17 - The ever present power grab

A pyramid is a tricky thing to topple. Force won’t cut it. It has to

be defeated from the inside.

- Kelvin Peltstrop

All animals squeak, but some are more squeaky than others.

- George Normal

In this particular version of an advanced human culture, the difference between the political and material elite and the rest of humanity in terms of experience and prospects, has become utterly absurd in the degree of its extremity. And that extremity has become a significant barrier to harmonious existence for most of humanity through the frustrating experience of the game rigged, resource hogging, poverty engendering rapaciousness of an apparently clueless few that seem to believe this state of affairs is not only just but also the only way it can be.

Viva la revolution.

Of course, it always seems like a good idea at the time. But I suspect it might be easier to teach a dead chicken how to be star in a Jimi Hendrix tribute band that it’d be to find a revolution that actually worked. They always fail. Replacing one set of elites with another, that may initially be better or worse, but the eventual consequence is a similar status quo. The pigs can no longer be told apart from the humans. The most prominent reason for this eventual failure of purpose is human narcissism. Those who come into power always end up behaving in the same way as those they deposed. This is because the proclivities of the powerful remain to some extent static across time and culture. Whatever the original intent of the powerful to begin their ascent, once they pass the very early stages of status acquisition then they become seduced by the side effects of that status in terms of how they feel themselves viewed and how they view themselves. The more they are exposed to the complicated requirements that an increasingly elevated position demands, the more they forget the imperatives they began with. They may have started out intending to transform the system itself, but once the system starts rewarding them for their success, they become increasingly committed to and identified with those goals. The system transforms them. It’s a side effect of its own effective functioning. One that happily (for those whose well being is tied up with the well being of the system – the elite), serves to inoculate the system against all invading foreign bodies.

Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become one... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

The revolutionary idealist turns into the familiar figure of the faceless bureaucrat with the desirable pension entitlements, the comfortable chair, the enviable office view and the original-idea deficit disorder. Those who have become used to privilege cannot bear to give it up. They become self-identified less with those outside the clubhouse gates and more with the corpulent members-only set. They also become psychologically dependent on the products of privilege and power - surrounded as they are, more often then not, by those who seek to please them and to be ratified by them and to rise by their agency. They are in turn flattered into believing that membership of that particular club is theirs by right of merit or divine decree or whatever spurious rationale serves what has become of their self-interest.

Those who seek social transformation, if they seek it for reasons other than those that serve their own narcissism, must seek it in a way that is actively hostile to that narcissism. This, crucially, requires compassion. If you cannot empathise with the humanity of the elite, forgetting the repugnance of their point of view and the consequences of it, and remembering the human being that is limited by that point of view, then you will ultimately fail in your action. In other words, the holistic, inclusive approach is far superior in achieving the desired ends of a successful revolution – namely, the cessation of tyranny (whatever shape it takes or mask it wears) and the creation of a new and sustainable framework that serves to minimise inequity and serve the actual needs of the many in favour of the rarefied wants of the few.

It is, of course, also important to acknowledge the utility of the compartmentalised, non-holistic, object-focussed, thinking that ultimately produces this effect – it permits the mental manipulation of symbolic objects and thereby the creation of new configurations and combinations – a facility that has greatly improved our ability to be in the world in such great numbers – But it is even more important to resist becoming a victim of that same gift. To perceive things only as a function of the default setting of that proclivity – the “I/Thou” duality, only lends itself to a pleasing yet futile Manichean simplicity. Other beings, in this, become reduced to mere objects to point the finger at, to name enemy, or to use for some end, or to avoid being used by, or to triumph over, etc. And it is precisely this reduction of other being into an object that best services the narcissism and self serving rationalisation that feeds all elites.

On the other hand, to hold human affairs up to the candle light of infinity and see things for what they truly are - and to acknowledge that the elitist hoarding all the carrots, is as much a victim as the pauper sipping water soup for dinner, is to at least serve accuracy and perspective far better. One is useful for getting things done. The other far less so, but aside from the cognitive and perspective enhancing riches it can yield, it also better serves to illuminate why we might be doing those things in the first place. It reminds us that we are different from that activity and that there are other imperatives that serve less immediate ends that might well be much more important in the long term.

