by: Margaret Paul, Ph.D.
Many of the leaders in our society are guided by unhealthy intentions. Instead of seeking to serve the people and heal our nation’s ills, their actions and decisions are primarily motivated by their desire for power. Many of the people running our country are run by their addictions to approval, sex, power and control. Unfortunately, few truly healthy individuals want to submit themselves to the necessary abuses inherent to our political races - the verbal abuse both given and received, the huge amounts of money spent, the integrity sacrificed through the concessions, lies and manipulations offered in order to win. Our system of electing our officials is so corrupt that there is little possibility of attracting a person with a strong, personally responsible, loving inner adult self. This is not to say that none of our elected representatives are honest and caring. Some are certainly motivated by positive intentions but, unfortunately, they constitute a minority.
There is no training required in personal responsibility to run for office. Our leaders are not required to heal their dysfunctional aspects in order to become honest and trustworthy people. The prerequisites for political positions mostly include having enough money, enough powerful people behind the scenes, being male, and being white.
Our political arena is designed to attract wounded people who need approval and power in order to feel worthy and validated. Obviously, such a person, with little or no internally derived sense of self-worth and integrity, is very susceptible to corruption. As the adage says: "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Power corrupts when a person is motivated by his or her desire for power over others, and few people have accomplished enough inner healing to transcend the desire for control over others.
A healthy person in office who is more concerned with serving the people than with getting re-elected could accomplish a great deal. Such a person was depicted in the movie Dave. In this film the actual president is in a coma and the White House officials, seeking to conceal the truth from the public so they can maintain control, put a look-alike into the president’s seat. Dave, however, is a man of heart, and rather than allowing himself to be controlled he sets about making necessary changes - cutting money where it is not needed and allocating it into more crucial avenues, like child care and the creation of jobs. He even takes responsibility for the corruption of the actual president and gracefully "dies" as the actual president is dying so the vice-president, a man of great integrity who was maligned by the power structure, could take over in his rightful place. The movie is, of course, a fantasy. Sadly, we would never elect a man of such integrity - a straightforward, honest, caring, and financially middle-class man like Dave. Our election process does not allow for this.
Revamping our election process would give people like Dave an opportunity to run for office. We desperately need people who care more for the common good than for their own popularity. We need brilliant, creative, honest and caring people to lead our country, but this will never happen with our present election system. We have incredible talent in this great country of ours, talent that could eliminate hunger and homelessness, and heal the internal wounds that create health problems, drug abuse, racism, violence and crime. But this talent is rarely tapped because running our country has been based on the earthly values of greed and power over others rather than the spiritual values of honesty, compassion and caring.
Unfortunately, neither our government nor most big businesses are based on the spiritual principles of compassion and caring about the common good. I have no doubt that if our government was based on spiritual principles we would not have the hunger, homelessness, crime, health problems, and drug abuse that are endemic to our modern society.