Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Sex and Power, Part 1

This is a four-part blog which I am posting on the installment plan.  ~ 

As read in the feature story in the May 30, 2011 issue of Time Magazine entitled Men Behaving Badly ~ What is it About Power that Make Men Crazy?

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"...the arrest of Strauss-Kahn (head of International Monetary Fund) in NYC for allegedly trying to rape a hotel maid has ignited a fierce debate over sex, law, power and privilege...The night of Strauss-Kahn's arraignment, former California governor Arnold Schwarnenegger admitted that the reason his wife...walked out earlier this year was the discovery that he had fathered a child with a former member of the household staff...Both (cases) suggest an abuse of power and betrayal of trust.  And both involve men whose long-standing reputations for behaving badly toward women did not derail their rise to power...How can it be, in this ostensibly enlightened age, when men and women are...schooled regularly in what conduct is acceptable and what is actionable, that anyone with so little judgment, so little honor, could rise to such heights?...

We know that powerful men can be powerfully reckless...They tend to be risk takers or at least assess risk differently ~ as do narcissists who come to believe that ordinary rules don't apply.   They are often surrounded by enablers with a personal or political interest in protecting them to the point of covering up their follies, indiscretions and crimes....With power comes both opportunity and confidence...and with confidence comes a sense of sexual entitlement...When men have more opportunity, they tend to act on that opportunity..."

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 This is old news.
  
If they say, 'Come along with us; let's lie in wait for someone's blood, let's waylay some harmless soul"...do not go along with them...These men lie in wait for their own blood; they waylay only themselves.  Such is the end of all who go after ill-gotten gain; it takes away the lives of those who get it.  (Prov 1:11, 18-19)

When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom. (Prov 11:2)

The wealth of the rich is their fortified city; they imagine it an unscalable wall.  (Prov 18:11)

 

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