Power Mapping God

I've been taking a course on Lived Experience Leadership through Yale University. So far, much of the material has been filled with terminology foreign to me: the language of institutions and corporations, mixed into business-speak. I feel like I'm in a whole other world: one not terraformed for me.

In my last session, we learned about power mapping. Here's a pretty basic template for it, yoinked from Wikipedia:



According to Power Mapping 101,

Power mapping is simply a way to identify who has power in the community, and to figure out what will move those individuals or institutions to do whatever it is you want them to do. Creating a power map will help you answer these important questions:

• Who are some key potential allies in your community—individuals and organizations who are likely to be on your side and who have the ability to influence others?
  
• Who might oppose your plan, and who is in the middle who could be brought over to your side?
  
• What are effective ways to communicate with your community?

Ok, that's not so bad. But I got squicked by some of the examples of contacts in the class I attended. They talked about finding connections with the target's children, family, and even hairdressers. As soon as those were mentioned, my brain went into full-on stubborn mule mode. Targeting people who have nothing to do with whatever policy needs changing feels all sorts of creepy to me. Like a cross between stalking and espionage. It makes me feel icky.

But my homework remained intact. I'm supposed to determine a target, map influence to that target, determine relational power lines, and target priority relationships.

That just makes me feel dirtier. I can't help but recall people who have inculcated relationships with me only so they could get their mitts on someone I'm close to. Like the time years ago when I applied for work at a bookstore, and the owner kept stringing me along for months because my husband was providing free computer help to him. He thought the only way he would get that help was to say he would hire me. I never did get the job. Or there's the time a close friend was using me as a nexus for hookups, and was systematically going through all my male friends. When this friend exhausted the supply, they simply stopped hanging out with me.

I would never want to do this to someone. It felt awful to have it be done to me. But my homework assignment still sits there, taunting me. Who can I possibly profile this way that won't make me feel like scum?

How about someone in a really high position of power? Maybe the Queen of England or some such? Even still, I would feel gross doing it. I mean, her family is already one super-rich dysfunctional clusterfuck, with all sorts of elitism, racism, colonialism, and eyebrow-raising ties to human traffickers. I don't want to get involved in that. And there are innocent parties, like the grandkids, who might be rich as Croesus on riches yoinked from Indigenous peoples and resource depletion, but they're still kids who maybe have a chance of growing up and becoming decent human beings. Princess Diana seemed pretty cool, and I'd hate to pester someone who was already up to her tits in paparazzi. And look what became of her? Naa. My conscience won't let me do it. I think maybe my conscience is turned all the way up to 11 on this because of being burned before, but it's still my conscience, even if it is super-sensitive.

So who can I power map without feeling like a creeper?

How about the old bearded capital G God? Yeah, I can do that.

So I decided to power map God, and I found one name cropping up over and over again: Satan.



Through power mapping, I've found the way to God is through the Prince of Darkness. He's everywhere. First of all, he's one of God's firstborn kids. He's a staff member, too, who is entrusted with the damned. He is also a business associate, I suppose he could be considered an advisor, even though God mostly ignores any of his suggestions. And he is God's favourite gambling buddy (witness the wager around Job). The Devil is God's favourite frenemy.

I seem to have independently come up with a form of gnosticism by using an activistic business model or something.

Frankly, I think the Devil gets a lot of bad press. I don't think he's as bad as a lot of Christians make him out to be, which, according to their logic, leaves me open to communiqués from him. I could also attempt to go through a direct route, and there are a lot of ways I could do that. Some of them involve blood sacrifice and some kinky shit with virgins, but that's not really my style. I think I'm more fond of the Satanic Temple's take on it. They're doing the Devil's work by fighting human rights abuses. I'm down with that. So maybe the best way I can reach God is by joining the Satanic Temple.

Q.E.D.?