Part One: Sharing Power and Abusing Power

Reading:

Penta, L. J. (1996). Hannah Arendt: On Power. The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 10(3), 210–229. 

Key Dilemma of Part One:

How do we reconcile the forces of “power-over” with the forces of “power-with,” when people in advanced capitalist countries are predominately motivated to advance their “power-over,” their wealth, status, and power? Are power, wealth, and status morally neutral, neither good nor evil– only becoming good or evil by how they are used?

Alternatively, are power, wealth, and status intrinsically evil because they are the basis of inequality?

Important Qualification: There is a continuum of positions between the two polarities, listed above. Therefore, the dilemma between the two polarities is not “either, or,” but rather where do we find a morally defensible position, given the context of our specific lives?

Review of List of Navigation Strategies for Seemingly Intractable Conflicts, Differences, and Dilemmas:

My Suggestions about Navigating this Dilemma:

Personally, I lean toward the view that power, wealth, and status are intrinsically evil because I believe that the vast inequality and brutality within the human race (and towards our environment) can be at least partly attributable to these attitudes and behaviors. Simply, extreme differences of power, wealth, and status undermine morality itself—a kind of “white hole,” just as the proliferation of white lies or small deceptions eventually transform trusting relationships into trustless, crazymaking, gaslighting.

On the other hand, I can understand the cultural pressure, and the number of examples that point toward the supposed neutrality of power, wealth, and status. Chief amongst these examples are where those with more power, wealth, and status have been morally committed and accomplished. For me, the problem of power, wealth, and status is generated by the isolation of those with more from those with less. For example, there is no homeless problem in wealthy communities because they are systematically excluded by the police.

Our thinking about the role of power, wealth, and status in our daily lives and in the broader culture will necessitate a recounting of a diverse set of people, experiences, and circumstances, without overly relying on abstract theories of morality and human behavior.

We need to consider opening a conversation with: “I’m genuinely interested in your viewpoint on the role of power, wealth, and status in our wider culture; what do you think about it?” When we begin our conversation about this dilemma by asking what the other person thinks about the issue. We might ask, “Would you like to spend some time thinking together about the role of power, wealth, and status in our world?” We might begin our conversation about the experiences that inform their position on the issue of power, wealth, and status may explain the degree of investment that they have in their position. Powerful experiences lead to strong opinions!

From an existential viewpoint, people’s experiences with the powerful, wealthy, and those with a lot of status determine their views on this dilemma. Generally, when we were children, our parents or guardians had significantly more power, wealth, and status. They controlled our behaviors; they bought us stuff that we could not buy ourselves, and as parental figures, they occupied a higher status. Similarly, our teachers, our doctors and dentists, and the police also had more power and status than us. What were those experiences like?

If those experiences were generally positive, then we are likely to believe that power, wealth, and status is generally positive. If we had mixed experiences, we might find that power, wealth, and status is neutral and becomes positive or negative depending on how it is used. If our experiences were negative growing up, we might think that power, wealth, and status is generally negative. From this conclusion, we might do two opposing things. One, we might believe that they are bad—even evil—and dedicate our lives to minimizing them. Or two, we might decide to become powerful, wealthy, and occupy high status, so that we could lord it over others, as they have lorded it over us.

If we are curious about other people’s experiences that are different from our own, we open up a space for navigating those differences.

In the case of our thinking about the proper role for power, wealth, and status in contemporary societies, our view from judgment suggests a certain position on the issue, and our view from compassion suggests a different position. Since I am critical of the how power, wealth, and status leads to social, economic, and environmental injustice, I need you use my view from compassion to see this issue through their values and experiences.

As we think about the examples of evil, and their relationship to power, wealth, and status, do we find that some unforgivable events happened to us, our family, and friends? Does this color how we think about this issue. On the other hand, we might find that we have forgiven these events too easily. Would movement toward more forgiveness or more unforgiveness change how we think of this dilemma about evil?

In the dilemma at hand, both extremes may have broader moral frameworks, as follows.

Leftist, Indigenous, utopian, and communitarian cultures are more likely to be critical of extremes of power, wealth and status, and point to overarching moral principles about equality, social and environmental justice, to support their views.

More conservative cultures will point out how power, wealth, and status drove civilization to become global, helping us overcome more primitive epochs. They will point to the traditional values of hard work, talent, and success are moral drivers for the advancement of civilization.

