Power

Power
Thoughts and questions on power and our individual ability to shape what happens in our world.

David Amerland asks provoking questions in this week's Sunday Read.

Two questions arise here: First, can we … do we have any more power than the medieval serfs toiling in the fields of their landed, moneyed overlords? Second, can we escape the trap of simply replacing one discredited system with another? Incidentally, the seminal book, Animal Farm (https://goo.gl/U8SD3e) asks that very question in its closing statement: http://goo.gl/LfWuxb while that other George Orwell book, 1984 (https://goo.gl/2dLRd) shows us that resisting absolute power is futile.

Worth the read and the time to follow links.

#power
#individualresponsibility



Originally shared by David Amerland

Systems…

One definition of power is “…the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events.” This is important because at an individual level there has always been a persistent and pervasive feeling of powerlessness, accompanied by an equally pervasive and persistent feeling of being controlled. Left alone, cut off from a real network of contacts and friends, it is easy to imagine that, somehow, the great machinery of the world, the system that is comprised of all the component systems that run things, is directed by person or persons unknown whose reach is as long as it is invisible and whose influence is so great as to make all resistance futile.

Lord Acton (https://goo.gl/sdGcJl), who studied history gave us: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." Laboratory tests of his insight, under specific conditions and with specific parameters (http://goo.gl/rPuw1z) verified that even honesty is not a shield to corruption.

Frank Herbert, author of Dune and a particularly sharp observer of human nature, somewhat modified his take on this by stating: “Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.”

Both Dalton and Herbert may have had a point. Their observations and the experiments which back them, take place within the petri dish world of scientific observations bounded by specific parameters and the operative word within those experiments and our understanding of power lies in the word “absolute”. The concern is not new. Plato, in The Republic (https://goo.gl/Y99moC) sought to understand the character of the “just man” (http://goo.gl/JBt7). Just like Machiavelli (https://goo.gl/C4QTxA) who would go on to pen The Prince (https://goo.gl/dA6IGL), a treatise on the justification of the means through which the exercise of power works to benefit itself (http://goo.gl/rNGN0x), Plato’s attempt sought to somehow reconcile “goodness” with “power” and sought to provide some reassurance that power can be exercised without ultimately destroying the moral basis upon which it is wielded.

The French post-modernist, Michel Foucault, suggested that “power is everywhere” (http://goo.gl/5dXZ7R) and in his treatise The Subject and Power (http://goo.gl/CZXilb) he analyzed how power can be used to “objectivize subjects”. In terms of abuse of power this is an important insight. Just as power flows through societal structures and institutions which acquire and then exude “authority” so does its broad wielding tend towards a dissociation of the subject (i.e. the person) from the object (the company, the battalion, the city, the country, the globe …). This psychopathic tendency towards switching empathy off (http://goo.gl/6WtOcs) is essential towards the making of the kind of decisions we often associate with the abuse of power.

So. Where are we now? Has anything changed or are we still caught up in Machiavelli’s world where a secretive, powerful few (http://goo.gl/UDgYt) pull the strings to which we dance our daily lives? Within it lie the unspoken questions of whether our world is neo-medieval (https://goo.gl/KKIW1n) or post-modern (https://goo.gl/ZS3gtU). Are we indeed, doomed to recreate the societal constructs of the past driven by the natural order of things determined by who wields power or can we truly re-imagine the world we want to be part of? (http://goo.gl/cedtuR).

These are questions that are more than of academic interest in our time (https://goo.gl/wJp0Cl). In The Social Media Mind (https://goo.gl/WbZKj0) I wrote that “social media is the empowerment of the individual at the expense of the system”. There are many subtexts in that sentence, not least the suggestion that in the societal structures we create, power is a zero sum game (https://goo.gl/zwV4d3) where its acquisition and exercise by one person or group somehow takes it away from another person or group.
That would imply that power is finite. That its acquisition and use is measurable and exhaustible. That no one person or individual can amass infinite power or hope to hold onto it forever. Certainly social media and our connectivity has diluted the effects and effectiveness of traditional power: http://goo.gl/d1Kdyj. Foucault made much of the fusion of knowledge with power and the web has given us all unprecedented access to knowledge (http://goo.gl/cQqk9r). We have in our hands tools that ten years ago did not exist and we are not shy of using them (http://goo.gl/CaXvmU). But having a lasting impact and fostering lasting change requires the creation of societal structures much like those we rail against and the accumulation of authority and, yes, power in institutional instruments much like the ones we want to topple.

Two questions arise here: First, can we … do we have any more power than the medieval serfs toiling in the fields of their landed, moneyed overlords? Second, can we escape the trap of simply replacing one discredited system with another? Incidentally, the seminal book, Animal Farm (https://goo.gl/U8SD3e) asks that very question in its closing statement: http://goo.gl/LfWuxb while that other George Orwell book, 1984 (https://goo.gl/2dLRd) shows us that resisting absolute power is futile.

The answers we give to these questions depend upon our own appreciation of where we stand. Is this Animal Farm or Manor Farm? Are we in 1984 or in a post-modernist future where the power we wield is defined by our capability to learn things and do something about it?

Sometimes it seems that we are engaged in an asymmetrical struggle where we share tips on how to meditate and be positive (http://goo.gl/R50YAH) while others are busy accumulating power. Yet money is not power (http://goo.gl/pakwO6), so what is?

Power is, indeed, what we started off with: “…the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events.” Within this framework we each have power over each other. The information we share, the opinions we voice and the relationships we create become the accepted channels through which power flows and the acceptable levels to which it can be exercised. (I, for example, would never be influenced by what you think if you block me so I can never see your content).

Power is the permission settings in our systems. For the first time in history, those permission settings that in the past were set by “Authority” are now set up by what we are prepared to accept. This is a new responsibility. A new way of working. We are not yet quite ready, en masse to accept the burden of completely running our world. That leaves us in an interesting place. Being capable to see, research, understand and make ourselves heard more than ever before, we are not yet sure how to organize or what to really do in order to make a difference.

This is something we need to work out. Together. Openly communicating our fears and insecurities, our hopes and ambitions. Building trust where there was no trust before and building bridges that unite us despite the differences that divide us. Not an easy thing to do. But anything else will see us go back to our serfdom without losing the ability to farm digital trees of train Pokemon. And that would be a tragedy. And just so we don’t end on a downer here’s John Lennon’s ode to power (and the people): https://goo.gl/iZYICK.

I hope you exercised the power you have and demanded that the systems around you provide rivers of coffee, mountains of chocolate ice-cream, piles of donuts and croissants and plenty of chocolate cake. Have an awesome Sunday, wherever you are.