Power comes from control. Lots of control may bring much power, or so one may think. When it comes to the living, power output is limited by capacity, while being conditional to the willingness from the object of control, as control must first be agreed upon. So an agreement must first be reached before any demand can be executed, as nobody may be forced to do anything against its own will, even if the only payback means staying alive.
So when one need other people to execute various tasks in its place, one has to exert control upon them through an agreement, a scenario which plays out in most work relations nowadays, as it has been since the dawn of times. The way to scale this mechanism is through social agreement, and the way to perfect it is social engineering.
Social agreement consists in a series of steps integrated by the majority of a control group. Each step represent a choice to make through an agreement, and full control is delegated to the group majority, providing group leaders with the illusion of being powerful.
The art of maintaining power over many groups over long periods of time is called social engineering, which consist in fine tuning every detail at every step in the social agreement process. Then, control may be achieved over very large populations, which yields great power, to the scale of countries, and far beyond.
Think of the steps leading to control over yourself from others as everything you ever agreed to in society: having people care for you at an early age in exchange for food and security, going to school to get grades, playing sports for group recognition, adhering to religious dogma as a way to display purity and show obedience, getting married in return for physical promiscuity and/or status, getting jobs for social advancement, going to work for money, having children for eventual continuation of your own self or as a way to achieve social recognition within your social group, etc.
Great power to those in control may come from these agreements. Good children caregivers will help produce a willing and fruitful workforce, school provides incremental agreement process training while helping to spread conformity, sports provide group cohesion and helps in channeling and expelling resentment, religion is a powerful control tool filled with many arbitrary agreements of dubious value, the process of randomly coupling individuals into marriage and relationships yielding births give many very powerful ways of control, while providing jobs will naturally lead to the only productive part of the whole deal, in the form of a mostly measurable, precious output. All of these steps merely serving as social accompaniments for the realization of power over others through control, in a seemingly infinite series of agreements.
These decisions you made in your life without being fully conscious of their real significance were all created from nothing, as ways to collect an agreement from your part. And all of this process is completely natural by design. These are the ways of any populations, from beehives to wolf packs, from animal herds to human groups.
Then, the act of focusing on seemingly glamorous and powerful individuals, and be filled with strong emotions like lust, fascination, disgust, envy or else, is just another by-product of the control for power process, one which helps in greasing the wheel of productivity through illusion and drama.
And of course, all of this is only possible because you agreed to all of it. You did. At. Every. Step. Of. The. Way. You took the bait. I did too. We all did.
Now, how do I get out of this deal, now that I'm awaken to the fact of being treated as a glorified herd animal? You just have to decide to get out, or not, and decisively act on that choice. Easy peasy.
Why would you knowingly stay in the social agreement/engineering loop? Because it works. Because knowing what you know now could give you an edge. You could get more out of it. And it's a totally valid choice. And you know it is because you've been doing that very same choice since you've been born, maybe prior to that.
Then, why would you want out? Maybe you're tired of losing your precious Self. Maybe you want to evolve beyond what's actually seemingly possible. Maybe maybe maybe. Again, all choices are valid ones, for better or for worse.
I'll tell you why I want out, if it's any help to you. I want out because I can. That's right. I want out because when confronted to the ultimate choice, to be or not to be, I might just choose not to be, because every instinct I have in every part of my being tells me there are no bad answers, there are no bad choices. No red or blue pill dictating what I can be. Nothing of the sort. There's only me, and the vastness, and I'm okay with that. Because I have an absolute faith in the process we call Life. So my choice is to only exert control upon my own Self. And that's my edge.