Powerlessness of the powerful

I often use this formula in my speeches in Europe – a mirror image of Vaclav Havel's formula.

Havel spoke of the "power of the powerless" as something that will sooner or later destroy tyranny. I speak of the "powerlessness of the strong" as something that can destroy democracy.

the "power of the powerless" is the idea that power is never complete, that tyranny is not able to control and suppress everything. Instead, the "powerlessness of the powerful" is the idea that freedom is never complete, and that every freedom (and the struggle for it) is actually a hidden slavery.

The modern European disease of the "powerlessness of the strong" is born of despondency. Despondency is a consequence of skepticism. Skepticism is a consequence of self-criticism. Self-criticism is a normal product of "critical thinking." But... It is a paradox of human nature that good things sometimes unnoticed turn into bad things. And then the value degrades and turns into its opposite.

Because criticism is good, and so is self-criticism. And skepticism is also mostly good. But despondency is not. Because despondency is the self-disintegration of the subject .

the "powerlessness of the strong" is the creation of the belief that power is bad. It is the fear of your power. The fear that your power actually hides violence, exploitation, inequality, discrimination and many other bad things.

This is the idea that you are strong only because you are bad. That the strong are only bad. And therefore, the good are only weak. That to be good means to be weak and powerless, skeptical and desperate. And even more: that only victims can be good. That is, in the end, only the dead.

The powerlessness of the strong is a hidden thanatocracy. A masochistic thanatocracy. It is a hidden recognition that only death, your own death, can be good. That only surrender can be good – because any act of resistance, of struggle, carries the risk of violence, and therefore of "evil.".

This is the paradox of mirroring: Europe, which has been seized by the virus of "powerlessness of the strong," and Russia, which builds everything on the idea of violence as the only possible manifestation of strength.

To overcome this means also to overcome the thought viruses that exist in both the East and the West.

Both the virus of fanaticism and the virus of despair. Both a virus of violence and a virus of powerlessness.

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