Power of the Dark Side

by Pamela Jaye Smith

  America has an odd attraction to the Mafia: perhaps a leftover adolescent desire for a strong father figure and the camaraderie of fellow warriors. Show what happens when someone “grows up” and wants out.

  Show how a gang gets started to fill some societal need for protection, distraction, release. Give us a “gateway” incident; have some warn against it, others pooh-pooh it as harmless.

  If there wasn’t a market for what the mob was selling, they’d be out of business. How might that play out?

  For an exotic setting for your mob story, explore the island of Macau, the “Vegas of the Far East.”

  CORPORATE CORRUPTION

  Many conspiracy theories cast big business, big pharmaceuticals, big energy, and big banking as the power tools of the Dark Brotherhood, intent on enslaving and torturing mankind. Look at the disparity of wealth, number of people on legal drugs, climate change, and overwhelming credit card debt in America alone and you might just agree.

  For centuries corporations have been considered artificial persons with all the legal rights and protections of natural persons. Basically, it’s the creation of a deva, with all that implies about an archetype. Unlike Japanese 200-year plans or native Americans’ 7th-generation consideration, U.S. corporations concentrate on the quarterly report, seriously diminishing vision and awareness of consequences.

  Whether it’s a collective Dweller on the Threshold or a tool of the Dark Brotherhood, the more you know about the motivations and machinations of the corporation, the more intriguing your corporate villain can be.

  A. IN ACTION

  In the Opium Wars of the mid 1800s the British East India Company forced opium onto the Chinese market to equalize their balance of trade. It’s how the Brits got Hong Kong.

  A major background driver in The Pirates of the Caribbean movies is sea trade by colonial corporations. Piracy today is a huge corporate problem in the Indian Ocean and South China Sea. Much U.S. military and covert operations in Central and Latin America is credited to protection of U.S. corporate interests.

  As water becomes more precious than oil, multinational corporations are trying to gain control over water supplies in many underdeveloped countries, forcing locals to pay for a local resource they’ve gotten free for eons.

  Besides problems from untested drugs, also research Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and the Union Carbide Bhopal incidents to see how corporations try to protect themselves from blame.

  B. IN MEDIA

  The Mission, Chinatown, Rollerball, Three Mile Island, Brazil, Wall Street, Silkwood, The Insider, Erin Brokovich, The Constant Gardener, and The Day After Tomorrow center on corporate malfeasance. The De Beers company controls the diamond trade, except for blood diamonds, mined in violence-torn African countries to finance local conflicts.

  A Dangerous Man: Lawrence After Arabia, starring Ralph Fiennes, dramatizes the post-WWI division of Middle East oil fields among England, France, and the U.S., including the creation of the nation of Iraq. Syriana shows the recent results of these ongoing international petro-power-plays, and The Smartest Guys in the Room unfolds the Enron energy debacle. Other documentaries include: Roger and Me, Fahrenheit 911, Who Killed the Electric Car?, and An Inconvenient Truth.

  Books chronicling the heavy hand of unchecked corporate power are 1984, Brave New World, Atlas Shrugged, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy, and Neal Stephenson’s brilliant cyber-novel, Snow Crash. Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins details the devious machinations of current government policy and corporate profits at the expense of other countries. Also read When Corporations Rule the World by David C. Korten.

  C. IN YOUR CREATIONS

  Inner Drives Center of Motivation - Lower Solar Plexus: power over money, & Ajna: powerfully focused intelligence dropped to lower motivations.

  Show how when the humongous artificial human takes over, it gives (temporary) cover and sanction to real humans’ darker impulses: white-collar crimes by CEOs, Congresspersons, and lobbyists.

  Trace how some international banks launder money for illegal drugs, guns, nuclear weapons, smuggling, and terrorism; BCCI was a huge scandal in the early 1990s; other big banks have been suspected of same.

  Show how the corporation eats its own young; we love to see the bad guy devoured by his own devices.

  What if low-paid workers upset over exorbitant CEO pay took hints from the French Revolution?

  Big business is notorious for buying out the little guys and shelving their innovations or persecuting the competition to extinction. There’s a ready-made underdog hero for you.

  Investigate mercenaries working for corporations in hot spots around the world.

  There’s excellent story fodder in the protests, rebellions, and boycotts in populist Latin America over trade that’s really free, not strictly controlled by industrialized nations.

  Explore the influence corporations have on academia and science via research grants and built-in censorship.

  SECRET SOCIETIES AND

  SHADOW GOVERNMENTS

  Skull and Bones, the Illuminati, Tri-Lateral Commission, Articles of Zion, the Masons, cabals, and cartels? What’s real, what’s imagined, and what does it matter? Beginning with our early games of hide-and-seek and I’ve-got-a-secret, humans relish the challenge of the hidden. Grown-up versions of this tendency create secret societies, spies, and conspiracy theories about them.

  The basic principle behind secrecy is that it concentrates energy, as a lid on a pot boils water faster. Seclusion also maintains the purity and integrity of a thing, be it a cherry pie, a love affair, or a heinous plot.

