I have been
working on the topic of empowerment for many years, since I realized the
importance of power in life: that’s what we have that comes from within and
helps us to defeat obstacles, to reinvent ourselves and to attain success.
However, I
have noticed that there has been a decrement in the awareness of power; I would
dare to say we are reaching very high levels of global disempowerment. How to turn this around? I would like to explore
three of the present paradigms that show disempowerment and how to change that:
- Aloneness and short-term relationships. People are either choosing to live
by themselves or they have relationships that last very little time, creating a
unique situation for the family-based societies, governments, the economy and
many other levels.
- The deep dissatisfaction, from citizens to
government officers.
In the past, this was a common trace of a dictatorial government, but nowadays
even very well consolidated democracies are facing this, which may be
considered a worldwide movement.
- The fake media. Instead of a media that covers matters and
subjects into their depth, the social network has opened the doors to all kind
of information and news are often short and inaccurate, generating the chance
for fake news and deepfakes.
Why does
this indicate the growing disempowerment and how to reverse this trend?
First of
all, the main reason people are alone is not that they don’t need others
because they are so satisfied and fulfilled; reality is there is not enough strength
to try and live with other people, by accommodating to others’ way of living. One way of solving it is to invest time in
developing more assertiveness and dialogue techniques, which will help in
creating new bridges between people.
That dissatisfaction
also reaches the social level, which used to happen in non-democratic countries
and people of democratic countries used to point and say well, that’s the result of dictatorship. By happening in a
democracy, it shows people’s disempowerment as the big irony is that people are
marching and protesting against people they themselves have put in that
position... The empowerment in terms of
citizenship comes from developing better criteria to use at time of election and
to know more about the government and social structure, so learning ways of
promoting change in a more effective way.
Last but not
the least, information has always had a deep impact in our mindset and good powerful
information helps us to feel more empowered. Let’s add to that truthful; if the news is not real, the
effect tends to be the opposite, particularly when facts come out and the
person realizes they believed in something false, losing self-confidence. On one hand, control the news that come to
you and don’t believe in them just like that; on the other hand, prioritize
more in relation to which information is relevant to you, and focus on that,
leaving other pieces of data aside.
