Power to command, if not through the better argument (persuasive power), is a forced force, the ability to take away the dangling carrot or to do harm to the subject of that power (the stick). The power of a wife is often to keep the flames of passion doused until criteria has been met sufficiently, the power of the boss is to threaten the withdrawal of future exchange of bill-paying tokens for labour offered, the power of the church is the manipulation of inherent existential fear concerning future nothingness.
Power is everywhere, and it is fascinating… It’s a sometimes hidden, sometimes overt, a force that drives our actions and inactions, it paralyses both the intellect and the act. I am brave in words on a page, yet I often lack the courage of those words in person because I have bills to pay too, so I need those tokens, and that position far too often makes me a subject of someone else’s power. Persuasive power is an unforced force, and for this reason it works better than forced force. One wins over the subject, the other merely makes them adhere regardless of their personal judgement. We could assume that when forced force is removed then that subject would return to their previous position, whereas if they are won over, convinced, onboard psychologically, we might assume they would continue to adhere to the idea in the absence of the person who suggested it.
I was in the company of a powerful person a while back, powerful in the ownership of resources sense rather than powerful through intellect or in physicality. This person quoted Sun Tzu rather badly, contending that the art of war states that the leader in war must always hold tight control of their generals. Tzu does not say this, he suggests that a good leader will have generals who will act with what we might call thematic autonomy, knowing what their leader would wish in his absence. These are two differing directives, not at all dissimilar in what they seek as a goal, that the direction of the leader be ultimately followed. The former speaks of close micromanagement, the latter speaks to unified thoughts and a harmony of clear purpose which then needs no further or continuous management.
They had thought it out wrong, as they often did with other quotes, reinterpreting canon and edict to suit their own justification of their own existent power. As if to reach into the past seeking a wisdom that justifies their approach and validity, and when finding none then attempting to change what is already known and well understood. The reason this seems to work, to them at least, is twofold: most people have not read what they are quoting because of its obscurity and often its context (which always matters), and people who require something from the powerful rarely correct them when they misquote. I have seen this many times and I am not alone in seeing it, there’s likely a name for such power based linguistic manipulations. Paul Grice must have spotted it also, hence his maxims.
The power of wisdom needs no ally in the power of the political, military, or financial worlds, it is reason enough to carry and unify people behind a movement, cause, or common goal, to be actually and provably correct.
“A leader leads by example, not by force.”
I had an argument another while back with a person who was relaying the wishes of a person more powerful than they, where they stated, in answer to my dismayed response at their request, “they pay the bills”. This is the answer that immediately admits defeat and refuses to speak truth to those that have either been misled, or have misled themselves. The recognition of power, if that power is not based on a reasonable amount of rationale, without offering any argument if you have a good one, is mental weakness.
It’s cap doffing, forelock tugging, and worst of all it has no possibility of progress. I think this tactic merely encourages more ridiculousness to follow. It’s the sort of ‘going along’ sycophancy that led to the financial crisis of 2008 according to John Lanchester, the author of Whoops, and the great losses of life in the world wars according to Neil Faulkner. It’s the faith in persons because of their unearned, non rational, unsupportable, position within a structure that consistently rewards, encourages, and perpetuates, existing power networks.
Thomas Piketty, a French economic theorist, suggests in his 2013 book Capital in the Twenty-first Century, that a very high percentage of wealth is in fact inherited and not the product of intellectual innovation, risk taking, or hard work; what we would state as “money goes to money” in Northern Ireland. If wealth is power, and in pseudo-democracies like the UK and the US, where it is no coincidence that politics is dominated by millionaires that have had doors opened for them by their wealthy powerful predecessors, wealth is very demonstrably linked with power, and the wealthy can transcend the decisions they make for others, in a social sense at least (they do not have to live them), then all potential for forward motion may be lost in a spiral of endless failure repetition (and bad quotes). I believe personally that that is exactly why the world seems now to be descending into revolution and riot; that this lot are worse than the last lot, and the last lot were worse than lot that came before them.
