An Unacceptable Time

(With no apologies to Madeleine L'Engle. It was a crappy book.)

We are living in an unacceptable time. We are living in an unacceptable time full of people acting in unacceptable ways. I'm not talking about Trump, either, or at least not just Trump; he's just one rich asshole who thinks way too highly of himself. No, I'm talking about the people who put Trump where he is, all of whom in one way or another think way too highly of themselves, too (which is what white privilege (especially male white privilege) is all about), and are hoping that by validating Trump he will return the favor and validate them.
(Suckers!)

Of course, it's Republican powermongers who created Trump and put him where he is. You only have to look at North Carolina to see that. North Carolina has become the microcosm that a significant part of the United States is on its way to becoming, which is not a democracy according to the EIP (Electoral Integrity Project), an international organization that evaluates the electoral processes of countries (and states) around the world. North Carolina scored the lowest score of any place ever evaluated in the entire world (a 7/100) on its districting practices. [And, overall, North Carolina isn't even the lowest scoring State on their scale. This is scary stuff to be happening in America, the place where this kind of authoritarianism was never supposed to be able to happen.]

Here's kind of what all of this is like:

Imagine a classroom. In the classroom are 20 young children, let's say six years old. They are sitting in a circle. One boy, a white boy, has a pile of cookies in front of him, 80 of them. Some of you are thinking that that boy should share some of his cookies, but hold on! There are some more cookies.

There's another white boy sitting next to the cookie hoarder; he has 10 cookies. He's looking at the guy with 80 cookies and being resentful of the fact that he only has 10 cookies.

But here's the real problem. There are only 10 cookies left to be shared out among 18 more children. Then, two more kids get two cookies each. Four kids get one cookie each. Two kids get half a cookie a piece, and... 10 kids get to share the last cookie.

Now, in any sane classroom, the teacher would make the boy with 80 cookies share some of his cookies, but, when the teacher makes that suggestion, the boy begins throwing a tantrum. And not just any tantrum, a raging tantrum during which he exclaims over and over about how those are his cookies and how he deserves his cookies because he is better than everyone else in the room, the rest of the students, other than the boy sitting next to him with the 10 cookies, being non-white children. So the teacher turns to little Joey, the boy with 10 cookies, and asks him if he, at least, will share. Joey sits grudgingly, watching Donald throw his tantrum and being resentful that Donald is getting to keep his 80 cookies just because he's pitching a fit, but he allows that he will share one of his cookies, which gets divided up without any of the pieces ever making it around to the 10 children all sharing the one cookie.

So the teacher brings in another round of cookies to try to even things up, but Donald is a greedy, selfish, piggish little boy, and he immediately takes another 80 cookies while the teacher is trying to keep control of the rest of the room. Joey takes another 10 but, then, once they are seated, Donald steals two of Joey's cookies from him and eats them while Joey watches. This time, as the rest of the cookies are divided out in the same manner as the first time, Joey refuses to share. Why should he? Donald just stole two of his cookies and is in the midst of another violent tantrum about how he is better than everyone else and doesn't have to share and no one can make him.

And this is how it continues. Donald always getting the bulk of the cookies and, actually, growing angry that he isn't getting all of the cookies each time cookies are delivered. Each time, he also manages to steal a couple or few of Joey's cookies.

Joey grows increasingly resentful over how many cookies that Donald has and becomes resentful at the other children in the circle for getting cookies that he wants. He has found that he, no matter what he tries, cannot manage to get any of Donald's cookies from him but, sometimes, he is able to steal cookies from other children in the circle. It doesn't matter to him that he has more cookies than everyone else; he only cares that he doesn't have as many cookies as Donald. Everyone looks with longing at Donald's pile of cookies and wants desperately for someone to step in and make him share.

But no one does.

Joey, thinking that Donald must have some trick for getting the most cookies other than being a bully and just being first in line every time, has an idea: He decides that, maybe, if they put Donald in charge of the cookies, then he will share.

