Power and Love and Deformity
The material goods that are shoved down the soul's spiritual throat take different forms. In the totalitarian, it takes the form of raw power. Control. That's the substance that he crams into his heart and mind instead of power's opposite, love (the proper spiritual food for the soul). As he crams more and more power into his heart, he desires more and more power, like a fat man who eats a lot of junk food, but keeps craving more food because his body continues to crave the vitamins and minerals that he needs and naturally obtains through good food. Power gives nothing to his soul, and therefore his soul keeps craving more and more of it.
The result is a grotesque specimen of a man: The oriental despot who takes delight in hearing people scream in torture, Tiberius committing sexual atrocities against women, Hitler killing six million Jews, Napoleon the Pig walking on two legs. Anything that serves the ruler's need for absolute control is welcomed. And if he can do it in the name of a “higher purpose,” like Hitler's proposed “Final Solution” to the Jewish problem and Stalin's pursuit of the classless society, then all the better because then the ruler is that much more oblivious to the tumor in his soul.
We can sit back and smugly snarl at those monstrous despots, but here's the problem: We're all potential despots. The theologian Leo Zimmy once wrote, “It is the inner mystery of every soul to be a new and unique tapestry of two basic tendencies–power and love, surmounting and surrender, domination and humility.” The soul tends to choose the former (control) or submit to the latter (love).