  Espionage has always been an element of most organizations: everybody wants to know what’s going on, to defend themselves, and to expand. Some are willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish that.

  The Mystery Schools of Egypt, Tibet, India, Greece, Persia, and mystic Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are initiatory systems to preserve and pass on Ageless Wisdom Teachings. The secrecy was to protect them from the corrupting influence of formal religions and misuse by people with selfish motives. They’re all much less secret today, both on purpose — to affect faster positive change in humanity — and also because of increased transparency afforded by the Internet.

  However, just as Darth Vader trained with the Jedis, so too we’re told the Dark Brotherhood also trains in the Mystery Schools. Without checks and balances, that concentrated hidden power can become heady and addicting and can go really bad when group-think presumes infallibility and invulnerability.

  A. IN ACTION

  The Trilateral Commission and the Carlisle Group, both often accused of controlling world affairs to their benefit, are legitimate organizations, often suspect as to fairness in world trade, banking, and developing countries.

  The Masons are a worldwide group of men and women dedicated to the betterment of themselves and mankind, operating under a ritual secrecy but mostly quite open to revealing their principles and sharing information.

  Just as the awesome Wizard of Oz was actually a wizened little man behind a curtain, when regents take power too young or are too weak, their viziers or advisors are the real power. The history of royalty teems with stories about shadow governing behind glittering thrones.

  During the Cold War, both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. propped up dictators in client states to hold each other at bay. The CIA and the KGB worked behind the scenes, moving players like chess pieces for secret government agendas.

  Corporate interests influencing public policy via lobbyists is a kind of secret government, particularly when it turns to war profiteering via a military-industrial complex. This is an ancient story, but still a rich mine for dramatic conflict.

  B. IN MEDIA

  Men in Black, X-Files, True Lies, Three Days of the Condor, the Da Vinci Code, Conspiracy Theory, Eyes Wide Shut, National Treasure, Smilla’s Sense of Snow. The League of Assassins plagues Batman. Harry Potter’s Hogwarts is a kind of secret society.

  The
Morning of the Magicians book by Pauwels and Bergier is packed with various conspiracy theories, from Hitler’s advisors studying black magic in Tibet, to the Sumerian god Enki as an emissary from Mars. The superb Snow Crash novel combines Sumerian phonemes, cyber-punk, and secret societies.

  C. IN YOUR CREATIONS

  Inner Drives Center of Motivation - Lower Solar Plexus: separatist ego, suspicion, and paranoia.

  Show how holding a secret swells a person up with self importance.

  Infiltrating a secret society is always an interesting and usually dangerous challenge.

  Give us layers within layers: use metaphors, allegories, and symbols in the rituals to give more in-depth meaning to the action of your story.

  Secret societies always have some initiatory process whereby the new member has to prove herself worthy. Those challenges can be part of your character arc.

  Industrial espionage is a huge problem for businesses, but seldom seems glamorous. “Aha! We’ve liberated the formula for the new soda flavor. The world will never be the same,” just doesn’t have the same ring as saving the country or a way of life. Make techno-spying exciting by focusing on the people who base their existence and worth on business success.

  BIG BROTHERS AND

  BUREAUCRACIES

  The paradox of the Big Brother situation is that what we desire — to be protected by a loving big brother can quickly become what we loathe — bullying and suppression as the machine takes over and starts to run the people.

  Bureaucrats with job security often run the systems and the so-called leaders are just figureheads (or airheads).

  Communism, Socialism, Marxism… all holding some good ideals at their core, turned out to be ponderous and deadly in action. The few countries still operating under these Big Brother bureaucracies are isolationist dictatorships (Burma and North Korea). Maoist insurgencies still smolder in Latin America and some small Asian countries.

  Big Brother typically suppresses and controls information, typically through censorship, co-opting media, or outright killing of journalists and intellectuals.

  This clenched-jaw deva of total control combines parsimonious Dweller stuff, Dark Force inertia, and, it sometimes seems, the full weight of Darth Vader with an MBA from Hell U.

  A. IN ACTION

  Ancient writing reveals that people griped about governments and bureaucracies as far back as dynastic Egypt. The Catholic Church took over the bureaucracy of the fallen Roman Empire and acquired a cumbersome system that still stymies progress and self correction.

  Prohibition in ’20s–’30s America. Our 1950s black list with Senator Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn. George W. Bush’s inefficient and ineffective Homeland Security agency, unwarranted surveillance, rollbacks of habeas corpus, and extensions of government power at the expense of civil rights.

  Less deadly but still quite frustrating are the bureaucracies of everyday existence: the DMV, the phone company, insurance, banks.

  B. IN MEDIA

  1984, Brave New World, Brazil, Office Space, The Office TV series, Guilty by Suspicion, Good Night and Good Luck. A fun section in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie takes Zaphod Beeblebrox into the maddening maze of Vogon bureaucracy. The last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark descends into bureaucracy when the dangerous Ark is wheeled into a huge warehouse as Indy’s assured it’s in the hands of “top men.”

  The Borg from Star Trek is/are a perfect example of exquisite organization gone really, really wrong.

