The Paradox of Power - Both A Means And End

I suppose part of the unconscious reason I started this blog is to explore limits of human potential spurred by my own failures and to find something more objective beyond those faults but I've admittedly failed. In a search to reign in the chaos of my mind and find more defensible positions, I've found no position is truly defensible. In searching for more potential, more power, to understand life which would lead to more optimal approaches I've realized the fallibilies of all possible approaches I've encountered. The powers of intellectualism have faults in that with increasing knowledge, one is encumbered by maintaining, indexing and processing that knowledge. Intellectualism is not only self-defeating but can be defeated by other powers, just as with every type of power. To once again use my favorite Mike Tyson quote, "everybody got a plan 'til dey get punched in da mouf", lisp grammaticized of course. In ideology, the more entrenched one becomes in it, the less one's able to move from it. One's knowledge of it has increased in such a way, built such a strong castle, that it's less likely to be toppled all-the-while he becomes increasingly less mobile. With great increases in size comes less mobility. For an increase in one power we trade it off with a decrease in another kind of power. The more you gain, the more others seek to topple you as you have powers others want. As with Jenja, the higher you get, the less stable your agency becomes. You could compare it with age also, when younger, the stronger and healthier you are, the better the foundation, the more stable the subsequent building blocks will be. Or with any agency, the more agents you have the more potential for a weak link in the chain that can potentially topple the whole thing; more people means more chance someone's compromised. And finally after beating the analogical dead horse, the same goes for software and infosec, more complexity means more chance of exploit. 

Some think because one is stronger and mightier that it, be it ideology, person, etc, should have rightful God(s)-given reign. And coincidentally, just the notion of worshing the "almighty" is an admittance to this notion and consciously or not admits to the relevancy of power worship or as I mentioned previously, the underwritten and underlying Machiavellian nature of, I'd argue, all religions. Seen another way, because one is stronger than another,  the one expects another to bow down to it while others conversely see the power acquisition and power potential of the reigning other as something which one should be defensive of and should be reigned in since we consciously or not tend to observe that with increased power comes increased potential for mis-use as well as the often comfortable stagnation that comes with power which leads generally to, what could be seen as evolutionarily degenerate actions. So with weakness, you sometimes see more maternal instincts to protect the weak, the underdog, the child, the newcomer, etc and it's often idolized in religiosity by the term "innocent", or that which hasn't been corrupted by power. In the universe, this underdog or smaller entity isn't as deterred due to its miniscule nature, it's naturally less a target like the evolutionarily small but mighty cockroach, which is a power unto its own, ala, security through obscurity, to use the popular infosec term. This sort of inverse square law pervades so much in daily life, the notion that the more you use various powers to push through the universe, the more it pushes back, that it's hard for me not to see it. 

Now back to the macroscopic powers, as if I didn't analogize it enough. But growth of any kind leads to needing more extended coordination efforts, be it in a biological organism, an organization, an ideology, etc. With smaller scale you have less latency, perhaps this pertains to the seemingly instantaneous traversal nature of massless/low-mass particles as with quantum tunnelling and speed of light. If we see particles and groups thereof as frequencies, phases and amplitudes of compatible nature then with increased mass comes increased interference or error rate as growth occurs due to connection latency and attenuation effects from other bordering and imposing particles which would affect to some degree all said dimensions of the imposed particles. With that said, the ends of my approach which often arrive at an argument for vigilantly moderating oneself, can also be seen as an evolutionarily degenerate view itself, to some extent. When you realize the fragilities of your own thoughts due to finding faults to perhaps come to a greater truth, the more you do so, the more loss of ego you encounter. Battering yourself and finding your own weaknesses takes a toll, just as training of any kind does. Besides that, should everyone moderate themselves it leaves room for evolutionary cheaters, those who don't care to moderate themselves, leading to niches which can be taken advantage of and the "moderates" have to resort to extreme measures to control the extremists which we have to admit can also be an evolutionarily advantageous approach, even if often careless and myopic. So should one wish to live in a fairytale, forego thoughts of what's not possible and the limits of human power, and pretend 'anything is possible'? As stated before, for our own sake sometimes it's best to pretend boundaries don't exist if only to nurture potential and so we less feel caged in by limits bearing down on us like the intellectual whips we may encounter. This is an admittance I attested to before of the evolutionary validity of a certain amount and kind of ignorance. But I think human life is wholly defined, nourished and to some degree dependent on pretension and that we should live within our own fantasy to some extent. I admit I have a hard time relaxing and ignoring harsh realities, or pretending, that I wished for my own sake I could do so more. I generally can't get into any fictional movies, books or media although there has been room for Game of Thones, love it except the last few seasons (writers should've let us wait so George RR could write the rest of the books as the show writers can't write worth a damn) as fiction just seems like a waste of time even though I know intellectually that this is the mind's way of relaxing and putting aside harsh nature by feigning a controllable world; it has survival and evolutionary merit. 

The chronologically (where age is concerned) and perhaps evolutionarily optimal approach may be to limit growth, be it intellectual, physical, chronological (those which affect age markers, as variable and obscure as they are in modern medical science) when possible but all those things are inevitable to some degree while also having benefits. Yes, as we know age does have benefits such as wisdom for the individual and for other more contentious reasons on the macroscopic such as with a younger average age in society comes more adaptive potential to some degree for that society. As said before and hammered into the ground, growth eventually decreases adaptive potential but increases defensive potential and in a dynamic universe, an optimal mix of those are needed for extended survival of the entity, although with time all entities are susceptible to the problems as the ship of Theseus. Components are always having to be replaced as entropy takes its toll, bordering particles affect neighboring particles. Maybe it doesn't need stated so much for the moderates but for those who are always looking for more, more growth in some domain, sometimes it's best that we learn to just accept good enough. This view is sometimes even stressed as healthy such as with many self-betterment endorsements to be bigger, stronger, faster, richer, etc. These tend to be fetishized power-based activities and as such without attentive moderation they can sometimes lead to the compromise of other powers.  This entry, or the whole blog, you could say is essentially a wake up call to extremism in any form, be it religious, ideological, physical, intellectual and such. Some amount of pretending that you're strong and that everything is alright is fine and well but only with a degree of moderation and vigilance against those notions because if you live in a world of pretension too often, perhaps everything isn't externally alright, and before you know it you get a left hook by the Mike Tyson of the universe. 

All that said, believe it or not I respect and honor succinctness but sometimes I get carried away with my verbiage. I suppose this is all some long-winded overly-verbose article to say that everything is fallible but in this age, where we think one side is all right and the other all wrong, we're in dire need of moderation and these things need said. I know I go from there to here a lot in my writing, my mind is chaotic, and sometimes I'll edit and things may seem a bit disjointed but my main concern is the jist, conveying the basics, details I don't try to concern myself too much with since if the jist is properly conveyed then details can be abstracted easily enough will little to no work.

And for this entry's music post, possibly relevant Audioslave song that just happened to be playing on Spotify while finishing this entry...