Is there a way to have equality, social and environmental justice, as well as the advancement of civilization concurrently? Answering this question could be the goal of conversations about the role of power, wealth, and status.

I suggest that we might consider ourselves to have a certain measure of identity fluidity or hybridization, while still having a strong sense of in-context morality. In other words, how can we find the morality within this specific issue, in this specific circumstance, with these specific people? This sense of the morality arising-in-the-moment stands in contract to forcing the moment to conform to a preconceived, narrow moral code or principle. Ultimately, the ethical aspiration that I suggest for conflict and collaboration facilitators requires moral discovery, rather than moral imposition.

The morality of power, wealth, and status may require us to think of a wide variety of circumstances, where they play quite different moral roles, and for us to accept that the morality of power, wealth, and status may be quite different is different circumstances.

Navigating the Space Created by the Dilemma:

When people consider this dilemma, they are often drawn to examples and experiences that support the following positions:

• Power, wealth, and status are intrinsically good.
• Power, wealth, and status are intrinsically neutral.
• Power, wealth, and status are intrinsically evil.

Hierarchical power, money, and status are simply different kinds of power. It has been argued that power is neutral, and therefore power is good if it is used for good purposes and evil if it is used for evil purposes

An example of using power for good is when as physicians use their power to perform surgery on unconscious people to save their lives; or when bystanders use their power to step in to stop a bully from harassing someone.

On the other hand, power is evil when it is used to disempower others, when those who are disempowered have done nothing to justify having power taken away from them. We take power away from the criminally insane to protect others because we have good reasons to believe that the criminally insane are a treat to the public. Creating public institutions and economic policies that disempower people, keep them unemployed and homeless, when they have done nothing to deserve such fates is evil.

Our society is structured so that a small percentage of people have massive power through their wealth, status, and structural power. With this power, they can use their wealth and status to greatly benefit others, which is certainly good. Unfortunately, only a minority of the powerful contribute to sustainable social and global structural improvements. Most of them use their wealth, power, and status to enrich themselves and their families in a never-ending competition to be the most powerful possible.

The bottom line is that capitalism is about the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a elite, who maintain an economy that serves their needs, not the larger public needs. Therefore, we can say that capitalism is evil because it uses power, wealth, and status for the interests of a few against the interests of the many.

Questions:

1. Do socialist bureaucracies transform capitalism into something better?

Since capitalism is driven by the self-interested incentive for more power, wealth, and status, how is a socialist bureaucracy any improvement? “It has become commonplace to observe that corporations behave like psychopaths.” (Rich, Nathaniel, NYT Magazine, April 9, 2019) We depend on large corporations because they are the engine of the economy, however, under socialism, they are more thoroughly regulated. Without stricter regulations, capitalist governments generally protect multinational corporations, so that they can flourish and expand their reach to exploit workers and resources, locally and globally. Socialist governments keep the immoral impulses of corporations in check, even taking over ownership of certain vital industries, so that ordinary people, vital resources, and less powerful countries, are not oppressed and exploited by this mammoth corporations. So, yes, it can be argued that socialism can, and does in many countries, transform capitalism into something better because they can put a leach on the psychopathic tendencies of corporations to pursue limitless power, wealth, and status.

2. Aren’t socialist bureaucracies as oppressive as large corporations?

Oppression occurs when any kind of bureaucracy, private or public, has a structure, where each person in the hierarchy is generally accountable upward towards those with more power, wealth, and status. Oppression will be overcome only when accountability becomes three directional: upward, downward, and laterally.

It seems obvious that individuals seek power, status, and wealth for their personal security and freedom. To a certain degree, individuals in Western, developed countries need to collaborate with family, friends, and colleagues to be successful in maintaining and achieving power, status, and wealth. However, family, social, and workmate bonds can weaken and disintegrate, potentially leaving the individual alone to rebuild a network of families, friends, and colleagues. Though 90% of people in Western cultures marry by age 50, the divorce rate of between 40-50% in the U.S. Consequently, through the forces of social and geographical mobility, many individuals are recreating their romantic, social, and economic connections periodically, leaving individuals to recreate their strategies for success. (American Psychological Association https://www.apa.org/topics/divorce/ retrieved April 2, 2019)

Within this process of individuals seeking power, status, and wealth, some are helped by inheriting power, status, and wealth, while others are impoverished or disadvantaged who find their quest for power, status, and wealth obstructed by their lack of privilege, their lack of advantages. Given this dynamic, the wealth gap, status gap, and power gap get larger and larger, with more extremes of wealth at the top, and more casualties, homelessness, and crime at the bottom end.

