December 16th, 2020
- Still need to do a full write-up on this but I think that a lot of the discourse around power-over and power-with is important but still not nuanced enough
- in particular, stuff Richard Bartlett says in minutes 15-22 of a convo on futurethinkers (1h34 total) makes the following errors:
- conflating
- power-over & dominance
- power-with & prestige
- I'm not certain that these errors are his; they might be in the original models
- Richard Bartlett himself is critiquing a common conflation of
- hierarchy & power-over
- noting essentially (though in different words) that you can have functional hierarchy
- which is not the opposite of "dysfunctional" but a reference to how hierarchy shows up all the time in nature in completely non-authoritarian ways
- at any rate, it is not just possible but inevitable for prestige to confer power-over, even though this is sometimes not consciously recognized by the people involved
- in general, it seems to me:
- in any group, some people will have more power than others
- whether it is power conferred by (threat of) overt force, power conferred by threat of shaming, or power conferred by prestige/esteem
- power-over is best understood as not a type of power but a type of use of power
- and
- there's a section of this Everything Studies post (variation 6: hierarchies) that does a similar job of noting that these two kinds of power are inseparable
- and also adds
- > I wonder if there isn’t another kind of status that Simler overlooked: connection status. That is, the sort of status that comes from being well-liked by many people, and by people who are well-liked themselves, i.e. a kind of social network centrality (or “popularity”, as it’s called…). It’s not the same as prestige, because it’s not so much a matter of being impressive; it can be had by just being friendly, personable and a joy to be around. I know plenty of such people, and it too can be turned into power, just like prestige can.
- tweet
- > you don’t have to argue with anyone to successfully evangelize, just be so forcefully secure in your reality it eventually undercuts theirs
- also very relevant - social reality is a thing and most people don't realize how many of their own thoughts become inaccessible when trying to talk to someone who loudly projects reality field that doesn't permit such a thought
- or at least, trying to listen to such a person or talk in their frame
- it's not that hard to completely reject their frame and stay in touch with your own, although this can still be tough if the person is charismatic or high status or quick-witted
- Convo w Eli Finer about wuju
- distinction between
- tylenol approach, where you do it when you have a headache...
- vs more proactive
- let your face express the thing
- then maybe look in the mirror