Does anyone else see the problem with this logic?

And, of course, in a classroom, any sane teacher would actually make Donald share. And Joey. No matter the tantrum. That is the acceptable solution: sharing.

But we are in an unacceptable time where we have elected Donald to be in charge of all of the cookies, and, if he wouldn't share before -- in fact, when he wouldn't share before and also went about trying to steal cookies that belonged to other people -- why would anyone think he would share now? No, now he has the power to block other people from getting cookies so that he can have even more for himself.

And, by the way, I didn't make up these numbers. I've roughly based the cookie distribution on global wealth distribution. Donald represents the 1%, and Joey represents the rest of Western white society. The problem is that, as a society, we have just decided to, rather than work to make the 1% share their cookies, work to keep people of other colors out of the cookie line all together. It's unacceptable. Completely. If for no other reason than that Joey still has way more cookies than everyone else and can, actually, afford to share. He (we) just doesn't want to because why should he when no one is making Donald?

So, yeah, screw what is right and good, because it's all about greed and gluttony. It doesn't matter to Joey (us) that he (we) actually has more cookies than he needs or can eat; it only matters that he doesn't have as many as Donald and, until he does, fuck the world. Because, really, that's what a vote for Trump translates into: Fuck the world.

This is not a time to support Trump and his cronies and their desire to consolidate power (and cookies) to the wealthy white power structure. This the time to stand up to their unacceptable ways and make them share. Yes, like any spoiled brat of a child, they are going to throw a violent tantrum, but it's time for us to stand up and be the adults. The real adults who stand for equality for all children, not just the white ones.

The Power Paradox (a book review post)

So... Power. What even is it? I think most people would say it's something about how able you are to tell other people what to do and have them do what you're saying and, while Keltner would probably agree with that, he would broaden the definition to include how able you are to make a difference in the world around you. Which, you know, is fine. I can go with that.

What I can't go with is Keltner ascribing the results of his small group experiments to the broader context of society.

So, yes, Keltner does have data, a lot of it, done mostly in labs (and colleges are labs, of a sort), mostly with small groups of people, and, frequently, with groups of people who didn't know each other prior to the experiment. And I can't argue with his results. I see how he came to the conclusions he came to within the contexts of the experiments he ran, but -- and it's a big BUT -- he applies his conclusions to society in general, and, no matter how I look at it, I can't see that any of his ideas, at least the ones dealing with how we gain power, apply to society at large and across other cultures (which don't necessarily have the same views toward power that we do). It's rather like Freud in his generalizing to all people the conclusions he came to from working with a select few of mostly women seeking him for psychological treatment.

Which is too bad, actually, because they are interesting ideas and conclusions.

To put it simply, Keltner believes that we give power to people who promote the greater good of the group. And that's all fine and good, but he also says we remove that power from people when they stop exercising their power for the good of the group and start exercising it for the good of themselves. And, well, I don't know if he's looked around lately, but there are an awful lot of people in power, exercising it for their own good only, who seem to be just fine where they are and in no danger of losing their power anytime soon, which is the weakness of the book.

Power, according to Keltner, is its own downfall, because it is the having of power which causes us to quit looking outward toward ways we can create the greater good and start looking inward to how we can create greatness for ourselves. And it's not that he doesn't get this stuff right, the things that having power causes -- I'm sure he is quite correct -- but he says it's giving into these power impulses that, then, cause us to lose the power we've acquired. That's the part I'm not seeing, these active dynamics he's talking about happening on a societal scale.

He talks about how power is a constant give and take, and he does demonstrate that on a small scale to some extent, but he never even touches on how or why the people in power who are demonstrably out for themselves are able to escape all of these natural punishments and consequences he says we have. It undermines his whole premise. The one thing he mentions that's kind of his out is that he says personal charisma is one of the biggest influencers on how we gain power, which, also undermines his theory of it having to do with contributing to the greater good, and he never talks about how it enables people to retain power after they've begun to abuse it.