Given our culture-wide belief that personal money, status, and power is the only way to have security and freedom, how will the powerful ever feel secure and free enough to contribute to the security and freedom of people at the bottom of the wealth gap? Given the reality of old age, infirmity, and death, when will the rich ever feel secure enough to help close the wealth gap? Given the luxuries available to the rich, how will they ever feel satiated enough to share with the masses of poor?

In The Holy Bible, 1 Timothy 6:10, it is written “For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” Is this still true today when capitalist societies are so thoroughly saturated with the necessity of more and more money? Isn’t it understandable that the wealthy and powerful love their power because it makes them secure, happy, and free? Are today’s wealthy “piercing themselves through with many sorrows?” Why would they want to let go of security, happiness, and freedom? In biblical times, people had security from family, workmates, and community, where wealth was not absolutely necessary for the needs of the day. Now, our daily lives thoroughly revolve around money.

True, there are some wealthy people who help the poor, but it is never enough to close the wealth gap and power gap. When President Trump announced a tax cut for 2019 that included a lower limit on tax-deductible, charitable giving, nonprofit organizations, that depend on charitable giving, immediately sounded an alarm because of their past experience that the wealthy will lower their giving if they cannot get tax deductions. Simply, for most wealthy people, charity benefits them at tax time, when it doesn’t they don’t give.

Where will the rising gap of power, status, and wealth lead us? At some point, entire economies collapse, as in the U.S. Great Depression, and the more recent Great Recession. The economic collapse that is happening currently in Venezuela has generated runaway inflation, reducing the value of money to nothing. Consequently, Venezuelans are in a deep humanitarian crisis. When the Argentinian economy collapsed from 1998-2002, people ate out of each other’s garbage cans. (Sharif Abdullah) Will such a crisis hit the U.S. when the wealth gap becomes intolerable?

Even though there are many examples of sharing power in the world, there still seems to be a strong tendency in capitalist and industrialized countries to generate hierarchies of wealth and power. Democracies depend on sharing power, and when this becomes more difficult, then they become failing democracies. “The Economist Intelligence Unit produces an annual review ranking countries on their adherence to 60 distinct democratic values, including electoral processes and press freedom. The US score of 7.98 out of 10 [in 2017], dropping into the flawed democracy category for the first time.” (Independent, February 5, 2018, retrieved April 3, 2019 at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/america-democratic-us-president-report-the-economist-a8195121.htnk?amp)

3. So, the dilemma is that democracies require shared power, but capitalist societies undermine democracies because of wealth, power, and status gaps. How can this dilemma be addressed?

Quote: Interview with Nile Rodgers, musician and cofounder of The Chic (famous for the song, “We Are Family”), in Rolling Stone magazine, October, 2018

4. What are the best and worst parts of success?

“The worst part of success is the way it’s changed the people in my life dealing with me. The relationships have deteriorated. I want to have the same kind of fun like we had when I was really poor, because that fun was organic and wonderful and based on us being friends. [Now], no one’s ever paid me back. I’ve given out millions, A few months ago, I said to one of my cousins, whom I adore, “I just don’t want this relationship anymore. That’s the only time I ever hear from you.” The best part is you’ve created something that people will remember. Well after I’m gone, “We Are Family: will be like “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.”

Quote: Interview with Jane Fonda, actress and activist, in the New York Times, September 23, 2018:

5. What’s the focus of your activism today?

“Grassroots organizing. The organizations that are going door to door and helping people understand that the white working class is not the enemy of people of color, and vice versa. That we have to stand together against a common enemy, which is people who only care about money and power and don’t give a hoot about average Americans.”

Further Questions:

1. How should conflict workers understand power?

To start, power is usefully understood as pure force. Having power is the same as having money or status. Individuals or institutions that have power through money or status have the capacity to force their will on others. This is dramatically illustrated by the revelations of the #MeToo movement. There is no intrinsic morality in power, money, or status. Power is amoral. People who use their power to be generous and help others are acting morally. People who use their power to dominate and control others are acting immorally.

