The True Story of Power

The Awakening

The time had come for me to fly back over the 'pond' as my friends in Europe called it.

To return home. USA.

I'd lived in Europe for most of the last 15 years, grown in ways I never imagined. And I'd had the distance I needed to start healing, examine my childhood, my spiritual beliefs, and begin, as they say in therapy, to 'individuate'.

Fresh divorced, I packed up to return home, in some ways licking my wounds, and, in others, with a peace that surpassed all understanding, caused by a recent spiritual breakthrough.

But home was two places. Oregon was mom. Vegas was dad. And I couldn't get to either without landing in New York first.

A FB friend told me: "Check out Ganas."

Turns out, Ganas is a fascinating experiment in communal living on Staten Island. And they had a spot.

And I just so happened to land in NYC in what was to be the last week of Occupy Wall Street.

I had heard about Occupy. Following it with excitement. That hope for the future, fighting against financial and government corruption. But I wanted to see it myself.

As soon as I arrived at Zuccotti Park, I went up to three guys sitting in their winter coats behind a table piled with xeroxed literature.

I asked what was, in retrospect, a very silly question.

"Are you in charge?"

They looked official.

"No one is in charge."

I looked around. A medical tent. A food tent. A library. People playing drums. Tents covering almost every square inch of the park.

Surely someone had to be in charge...right?

My brain still hadn't gotten it. My mind was still polluted, blind to how things really are.

No one was in charge.

"So who are you guys, then?"

"We are the anarchists."

I smiled. Foolish, head-in-the-clouds idealists, right?

But then it dawned on me. What did they actually think? I had never asked the one before.

"So, what do you believe?"

I was expecting utopian nonsense.

"We don't rule anyone, nor will we be ruled."

BOOM.

You know how they do that thing in movies where they zoom out and zoom in at the same time to show the guy getting his mind blown?

That's what happened.

The words reverberated inside my brain, resonating with a thousand places that had felt exactly that...but which I never had the words to say.

"Huh. That sounds like me."

I paused.

"How does it work?"

"Sit down and we will tell you."

I spent the next four days sitting next to Thaddeus and his comrades in freedom, not realizing I was learning from a legend in the anarchist community. I read their pamphlets and asked questions about recent history I had somehow never heard of. _COINTELPRO? What was that?

The ideas made sense. But somehow, no one had ever told me any of them before.

What I discovered in those four days began to shift everything I thought I knew about power, freedom, and how the world actually works.

The Problem

Here's what we can all see: everything sucks and nothing ever gets better.

Why?

Different president? Same wars. Same corruption.

New job? Still running to a standstill on life's hamster wheel.

Better diet? New relationship? Another self-help book? Something still feels deeply wrong, once the new wears off.

So you try harder. Work harder. Make better choices.

But the feeling persists.

Because you're trying to solve the wrong problem.

You think you need to work harder, choose better, try more. _Be better. _

That's not the problem.

The problem is that we are at war, and most of us don't even know it.

There are people at war with us whose names we don't even know. And this has turned us all into puppets.

Everything you think. Everything you do is influenced. Not because there's someone with a gun to your head. But because of powerful manipulation techniques, implanted through fear, and enforced by the very people you trust to love and take care of you.

Your career path? Planned. Your morality? Instilled. How you feel about money? Suggested. What you believe about God, government, sex, success? Programmed.

We think we're making our own choices.

We're not. We're executing code that was installed in childhood -- by parents, religion, school, government, media -- since before we can remember.

Edward Bernays -- Freud's nephew -- said it plainly in 1928:

[quote, Edward Bernays, Propaganda (1928)] "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. *We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. *"

He wasn't warning. He was bragging.

What Power Actually Is

Power is simple: *the ability to get others to act to meet your needs. *

There are two ways to exercise it:

Power Over: Force. Manipulation. You do what I want because I threaten you or something you value.

Power With: Cooperation. Mutual benefit. You do it because you want to, because you see a benefit.

Guess which one runs our world?

Those with power stay in power by keeping us powerless. And the easiest way to keep us powerless? Keep us ignorant.

Knowledge is power, after all.

The Knowledge Problem

If I know when the stock market will crash and you don't, I get rich while you lose everything.

If I know how to make weapons and you don't, I take your land.

If I understand how your mind works and you don't, I control your entire life while you think you're free.

*Knowledge is power. *

Which means: if you had all the power, would you share the knowledge that gives you it?

Think about it like this: you have a jar of cookies you love. Limited supply. And you have children who will eat every single one if you let them.

First, you put them on a high shelf. Then you hide them. When the kids get smarter, you need a safe. Maybe a decoy jar.

Now imagine a whole team of adults trying to get your cookies. What would you do?

*That's exactly how the powerful think about power. *

They have the cookies. They know everyone wants them. They're vastly outnumbered. So they don't just hide knowledge -- they create entire systems to keep people ignorant and weak.

You went to school for 12,000 hours. You learned geometry. State capitals. The date Lincoln was shot.

You know what you didn't learn?

• How money actually works
• How to negotiate
• How to communicate effectively
• How power is maintained
• Who actually runs things

That wasn't an accident. That wasn't an oversight.

*That was the point. *

So Who Has the Power?

In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson wrote:

[quote, Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom] "Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."

A sitting President. Admitting that even the richest, most powerful men in America whisper about this power in fear.

The President? CEOs? The billionaires you see on TV?

They have influence. They have wealth. But real power?

*Real power is invisible. *

And right now, we're getting a rare glimpse behind the curtain.

The Epstein files.

A financier no one had heard of had private islands, connections to presidents and princes, and was trafficking children to the most powerful people on earth. Then he "committed suicide" in a maximum security prison. Cameras malfunctioning. Guards asleep. His partner convicted -- and not a single client named.

That was power protecting itself.

But the files are coming out now. And what they reveal isn't just one man's crimes. It's the shape of the network. The connections between people who publicly pretend not to know each other. The favors. The leverage. The blackmail.

This is how invisible power actually operates. Not through elections or legislation, but through compromise, leverage, and fear.

And Epstein was just one node in a much larger web.

*You can't fight what you can't see. You can't even question someone you don't know exists. *

Think about COVID. In March 2020, virtually every country on earth -- capitalist and communist, East and West, allies and enemies -- implemented the exact same measures within days of each other. Lockdowns. Mask mandates. School closures. Vaccine passports.

If power was actually distributed among competing nations, that coordination would be impossible. There would have been holdouts. Different approaches.

Instead? Instant worldwide compliance. Leaders of countries that refused died mysteriously or faced international pressure until they fell in line.

That's not coincidence. That's coordination.

Someone is coordinating. And they're not on the ballot.

What Happens Next

You have a choice.

You can close this page. Go back to your life. Pretend you didn't read this. Stay comfortable.

I wouldn't blame you. Once you see this, you can't unsee it. And that comes with a cost.

Or you can keep going.

Because this is just the beginning. Now that you've seen the shape of the cage, the real questions start:

How do they actually maintain control over billions of people? What are the specific mechanisms? Why do we go along with it? And what -- if anything -- can be done?

That's what's next.

Shall we?