The one part of the book he gets right, completely right -- and he gets it right because he deals with this aspect on a societal level -- is the section dealing with the effects of powerlessness on people. Having no power causes stress which leads to a further lack of ability to contribute to society (basically, the definition of power itself, according to Keltner) and poor health. He does nothing, however, to address the issue other than to say that these people need to be empowered.

I'm not going to say that the book doesn't contain some interesting ideas; it does. I will say that these ideas weren't ready to be a book, though. Even if he's onto something. And he might be onto something. But there's no way to apply what he says here to the world at large and no way to apply the principles he's come up with other than to say, "Be excellent to each other." Which, you know, is a great thing to say and something I agree with wholeheartedly, but he needs to offer some practical applications if he wants to write a book about it. Simply saying, "Be empathetic," isn't enough.

Reading Is Power

I was having one of those thought things recently, and I want to point out that it was just a thought thing. A thing like "I wonder if there's a connection here" kind of thing. Of course, since I'm about to talk about it, I think there is a connection, but my wife tells me I'm wrong about this one. But, hey, it's my thought, and she's just telling me that because I don't have any data to back it up. And, it's true, I don't have any data to back it up (she's a real data person), but, what's more, I'm not going to do the research, right now, to figure this one out, because it was just a thought thing.

However, it all makes sense to me, so I'm going to go with it. I mean, I'm going to go with it at least as far as I'm going to talk about it as an idea. It's not like I'm putting this forth as law or, even, as any kind of fact.

It does make me wonder if there's any data out there about this, though, or, even, how one would go about figuring it out. It doesn't make me wonder enough, though, to do the research.

So, anyway, here's where the thought began:

Reading Is Power

As someone who reads, this seems like a pretty obvious statement to me, but let me re-frame it by walking you through a bit of history.

For centuries (at least) only the wealthy have been able to read. Well, the wealthy and the priests, but there was wealth in the priesthood even if not controlled by the individual priests. And not just the wealthy but, more specifically, wealthy men. I'm not just talking about European culture; this has been prevalent across all cultures for thousands of years.

Now, an argument could be made that it's the wealth that created the power, but I think it was the ability to read. I think the reading created the wealth and the wealth was used to maintain the power. Books were expensive, so it was, then, easy to keep reading out of the hands of the "common man."

Over time, the power base expanded as reading was taught to those few who became successful enough, or wealthy enough, to be able to buy the knowledge. Remember, for hundreds of years, schooling only went to those who could buy it.

Eventually, though, education had to become more widely available because of a growing need for skilled professions (doctors, lawyers, even skilled laborers). And, then, an American guy had the startling idea that education should be available for all, and thus was born the public education system.

An interesting thing happened after that: Women started reading. I'm not trying to suggest that no women ever read prior to that, but, after public education, reading became available to women en masse. And, not long after that, women began to demand the right to vote. With the ability to read, women gained power.

Likewise, when under privileged minorities have learned to read, they have gained power.

When people in countries of oppression have learned to read, they have gained power.

It's through reading where ideas like "freedom" and "democracy" are spread.

Ideas are power, and ideas come from reading.

And here is where my thoughts lead me:
It is often widely bemoaned how boys don't read anymore and, when I say "boys," I mean white males in the USA. Reading has fallen out of fashion for white males and, as such, the white male power base has been eroding for years. Or decades. White men in power are gnashing their teeth about all sorts of things that are undermining their power. Like women. And "minorities." And "gays." And whoever else they complain about.

Well, I think it's their own fault. The white males, that is. It's their own fault that power is slipping from their grasp, because they have largely given up on reading and learning and are doing all they can to foster a society that thrives on ignorance, "faith," and a lack of education (the ability to read). White male leadership continually undermines the power of reading and science by clinging to... well, all sorts of things that have no factual basis.

Why?

Because they don't read.

So I don't feel bad for them that they are all fearful of losing their grip on power, because people who cling to ignorance don't deserve to lead.