Truth Over Tyranny: Biblical wisdom for defeating the Technocrats.
These are my insights for defeating the Transhumanist Technocracy movement, based on the teachings of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory, on the weekly Bible portion.
When we look at all the power amassed by the people who want to rule the world, it is easy to feel overwhelmed.
They are presidents and prime ministers of many countries.
They are oligarchs and billionaires.
They run huge multinational corporations.
They are executives in global health and humanitarian organizations.
They are in charge of schools, media, and cultural institutions.
They direct professional legal and medical associations.
They have control over armies and police forces.
How can we ever beat these people?
isn’t resistance futile?
That’s what they would like us to believe. In their eyes, life is a power game, and he who has the most power, wins.
But what they don’t get – and what will lead to their ultimate downfall – is that life is not about power. It’s about influence. And influence trumps power.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks makes this point is his commentary on Parashat Beha’alotecha called “Power or Influence?”
https://www.rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/behaalotecha/power-or-influence/
He describes the difference between the two:
“… it is essential to grasp the difference between two concepts often confused, namely power and influence. We tend to think of them as similar if not identical. People of power have influence. People of influence have power. But the two are quite distinct and operate by a different logic, as a simple thought experiment will show.
“Imagine you have total power. Whatever you say, goes. Then one day you decide to share your power with nine others. You now have, at best, one-tenth of the power you had before. Now imagine instead that you have a certain measure of influence. You decide to share that influence with nine others, whom you make your partners. You now have ten times the influence you had before, because instead of just you there are now ten people delivering the message.
“Power works by division, influence by multiplication. Power, in other words, is a zero-sum game: the more you share, the less you have. Influence is not like this, as we see with our Prophets. When it comes to leadership-as-influence, the more we share the more we have.”
Moses, the first leader of the new Jewish nation, had both power and influence:
“Throughout his forty years at the head of the nation, Moses held two different leadership roles. He was a Prophet, teaching Torah to the Israelites and communicating with God. He was also the functional equivalent of a king, leading the people on their journeys, directing their destiny and supplying them with their needs…
“We can see this duality later in the narrative when he inducts Joshua as his successor. God commands him: ‘Take Joshua son of Nun, a man of spirit, and lay your hand on him … Give him some of your honour (hod) so that the whole Israelite community will obey him.'” (Num. 27:18-20)
But it is influence that has the highest impact, and longest-lasting effect:
“Note the two different acts. One, ‘lay your hand [vesamachta] on him,’ is the origin of term s’michah, whereby a Rabbi ordains a pupil, granting him the authority to make rulings in his own right. The Rabbis saw their role as a continuation of that of the Prophets (‘Moses received the Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua; Joshua to the elders; the elders to the Prophets; and the Prophets handed it down to the men of the Great Assembly,’ Mishnah Avot 1:1). By this act of s’michah, Moses was handing on to Joshua his role as Prophet.
“By the other act, ‘Give him some of your honour,’ he was inducting him into the role of King. The Hebrew word hod, honour, is associated with kingship, as in the biblical phrase hod malchut, ‘the honour of kingship’ (Dan. 11:21; 1 Chronicles, 29:25).
“Kings had power – including that of life and death (see Joshua 1:18). Prophets had none, but they had influence, not just during their lifetimes but, in many cases, to this day. To paraphrase Kierkegaard: when a King dies his power ends. When a Prophet dies his influence begins.”
So the Torah places primary importance on leadership through influence, not power:
“…Judaism clearly demarcates between leadership as influence and leadership by power. It is unqualified in its endorsement of the first, and deeply ambivalent about the second. Tanach is a sustained polemic against the use of power. All power, according to the Torah, rightly belongs to God. The Torah recognises the need, in an imperfect world, for the use of coercive force in maintaining the rule of law and the defence of the realm. Hence its endorsement of the appointment of a King, should the people so desire it.[3] But this is clearly a concession, not an ideal.[4]
“The real leadership embraced by Tanach and by rabbinic Judaism is that of influence, above all that of Prophets and teachers. As we have noted many times before, that is the ultimate accolade given to Moses by tradition. We know him as Moshe Rabbeinu, Moses our teacher. Moses was the first of a long line of figures in Jewish history – among them Ezra, Hillel, Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai, Rabbi Akiva, the Sages of the Talmud and the scholars of the Middle Ages – who represent one of Judaism’s most revolutionary ideas: the teacher as hero.”
It is through having influence on the world – not power over the world – that a civilization survives:
“Judaism was the first and greatest civilisation to predicate its very survival on education, houses of study, and learning as a religious experience higher even than prayer.[5] The reason is this: leaders are people able to mobilise others to act in certain ways. If they achieve this only because they hold power over them, this means treating people as means, not ends – as things not persons. Not accidentally, the single greatest writer on leadership as power was Machiavelli.
“The other approach is to speak to people’s needs and aspirations, and teach them how to achieve these things together as a group. That is done through the power of a vision, force of personality, the ability to articulate shared ideals in a language with which people can identify, and the capacity to ‘raise up many disciples’ who will continue the work into the future. Power diminishes those on whom it is exercised. Influence and education lift and enlarge them.
“Judaism is a sustained protest against what Hobbes called the ‘general inclination of all mankind,’ [namely] ‘a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.'[6] That may be the reason why Jews have seldom exercised power for prolonged periods of time but have had an influence on the world out of all proportion to their numbers.”
By asserting proper influence, each and every one of us can be the leader the world needs to change for the better:
“Not all of us have power, but we all have influence. That is why we can each be leaders. The most important forms of leadership come not with position, title or robes of office, not with prestige and power, but with the willingness to work with others to achieve what we cannot do alone; to speak, to listen, to teach, to learn, to treat other people’s views with respect even if they disagree with us, to explain patiently and cogently why we believe what we believe and why we do what we do; to encourage others, praise their best endeavours and challenge them to do better still.
“Always choose influence rather than power. It helps change people into people who can change the world.”
I would add this:
We can see now why the Technocrat dictator-wannabes try to oppress us; why they lock us down… censor our speech… prohibit our assembly… persecute our popular leaders. They are trying to prevent us from having a positive influence on one another.
They know that as we do that, we become unbeatable.