@Tegesan234 30 August 2022 more from that month

Power and Spirituality Aaaah, how tempting power is. With power, we are respected everywhere. Come and go in luxury vehicles, along with aides who are ready to serve. Invitations to eat and meet with important people flooded. Great salary, although often not accompanied by commensurate performance. The opportunity for corruption is great, as long as it invites other powerful people to join in. However, also with power, people can change the situation. Great good can be realized, if power is used for the benefit of all, without exception. Power Not surprisingly, the world's great thinkers talk about power with double hearts. There are those who rail, but not a few who hope. Rutger Bregman, a Dutch thinker, exposed the corrupt seduction of power. Sincere-hearted people become vile and greedy, when they hold power. Lord Acton is also famous for his expression. Power tends to corrupt humans (power tends to corrupt), and absolute power corrupts humans absolutely (absolute power corrupts absolutely). Friedrich Nietzsche, the German thinker, also saw the driving force of power in the human mind. In fact, he calls the human impulse the will to power (Der Wille zur Macht). No one would be able to feel the dilemma of power, other than Abraham Lincoln, the President of the United States who brought the US out of the dark era of slavery. He once said, if you want to see a person's true character, give him power. The real power lies in knowledge (knowledge is power). That is what Francis Bacon, one of the thinkers of the European Enlightenment, emphasized. With that quote, Europe entered an era of tremendous scientific and technological progress. Oscar Wilde, the Irish poet, has an interesting opinion on power. Everything in the world, he says, is about sex, except for sex itself. Sex is all about power. The series of reflections of world thinkers on power would not be complete, if not closed with Mahatma Gandhi's understanding of power. The day when the power of love is greater than the love of power, Gandhi said, the world will know peace. Sheath of Power In itself, power is neutral. It is neither good nor bad. Power is like a sword. It is sharp, but needs to have a scabbard that fits. Otherwise, it will injure innocent people, including its owner. What is the right sheath for power? There is only one sheath that suffices: spirituality. Spirituality is a way of life for people to realize their true self. This can be done, if people are able to distance themselves from the social identity they receive from society. Before all identities, including before language, who are we really? We are universal beings who take on a social identity to temporarily live in this world. Realizing this is true spirituality. It transcends religious boundaries. In philosophy and political theory, this kind of consciousness is also known as cosmopolitan consciousness. Spirituality and the Scabbard Regarding power as a sword, and spirituality as a scabbard, two things are important. First, the identity of the power holder must be as wide as the universe. He must not be attached, let alone fanatical, with a certain social identity, such as religion, race, ethnicity and nation. The true identity of man is a universal being. Before taking power, one must really be aware and live this thing as deeply as possible. Two, from this universal identity, true morality is born. People do good to others, because they are fellow creatures of the universe. The limits of the self are the limits of the universe. The morality born of this awareness is a natural morality that is in line with the laws of the universe, as well as being ideal for exercising power. If this happens, power is then dedicated to caring for life, both human and all creatures. This is true power. Indonesia We see many swords without sheaths in Indonesia. Many political, economic and religious rulers hold power with narrow identities. As a result, morality becomes narrow and pseudo. Discrimination, corruption and policy errors are common. People live in poverty and ignorance, because there are no examples from their leaders. This was all added to by a wave of foreign influences, both from Arabia and the West, which destroyed the existing culture. Hypocrisy then became a daily culture. Religion and morals are used as masks to cover injustice, discrimination and corruption. Of course all of this cannot be allowed to continue. If there is no scabbard, it is better to throw the sword away, because it will hurt everyone. If the ruler has no spirituality, so corrupt and divisive, he should step down. Before the people took it down by force.