Hannah Arendt, a foundational feminist, claimed that individuals or institutions that have dominating power over others do not even have genuine power. She said that such power-over-others is really just oppression, and it is used to convince the public that the powerful deserve their power and the powerless deserve to be powerless. Arendt suggests that the only true power is collaborative power, where people share power with others. Oppressive power only becomes powerful when the powerless accept their oppression and do not organize with others to overthrow their oppressors. The #MeToo movement organized abused people to bring their oppressors to justice.

2. What is the distinction between power-over and power-with?

Mary Parker Follett, a foundational thinker in the field of conflict processes, explained that power-over (dominance and coercion) was the traditional relationship in the structures of civilization: one person’s power over another person; one group’s power over another group; one nation’s power over another nation. Follett did not propose power-with as utopian, but rather that people often, naturally and creatively, collaborate with each other, and that tendency should be encouraged in every sector of society. In this way, the traditions and institutions of power-over could slowly wither away, being slowly replaced with the power-with, collaborative processes.

Since power-over–others is a defining feature of civilization, it is not surprising that people play power games to control others and gain their own self-interest by denying others what they want. Sports are built on this relationship. One can win at sports by outscoring an opponent, or by denying an opponent the ability to score as many points. Sometimes, those points are on a scoreboard, showing who scored the most—given the criteria of the sport, or on a clock, showing who accomplished some feat the fastest.

3. How is power related to money and status?

In some ways, power, money, and status are simply different modes of “power-over.” Power can easily oppress others; money can make one insensitive to the plight of impoverished others; and status can make one arrogant. The paradoxical dilemma here is that for many people, power, money, and status are simply survival tools; not physical survival, rather, identity survival.

4. How is power related to identity survival?

To survive as “someone,” rather than a “nobody,” within one’s identity group, one needs to have some level of status and power that other members of one’s identity group respect and appreciate. This is true for all incomes, the wealthy and the impoverished. Even for homeless people, losing some level of status or power, means losing membership in one’s identity group. The consequences of this loss of identity can lead to social isolation and mental illness.

5. How is power handled within collaborative processes?

To win power, or not lose power, people use many strategies. In collaborative processes, power plays should be absent, but elsewhere, outright or subtle power strategies are regularly in play. Navigating between our ubiquitous, civilized, tendency to maximize power, one cannot even trust collaborative processes, because even they can be undermined or used within a larger power plan.

In this chapter, I will explain the dynamics of common power plays, and suggest ways to address them, when one is in the midst of the riptide. For me, the key insight about the dynamics of power is that power plays are everywhere: in our homes, our jobs, our communities, in the media, and even in our schools and colleges. Even though people often cooperate with each other, and some of us participate in collaborative processes, involving stakeholders and disputants who are trying to find agreements and make shared decisions, power is still one of the largest elephants in the room.

Perhaps for long periods of time, the elephant appears to be calm, maybe even sleepy, but it can lurch into life and aggressively lean against the negotiating table, jolting it to an uneven surface—and the game changes radically. To keep the negotiating table even, and immune from manipulation, everyone in the room needs to be committed to keeping power evenly balanced, and be vigilant about any, even subtle, efforts to turn the proceedings into a game to be played and won.

However, conflict facilitators have the greatest burden of maintaining equal power in negotiations. Conflict facilitators need to watch for any indication that power inequities are being used to win an argument or conflict. Power differences come in many forms:

Objective power: where someone has a job title, some kind of status, official or renown

Subjective power: where someone has personal charm or attractiveness, an ability to tell a compelling story, or being hyper-logical.

To counter power in negotiations, appropriate boundaries need to be applied to the process so that no one dominates by filibustering, making others uncomfortable, subtle or overt threats, etc.

Another power strategy is to be overly adversarial, creating a win/lose dynamic to negotiations. On the other hand, people might gain power by being overly accommodating, as a way of creating a trade-off dynamic, where an accommodator will expect a pay-back for being so “nice.”

• Justifying power games because life is a game to win or lose, right?
• There are many forms of this perception:
• Everybody tries to manipulate others to get their way, right?
• Somebody has to maintain control and order, right?
• Somebody has to be boss, right?
• Everybody plays on other people’s weaknesses, right?
• It’s easier to complain than to praise, right?