Chijioke Ogwo Ezikpe

The Power and the Passion Chijioke Ogwo Ezikpe

BOOK SUMMARY Blending spirituality and humanness has always been a challenge. Monasteries were built andhermits created by the failure to see how spiritual excellence could possibly be realized amidst themundane aspects of human subsistence. Whatever the name of the religion or cause - whether Christianity or Communism, Buddhism or Blogism - humans remain inescapably laced together by a resilient thread that resiststhe peculiar grind of culture, the suffusing halo of religion, the mind-blowing rhetoric of revolutionaries, and the corrosive drag of time. Hitching onto Judo-Christian history, The Power and the Passion examines certain aspects of corporate humanness that were manifest in King David and King Solomon, and how these aspectshave continued to play out in the lives, loves and experiences of prominent and would-be prominentpersons in contemporary human society. Surely, humanity's fickleness has scarcely been remedied by civilization just ashumanity's deviousness has hardly been healed by religion. But we have remained incurable optimists. Though successive episodes of ingenuity andinventiveness have failed to deliver the upward cultural evolution that promised to breed evil and vice out of people, humans have remained hopeful of a future Nirvana. The Power and the Passion locates us as people - even as individuals - in our ceaseless marchtowards nobility and perfection and in our oft-realized slow progress in achieving these virtues. Tearing through the thin veneers we often use as camouflage, the book shows us up for what weare: frail creatures that remain slaves to base passions and ambitions, and waning creatures thatscream our invincibility but soon yield to transience and fated inevitability. It identifies thepoliticians ready to sacrifice their souls to climb the dizzying heights of power; statesmen that weavecurious nets of intrigue in their behind-the-scene maneuvering; fair faces that must bargain with andoften pawn their gender; astute men and women that have made the world more hospitable; and theyoung people molded - or made moldy - by their parents' successes. The book identifies people who at the crest of self-actualization are forced to look down to see the wreckage they made of theirfamilies, communities and environment. YetThe Power and the Passion emboldens us to confirm our humanness by persisting in the upward climb rather than yielding to an effortless slide. The book has seven chapters.