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!
We know so much about enhancing relationships, with children (Good Inside) with partners (Gotham) but I suspect that many people who will read those books and say, yes, I am willing to do that to be connected to my kids, to my partner, - will need to be persuaded to use these techniques to connect with people they disagree with ideologically.
no strategies (like nonviolent communication, brave spaces ) won’t work if we don’t know why we are really going this, if we are just going through the motions. You cannot fake connection, you cannot fake empathy, you cannot fake love. Either those things are underneath or not, and if they are not, no strategy will work. See Gotham’s book on principles of marriage.
as technology is evolving, humanity is developing new capabilities, it’s important to understand our limitations (humility, it’s all of us, not just some of us)
I believe that society's problems cannot be solved just by fighting those who we see as "bad guys". Society's problems exist not because bad guys do bad stuff, but because people are people. Solving society's problems is impossible without understanding what it means to be human, which requires some (self)awareness and (self)empathy. This is what I believe, and although there is an element of faith in that, I can also back my opinion up with an array of studies, practices. (For example, studies that show complexities of human behavior and cognition). I can refer to opinions to such famous proponents of compassion as Martin Luther King Jr. who talked about the importance of nonviolence and compassion toward people you disagree with even at the end of his life, when his opinions about the need for resistance became more radical.
I can argue that practicing radical loving-kindness meditation can help us better fight against injustices and inequalities. But how can I get more people to actually take this path? Before someone decides to send loving vibes to a person whose actions they deeply dislike, they need to believe that this effort makes sense.
To explain why it makes sense, I started developing my theory of micro- and macropower that is part of my guiding vision is to help people combine awareness about social problems with collaboration across divides through empathy.
not making the same mistakes that we notice in other people
For oppressed not to become oppressors
To get out of the Groundhog Day of mistakes made by people (with each generation people ideally should learn more and not make as mistakes )
Why trying to complicate our understanding of power can see like a dangerous activity [create a separate page]
The concern about seeing the complexity of power: people whose actions hurt others can use it to manipulate, they can say, I did this this but it was not my fault, I did it because of all the things outside of my control. And I might do it again, can’t do anything about it! So they can get away with bad behavior (I am psycho song with Minecraft)
Why it is important to explore power: we think that mistakes are done by bad people, and we are not bad people , so we run the risk of not noticing/denying our mistakes
But I suspect that reminding ourselves that "those in power" do not have absolute power will keep being an unpopular thing to do. As a part of my claim that power always coexists with powerlessness, this idea implies that all of us have certain power over the way thing are, even if we are to a great extent powerless.
Combining resistance with empathy makes resistance more effective and its results more sustainable.
Changing the frame of how we see social problems. If we think that the reason problems exist is bad guys vs. good guys, we will see this binary everywhere. However, if we want to go beyond this binary, if we want to look f0r complexity, we will see this complexity.
It is not uncommon (although not a rule, and should not be seen as such) for somebody who was oppressed to then oppress somebody else [write why I think we can talk about opressin or being opressed, but not about opressors/oppressed - generalization, essentialization, for the same reason we say now enslaved peole instead of slaves] for example protestsnts for horribly oppressed in Europe (e.g., see the page on Louis XIV), then they came to the US and started doing things that is considered opression; see the whole history of Chritianity, with first christians being a marganizalized sect, martyrs]
It is important to know history, to know what mistake people made and how they hurt each other. But if we don't understand complexities of power, we will see people who caused damage as "bad guys", and because we usually see ourselves as "good guys", we won't be able to imagine how we can cause a similar harm. This means that we won't learn from history as we will not be able to anticipate our own mistakes. [provide examples of how people can now learn better about past mistakes, for example thanks to conflict archaeology, see chapter 35 of the History of Archaeology.]
Complicating our understanding of justice. Justice for the victims, but what about the fact that their perpetrators were not 100% free when they created the damage that they did?
It helps us to avoid situations when solutions become new problems. Monarchy was not ideal (serious inequalities). The ideology of monarchy was cohesive for the state, it was replaced after revolutions (e.g., French Revolution) by the idea of nation, which lead to nationalism (see Chapter 29 in History of Archeology). First kind of nationalism, civic nationalism "was based on the ideas of the sovereignty of the nation, the equality of citizens in the eyes of the law, and the idea of the Common Good, Veritas (Truth), and Progress" (another problem/solution - when progressivism disregards the difficulties of change for some people, which makes a dialogue impossible, see polarization in USA). But... "The liberal ideas that had been the basis of civic nationalism did not disappear—including ideas of citizenship, equal rights and duties for all citizens, universal education, and the belief in freedom and progress. Rather, their importance was minimized in comparison to others, such as history, territory, nation, language, culture, ethnicity, and/or race. "
example of a psychopath: It's not about "forgiving" a psychopath or "accepting" a psychopath. Obviously, a psychopath hurting other should be stopped. But it is enough just to stop him/her and be content with a result. It's about understanding that psychopath is not a "monster" (though what he/she does can certainly appear monstrous to us) but a person who is in many ways similar to an average person but a person whose brain also differs from an average person's brain in an important way. A psychopath did not choose to be a psychopath, it is a kind of disability. If we understand this, we as society can find ways to detect psychopathy and deal with it. Understanding how a human being's mind works helps us understand how a psychopath's mind works and vice versa.
Why study power: not to confuse dealing with symptoms with dealing with the problem itself. We see bad things happening in society, we stop them and punish those who did that (ideally, in our mind) and we think that the problem is solved . It is not solved. It will keep happening. And we might be even doing things we find reprehensible in others without noticing that.
(positive, long-lasting) change (that does not bring new problems) does not happen through pressure, force, blame, shame... it only happens through compassion (see Martin Luther King, Gandhi) blame, shame, force appear to be effective strategies in the short term. But, see what Becky Kennedy says in Good Inside: forcing kids to change behaviors seem to be an efficient strategy (and these is data on that) but this does not create positive change, it often creates more problems than it solves. but see MLK’s radicalization later in life and emphasizing that the use of force can be an expression of anger and despair for those who are consistently not heard, but still he did not condone violence and advocated for solutions through nonviolence and compassion