It is endemic on those who occupy positions where they have any kind of power over others to restrain their impulse to wield that power in service of their own narcissism. To serve the humans before the system, within the bounds of reason and functional necessity. There is always that balance in the equation – Be too concerned with individual humans at the cost of the ability of the system to thrive and you are left with little more than empty plates and cultural decay. But the temptation to serve only the functioning of the system at the cost of the human being is perhaps all the more dangerous and tempting – It can masquerade as service to the greater good while it, in fact, only services the easy rationalisation of callous and expedient action at a distance.

Simply examining the end results of those dissociated actions can reveal the degree of the fundamental disconnect. For it is those who can cause the least amount of trouble for those in power, who suffer the worst – And who suffer it first. In any equitable situation, those who are most powerless should be those who are most protected. So the actions of the powerful are more often than not revealed to have a natural bias – These hugely impactful decisions are not made on merit alone, they are made based on the immediate necessity to serve their imperatives and what can be gotten away with. The voiceless are the low hanging fruit. An appalling state of affairs. And to salt the wound, such actions pretty much always ends up in service of the elite. The persistence of this particular dilemma in human political structures has always served them ably. Moreover, it is well defended by all and any means that serve to keep it in place – sleight of hand and distraction being the most obvious.

Of course, there are factors other than narcissism that play into the perennial dysfunction of the elite that inevitably results from human social organization. However, I suspect that narcissism is the great blind spot that renders previously astute leaders into foolish consumers of their own press release - forgetting that in questions of power, the emphasis must be on service to others as the primary imperative, in tandem with the necessity of maintaining workable system dynamics. This dynamic of service keeps them honest and forces them to constantly assess things by measures other than their own personal imperatives.

Instead of the acceptance and almost fetishising of the toxic psychological by products of power, such as narcissism, superiority and entitlement - a more appropriate reaction would be withering contempt. It should be a matter of considerable social embarrassment to display such a poorly constructed and managed ego, an unacceptable deficiency as opposed to evidence of inherent superiority. This would apply as much to the managing director as to the world leader. That contempt would need to permeate the entirety of society to counterbalance the ability of power itself to propagate such incautious self regard and psychological self neglect. Shame – as though a social crime has been committed, because well, a social crime has been committed. The sane among us know enough to treat others well, since that’s the best way to encourage them to treat us well in turn. There are no guarantees but you play the odds.

The hierarchical structures that humanity routinely create to manage any collective activity, usually serve the institutional imperatives of longevity and stability but they have also invariably come to represent and wield a certain strength and power in their society. A hierarchy by its nature, generates elites. And elites, by their nature, inevitably hijack the forces of an institution to serve their own ends. And because elites tend to shift the focus of the institution away from its central purpose for existing, towards ends that serve their own particular best interests, then these institutions inevitably take on a will of their own, one that is a strange amalgam of their own original remit and the remit of the elites that come to govern them.

It starts with the original idea that the construct was developed to serve. A governing body is appointed, or rises to the top by means that usually involve some degree of political skill and interpersonal manipulation. It has been found by those who find such things professionally, that psychopathology is particularly favoured in such contexts, since a certain ruthlessness has proven to be one of the most politically apposite faculties. These “leaders” set the terms of how the construct is to proceed and evolve. Over time then, these basic terms determine the type of person that is favoured by the institution and the type of person who is likely to progress most ably through the upper ranks. So a certain style of behaviour and presentation is encouraged and rewarded by the governing structures, since it mirrors the behaviours of those at the top, and through mirroring, forgives much – The inference becomes - “This is how the world actually works. Look how others also behave in this way. That means I was correct in my approach and methods, and that those who did not act in a similar manner, were weak and stupid since they failed to achieve my level of power and influence”. Prospective members of the elite are thereby encouraged to emulate this style to improve their odds of progressing. A particular kind of ruling class develops internally which over time is moulded by the institution, which itself continually modifies, by minute degrees, how the institution operates and what it eventually comes to represent.

This process determines how cultures operate and the forces those cultures represent by virtue of the fact that, through the power and wealth of these institutions, their elites tend to govern the direction and terms of the overall cultural conversation. This is because humans tend to accept, relatively unchallenged, the general ideas that are agreed to be fundamental to their culture and its Philosophical inclinations. And a cultures Philosophical inclinations are rarely based on an appreciation of truth or beauty or even pragmatism (at least where the greater good of the masses are concerned) - generally speaking they are determined by the ideas that best serve the interests of what passes for the ruling classes at a given time. And more often than not this refers to the wealthy, since it is the wealthy that wield most of the useful power in any given culture. The wealthy exert the most telling influence over political policy, because the wealthy are best placed to ensure the financial wellbeing of those in a position to be most useful in its moulding.

