history is to bridle the impulse of power for the common good of the people. Of course, you need rules to limit your impulse of power and to avoid a helter-skelter. The fear of the tyranny of the absolute authority evolved the concept of checks and balances. Russell brings another interesting feature of the love of power that is disguised, among the more timid, ‘as an impulse to submission to leadership.”

In the late 20th century, Michel Foucault came up with the idea that “power is everywhere’ that’s embodied in our discourse. Simply, power is discursive not purely coercive and ‘constitutes agents rather than being deployed by them.’ To Foucault truth is the thing of this world that induces regular effects of power and each society has its own ‘regime of truth.’ The educational institutions are the agents to disseminate the truth as prescribed by the regime.

From the 20th century onward the world has become the world taken from the novels of Kafka. Since power asserts itself as a source of social discipline and conformity. Power is elusive. To organize a movement against the atrocities of the state is to fight with the windmills. As is palpable in the recent events reported from what used to be the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. Power has become a hydra. It demands docile citizenship. You accept your role the way society sanctions it for you and conform with the assigned role as demanded by the ‘regime of truth.’

In Choose Life: A Dialogue: Arnold Toynbee, Daisaku Ikeda, a Zen Buddhist, elucidated the dilemma of the modern man. In the past, proletariats had a target to rise against but now in this age, the poor man doesn’t know the whereabouts of the office of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank or offices of the giant corporations.

From the above discussion of the two, I think, I am justified to suggest that the common man will look for a Messiah. WB Yeats, in his oft-quoted poem, The Second Coming, yearns for the coming of Messiah. “The best lack all conviction, while the worst /Are full of passionate intensity.” But who are the best who lack convictions? It is a difficult question to answer.

In his recent address to the parliament, Khwaja Asif, the PML-N parliamentary leader, propounded the theory that ‘power has a shelf life’ to remind us of the stoic ages when nothing remains but the glory of the eternal good. Telling the destitute to wait for the better days to come and ‘indeed there will be a time’ is their opium. Instead of motivating people, it lulls them to a slumber.

All seems lost in the corridors of power in our country. Even those who believe in the glory of the might, confront the hydra of the corporate sector. For the time being, let us be with Gabriel Garcia Marques to listen from him the tale of gypsies coming to the town of Macondo. “In March, the gypsies returned. This time they brought a telescope and a magnifying glass the size of the drum, which they exhibited as the latest discovery of the Jews of Amsterdam. They placed a gypsy woman at one end of the village and set up the telescope at the entrance to the tent. For the price of five reals, people could look into the telescope and see the gypsy woman an arm’s length away. “Science has eliminated distance,” Melquiades proclaimed. “In a short time, man will be able to see what is happening in any place in the world without leaving his own house.”

The writer is a language instructor at the English Language Centre of Taif University, KSA