  German writer Franz Kafka’s stories epitomized the horror inherent in mindless organizations. Situations of random unfathomable obstacles and oppression are called Kafkaesque. Orson Welles made a movie from Kafka’s paranoid novel The Trial.

  Dilbert cartoons.

  C. IN YOUR CREATIONS

  Inner Drives Center of Motivation – Throat: drive to organize and oversee, & Lower Solar Plexus: drive to control others.

  Show the tipping point when the organization gets so big it gets impersonal. Systems theory usually puts that at one hundred people. See the effect on particular individuals who still try to operate the old way.

  Show how a person with rigid tendencies who is afraid of freedom finds bureaucracy comfortable. Then toss them into free fall and watch the fireworks.

  Investigate what it takes to dissolve or destroy a Big Brother system. Why did the Soviet Union implode? Why is Chinese Communism eroding?

  Show how freedom of information effects Big Brother.

  Have your heroine find the weak spot in a bureaucracy and exploit it.

  Privatize a bureaucracy. Show the positive, such as commercial space flight; or negative, such as the failed California energy grid under Enron.

  Offer clever ways to navigate bureaucracies, serious or funny.

  EVIL EMPIRES

  For all the reasons in this chapter, giant empires can and most often do go bad. They may start out as sheer adventurism or a search for resources, but once you’ve taken new land, you have to hold it. That requires resources and management, then that requires growth, so you need to expand further, then the expansion requires resources and management, etc. Staying in power and growing often demands the violent suppression of opposition, as well as forming alliances with unsavory people.

  The Catholic Church took over the structure and reach of the Roman Empire in the 4th century; some have called their reign evil… it’s certainly been a heavy hand. The British also claimed to be descendents of the Romans via a convenient myth, and in the way their Empire emulated Rome’s vast reach. The Pax Romana (Roman peace) and Pax Britannica of those vast empires were bought by sword and bloodshed, but they did open routes for trade, culture, and people to flow more freely. Evil, or just breaking eggs to make omelets?

  A. IN ACTION

  Oh, just read the history books and watch The History Channel.

  World War II and the Cold War both pitted Evil Empires intent upon world domination against other nations fighting for world freedom. Many of today’s conflicts are leftover Cold War proxy-wars, particularly in Africa and Afghanistan.

  It was President Ronald Regan who called the Soviets the Evil Empire and it was the U.S. that trained and armed the Taliban to fight them. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Yeah, maybe… until that enemy goes away and then your new friends may become your new enemies.

  B. IN MEDIA

  Will and Ariel Durant’s multivolume The Story of Civilization reads like an epic novel and will give you many story ideas. Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is also a vivid classic, often quoted in warning about America.

  Little Big Man, The Last of the Mohicans, and The Mission are about Europeans colonizing the so-called New World, though the Amerindians had been there tens of thousands of years and had empires to rival the Egyptians.

  The Star Wars movies pit the Evil Empire against the valiant rebels, with Darth Vader and the wicked Sith Lords determined to wipe out all opposition. They didn’t figure on Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Princess Leia.

  The BBC TV series The Jewel in the Crown examines darker sides of the British Empire in India during World War II. The HBO series Rome and the BBC series I, Claudius reveal bloody rottenness at the heart of the Roman Empire.

  The Lord of the Rings trilogy pits the good Fellowship of the Rings folk against the evil empire of dark Sauron and his deadly creatures.

  Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick have one guy (Vin Diesel) fighting the entire empire of half-dead Necromongers.

  C. IN YOUR CREATIONS

  Inner Drives Center of Motivation – Ajna, dropped: empires can’t begin without incredible intellect, courage, and strength. Once that focus drops to sheer power-mongering, greed, and sensual indulgence, the end is not far away.

  There’s a rich spectrum of plot and character examples from history. Select the little-known stories or people and expand on those unique perspectives.

  Show how some Nazis believed they were helping bring about the
evolution of humanity by culling the race of undesirables. No doubt some conquistadors thought it was better for native Americans to lose their lives but save their souls. How did those people deal with what they had to do to accomplish their “higher” goals: glee, anguish, guilt, indifference? What parallels can you show in modern radical Islam? Fundamentalist Christianity?

  Many stories already tell the ancient Briton’s side of the Roman conquest. So, let’s see more about the Amerindians conquered by Spanish conquistadors, or the people who remained in Babylon after the Mongols conquered it in 1215.

  If you found hidden books by the Incas or Aztecs, what might you learn about those powerful, rather bloody empires?

  Use the shifting-scope story device to show how a big Empire affects one little person; or vise versa.

  What if the Empire got reformed? Would utopia be so boring someone would just have to rebel?

  WAR! HUH, WHAT IS

  IT GOOD FOR?

  Though there can be great virtue and value in the Warrior Path, there’s also a really Dark Side to it.

  Groupthink is essential if you want to get a good war going. No individual in their right mind would take up arms and go into harm’s way with a good chance of killing and being killed unless there were a seemingly good reason for it. Granted some people are prone to violence, but they usually prefer to inflict it, not receive it. Going to war implies both.