(**)

As a species, we tend to band together, like with like. The wealthy, like the rest of us, sympathise most with those who most closely resemble themselves, whose lives most accurately mirror their own. So the wealthy club together accordingly. They are in a position to make more charitable contributions, and this also buys influence and cultural capitol. It also buys effective grounds for rationalisation and self justification – “What does this reprehensible thing I am about to do matter in the face of all the good I’ve done with the tax shelter I invested in which stencilled my name over the door of the hospital for sick children?”

Others often align themselves with the wealthy, finding flattery in the mere fact of their proximity to power and influence, hoping that some of its apparent magic will rub off on them. And often, those in positions of influence strove to achieve positions of nominal power in the first place, so that they might benefit by association with the seat of actual power. They may also have done so for the best of reasons, at least initially. There is no one route to proximity to power. But the end result remains the same - Almost without effort, the wealthy manage to acquire a disproportionate influence in human culture. Even (or indeed especially) a culture that actively discourages the accumulation of personal wealth (communism, for example) is prone to the exact same malaise albeit in a different guise. The accumulation of political capitol acts as a proxy for the monetary variety, at least at first. And in the end, the luxury and influence that monetary capitol affords become part of the experience and stock in trade of the elite. And those who aspire to be counted among them, become fundamentally compromised (if they weren’t already) by that desire. And moreover, this influence can easily be neatly codified, aligned with another questionable imperative, like for example, patriotism and sold to the impoverished as high virtue, potential life goals to aspire to.

If a culture doesn't encourage its citizens to constantly question the assumptions on which it relies, to follow a logical train of thought, step by step, in a coherent manner, which culminates in at least the possibility of their acquiring a penetrating understanding of the ideas they hold to be true, then that culture can be considered to be fundamentally impoverished. Human culture arise out of human activity, without which it would not exist. So a culture that acts against the best interests of the humans that create and invigorate it, also cannot be considered healthy or nourishing. This translates into nearly every culture that has existed on planet earth.

Most cultures have that natural counterbalance of those who are compelled to pursue knowledge for its own sake, or who are at least indifferent, or are actively antagonistic, to the mundane imperatives of the elite. The political and economic elites that rise to the surface of most cultures do not find it useful to have a highly critical and intellectually able population, since this tends to impact unfavourably on their malleability. Critical engagement with the substance of one’s own consciousness is the essence of worthwhile experience. It marks the dividing line between blind faith and informed judgment. Political, economic and cultural elites tend to be the enemy of critical engagement. Even if by their nature they are themselves critical or appear to wholeheartedly support critical engagement, they tend to do so from the balustrades of an institution. The institution will often present obstacles to entry, it’s inescapable. Those obstacles thereby ensure that criticism occurs in a relatively safe and manageable way. If they do not encourage the development of that critical faculty in as wide a context as possible, if they corral it in any way, then ultimately they serve to deny it to others. Those obstacles can be cultural, financial or simply mundanely prejudicial. The philosophy of “the cream rises” doesn't really hold true, since the means of attaining access always favours a certain kind of mental activity, that itself favours a certain style of engagement, that itself is favoured by a thinking style encouraged by certain interests that find it favourable to their ends. Of course, this is not an absolute, but it would be close enough to make the differences negligible. And while this understanding can be useful, it is like everything else, moderation in all things.

It is good to acknowledge the corrupting power of power itself – It is also important to acknowledge that this is not all there is. The fact that elites exist, and tend to predominantly serve their own ends, should not obscure the other benefits that accrue from the existence of the hierarchy. It should be balanced against it. The structure inherently gives the institution dependability and stability. This in turn ensures its longevity. Where the institution fulfils a necessary remit, then this is extremely desirable. Heads should only end up on pikes when the influence of elites becomes disproportionate and destructive to the functioning of the system. If greed can be held in reasonable check, then it might best be wise to leave the reasonable in a position of influence, even if they also serve the imperatives of greed – if they at least do so reasonably, then it might be wise to factor in the likelihood that we would also act similarly. The cost of what is ultimately “right” might come at the cost of pragmatism and reasonableness. In the context of collective activity, what is “right” is only one of a number of imperatives. Utility should ultimately sit higher up on the hierarchy of importance. It is only when that compact of what is reasonable is broken, that it becomes time to cry havoc.