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The will to power is a terrifying force of humankind. Oppression plays out in every culture as if it has been syndicated by the devil himself. And overwhelmingly, opression is perpetrated on the basis of class rather than ethnicity or religion. It is more difficult to oppress a cultural, religious, or ethnic group if they are united in their shared identity. However, if you fracture the unity of a people with poverty and if you can make them dependent upon institutions that are utterly foreign, oppression is a much simpler task. The abolition of the native American potlatch system by U.S. Indian reform laws effectively impoverished the native Americans of the Pacific Northwest by obliterating their economy. While the potlatch system had its own institutionalized power structures that could be perceived as oppressive, overall it promoted a shared economy based on the idea that if you're doing well, then I'm doing well. However, when that economy was outlawed and even the powerful were impoverished, everyone in the community became impoverished.

The will to power, that is, the single-focus of all of man's energies to gather power, is a self-perpetuating illness for which there is no vaccine. Thich Nhat Hanh wrote in "Peace is Every Step":

"Every time a seed has an occasion to manifest itself, it produces new seeds of the same kind... That is why we have to be careful in selecting the kind of life we lead and the emotions we express."

When we plant the will to power, then the will to power perpetuates itself in the soil of our life. If, however, we plant humility, mercy, and love then those things are perpetuated in the soil of our life. It boils down to choice. Do we choose power or do we choose mercy? To we choose to oppress or do we choose to serve? Do we choose apathy or do we choose love? The choice is yours and the choice is mine.

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