Power

The core of what I’m trying to do with my life at the minute is democratise power. There’s a couple of immediate questions that need answering before I can start doing that though, which are all fairly important.

The first is what exactly power is. Truthfully I don’t know. Sometimes it’s really basic, like forcing somebody to do something they wouldn’t ordinarily do. Other times it’s more conversational, evident in the language we collectively use to describe outgroups or ingroups, even the formation of those groups to start with, on different scales — from people you do or don’t like at work or school or in your family, to governmental respect of the sovereign nature of other states. It’s our own submission to the authority of the police or intelligence services, our voluntarily joining groups with problematic histories, fighting in the street over civil rights or a kebab.

Power is everywhere and is drawn from everywhere, in how we talk to how we dress to how we listen to how we perceive others. It is how we talk, it is how we see the world, it is how we walk and dress and create relationships. That isn’t masked or obstructed by power, that is power.

If that’s true, though, it’s already democratised — if power is the concentrated effect of our mutual and individual actions, then we’re all already the producers of power, and its controllers and its master.

The problem is that this thesis doesn’t follow very well with how I’ve experienced the world, the things I’ve learned about political and financial and social institutions, the ways humans have behaved with each other throughout history, and the differences between humans in different systems of power.

The second question is what is democracy.

Democracy is a structure of power, wherein power is distributed evenly across a given population.

A structure of power is a formalised, codified arrangement of relationships between people, objects and institutions, again on many scales. This can be as grand as a bilateral parliament with strict codes of conduct, to the governing documents of a business, to a sign on a car park saying ‘Parking £1.50/hour’.

The third is why democracy is preferable to other structures of power.

There are lots of enlightenment rationales for adopting democracy — consent of the governed, prevention of tyranny, etc.

The one that has attracted me to democracy above all other structures of power is that power corrupts. It’s a maxim we’ve all heard but it is almost unfailingly accurate. We can count on a single hand the number of leaders in local, regional, national, international government and business unaffected by financial misappropriation or fraud, or by ageism or racism or sexism or nepotism.

The more power we vest in a single individual at the top, the greater the likelihood that they will eventually abuse that power in whatever form.

Power is also stupefying. The more force a person can use to make sure a given action happens the less reasoning and rationalisation has to take place on their end to justify their actions.

I think the proper response to that is to strip as much power as possible from single individuals and spread it across society.

Earlier I mentioned that the model of power I think is accurate doesn't necessarily align perfectly with human behaviour in the past. The model of power flowing between agents is at odds with autocratic structures. It could be seen as callous to describe the oppressed as perpetrators of their own oppression through a kind of dialectical consent. And it is.

Power is both a fluid and a solid, simultaneously ethereal and real. At certain points in history there have been melting-points of power, where its solidity is brought into question and its illegitimacy is unfurled. These points have sometimes come after great conflict and sometimes sprung from pressure from ordinary, powerless people. They are unpredictable and volatile, and do not always end how actors and spectators assume they will.

I quite like thinking of this as the water theory of power.

more here