"...it's not the training to be mean but the training to be kind that is used to keep us leashed best." ~ Black Dog Red

"In case you haven't recognized the trend: it proceeds action, dissent, speech." ~ davidly, on how wars get done

"...What sort of meager, unerotic existence must a man live to find himself moved to such ecstatic heights by the mundane sniping of a congressional budget fight. The fate of human existence does not hang in the balance. The gods are not arrayed on either side. Poseiden, earth-shaker, has regrettably set his sights on the poor fishermen of northern Japan and not on Washington, D.C. where his ire might do some good--I can think of no better spot for a little wetland reclamation project, if you know what I mean. The fight is neither revolution nor apocalypse; it is hardly even a fight. A lot of apparatchiks are moving a lot of phony numbers with more zeros than a century of soccer scores around, weaving a brittle chrysalis around a gross worm that, some time hence, will emerge, untransformed, still a worm." ~ IOZ

Apr 12, 2010

Quotable Meditation on Power

"To be respectful is to attentively incline oneself towards the other in recognition of their autonomy and integrity.

There is no one we can respect and simultaneously try to change. When we coerce or manipulate someone, we cannot respect them because our attention is focused not on them but on what we want.

If one views respect as a resource, nowhere is it generally more scarce than among the powerful.

The conceit of power is that power elicits respect, when in truth the tokens of respect bestowed on the powerful are rarely more than expressions of fear, envy or duty. (Hence an underlying paranoia haunts the powerful: they know they are the beneficiaries of a social investment that could, if things turn sour, be swiftly withdrawn.)

Respect is not the fruit of power, but on the contrary, it is a self-propagating virtue that becomes mirrored through its own expression."

~ Paul Woodward, War In Context, April 12, 2010

2 comments:

Ethan said...

This is interesting, and I definitely need to think it over, but I'm a bit reluctant to completely embrace this:

There is no one we can respect and simultaneously try to change. When we coerce or manipulate someone, we cannot respect them because our attention is focused not on them but on what we want.

because if we take it seriously it leaves us essentially unable to try to improve the world. And while a lot of good intentions, including many of my own I'm sure, would probably be best squashed, I'm not comfortable giving up.

Jack Crow said...

Good point. Does it rule out persuasion?