James O’Brien often expresses the view that the powerful have a delusional reflection of their own ability to make good decisions, he is bemused by the directions they so often take. I think he should look at the Dunning-Kruger model for his answer. His is an almost “what did they think was going to happen?” type of questioning, as if he sees that even the least capable of persons would have known better. In Plato’s writing we see Socrates almost proving that so mooted ‘experts’ had not the faintest idea of how to contextualise the purpose of their role, nor the justification of it, or express why it is them holding the power of it in preference to others. I’ll grant that his questioning drilled far in, and anyone might have been lost to answer “what is it to be X?”, but we base our faith in expertise on justifications, not on existing power, or do we?
Why do we think then that a person who inherited power, or was favoured to it, might be wise or a real leader, and is that perspective not more hopeful than it is rational? Bonaparte came to prominence post revolution because he had the ability to make the better argument, and if he had ultimately succeeded in his conquering, we as a species may have benefited greatly from some of the more progressive ideas he held on education and science. Unfortunately he was beaten by established conservative power and we’ll never now know how much earlier we may have got to the moon or invented the light bulb. That is a speculation, and it’s narrow, Bonaparte of course had tyranny in him like any other dictator, but I do wonder if he had a lot of benevolence also. Certainly worth looking at his acts and our propaganda in isolation to further your thoughts on the man.
When folks follow because they have faith in the wisdom of another, they are unlikely to strategize at a tangent to the directive of that other. Conversely, if folks perceive their leader as likely misguided, by their confidence (the Dunning-Kruger), into thinking well beyond their capabilities, and remember our capabilities are based on experience and wisdom not on our financial position (rich people are not wiser, they are richer), they are then most likely to modify directives to suit situations, i.e. they will act with autonomy and uncommon purpose. We cannot fail to recognise that all innovation has arisen from dissent, not conformity.
This may be slight, it may be a great deal more, what we can definitely state is that will be a departure from what has been directed primarily. ‘Fragging’ is the term used when soldiers go out into the tundra with an overzealous nitwit of an officer, and then return without him. In his place may then stand a story of heroism during an ambush where he happened to be the only casualty. They ‘Fragged’ him, but it cannot be proven, so a medal is issued and all have to then live with their decision. It may have been an easy one, reasoning that his inability was likely to cost their lives; they might feel no pangs of guilt. Of course this can only be done in conflict in this form because it’s not so easy to go to lunch with your supervisor and return alone with them never to be seen again. There may be questions to answer.
This has been a long lead in to what I had primarily intended to write about, we’ll get to that now…
I witnessed a person I know becoming emotional about the pressure a power from above had been putting them under, unjustifiably I need to say. The reason why what has happened, what they are now being castigated for, was demonstrably not their fault, although they were bearing it and have been made to bear it by the aforementioned power, is that they were powerless to affect the changes they likely would have enacted that would have prevented the problem that had manifested. Stated simply, there is no fault when there is no autonomy, how could there be? Everything that results from a proscribed set of unalterable directives is the fault of the persons that issued those directives, and cannot be assigned in blame or shame to the actor that carries the orders out. It is easy to state in moral terms, as if in a classroom “I was only following orders” as being no defence, but what if the result of not following orders would be too much to reasonably bear?
The actor may be in uniform during a war, the actor may need their work wages to pay their bills, the actor may be too old to do something else instead of this. There are many reasons to think that the previous statement (only following orders) is perfectly valid given the circumstances. Sartre points this out when criticising Mill and Kant’s opposing moral positions, embodied reasoning, taking into consideration a wider picture of circumstances and the forces within them. I talked in a previous post about an important element to consider when deciding the level of faith to have in powerful people, word-soup served as a tactic. To speak so as not to be understood (ambiguity) is to enable the playing of a linguistic blame game after the fact if that is what is desired.
The Texas Sharp Shooter Fallacy is where the target is painted on after the event so as to decide if the primarily unclear instructions toward the goal has, or has not, been followed. The reason for this is tactic, and it is one, is to then assign self regarding plaudits, or externalise blame in a dynamic fashion, pursuing whichever strategy suits the needs of the issuer of the instructions. In simple terms, flatter power when things go right, punish a subordinate as a scapegoat when they go wrong, always make sure you are always the reason of success and never be to blame for failure.
What I witnessed played out was exactly this.
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