PAGE IN PROGRESS What you see here is a page of my hypertext book POWER of meanings // MEANINGS of power. Initially empty, this page will slowly be filled with thoughts, notes, and quotes. One day, I will use them to write a coherent entry, similar to these completed pages. Thank you for your interest and patience!
Luxury trap, Harari Karl Marx
having doing being 1) Having: There is only one apple on the table. If we both want it, but I get it, I have the power in this scenario. 2) Doing: If I want to do A and you want to do B, by making sure that we do B you assert your power in this situation. 3) Being: In each little corner of the universe, things can exist only in one specific way (imagining other ways requires bringing in the concept of multiple universes). If I shape the way things are, even if this seems as mundane as choosing to put a table in one room of my house as opposed to another room, I exercise my power.
example: serge gainsbourg song: people put aside their forks when they heard the song: example if power as influence via limited resource, and if you never heard that song before you may now be prompted to open Google and read more out it. Listen to it. Another example of limited resources, and if a song plays in your head, it’s another kind of influence, another limited resource
from the blog post by the author of We Have Never Been Woke (title of Substack post: “book review: the road to Wigam Pier): ” In order to get over the first obstacle, Orwell provides a “thick” ethnographic description of workers and their lives. He stays at the kinds of hotels single coal miners sleep in; he treks through the mines (an extremely arduous journey each way), observes them at work, and reports on the risks they face. He describes workers’ living conditions, working conditions and lifestyles in great detail. He also stays at the homes of laborers who have families. He analyzes their income relative to expenditures. He surveys the size and conditions of their houses. He inquires about their physical health and psychological well-being.In the process, he connects the labors and suffering of the workers to the lifestyles and comforts of the readers. He explicitly draws lines, repeatedly, to help readers understand how the conditions they take for granted are predicated on the exploitation of the working class. They could not enjoy their current standard of living without these “others” experiencing their standards of living. The abundant electricity they rely on isn’t (just) a miracle of industry, science or technology. It’s a product of hard labor – “ghost work” -- that provides the means for all the other modern marvels that white-collar professionals take for granted. And this energy remained affordable for city dwelling professionals because the working class was absorbing the costs. As Barbara Ehrenreich would later emphasize: “When someone works for less pay than she can live on— when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently— then she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health and her life. The ‘working poor,’ as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to every one else. As Gail, one of my restaurant coworkers put it, ‘you give and you give.’”