Power Relations
I believe that power relations are rampant among humans in a non trivial way.
I am not just referring to obvious power dynamics but the power relations in every interaction.
I shall give a few examples but there is so much to say here it is hard to be succinct.
So imagine if you are arguing with someone and they make a controversial or offensive point in a soft quiet voice and then you respond forcefully maybe with some anger. The forceful or angry person can be judged to be in the wrong and the other person scores points for their calm demeanor regardless of what they actually said. So this is on example of a situation where power is gained in my opinion without justification by manipulating power dynamics and norms.
Another example is someone who claims they won't vote in an election because it does not make a difference. This seems like someone trying to distance themselves from political decisions whilst they still live in the same society and even may benefit from it. Also this kind of apathy to me is a false belief that leads to further apathy, that no political protest will work.
I am not just referring to obvious power dynamics but the power relations in every interaction.
I shall give a few examples but there is so much to say here it is hard to be succinct.
So imagine if you are arguing with someone and they make a controversial or offensive point in a soft quiet voice and then you respond forcefully maybe with some anger. The forceful or angry person can be judged to be in the wrong and the other person scores points for their calm demeanor regardless of what they actually said. So this is on example of a situation where power is gained in my opinion without justification by manipulating power dynamics and norms.
Another example is someone who claims they won't vote in an election because it does not make a difference. This seems like someone trying to distance themselves from political decisions whilst they still live in the same society and even may benefit from it. Also this kind of apathy to me is a false belief that leads to further apathy, that no political protest will work.
Comments (41)
I think that society can negatively affect and influence the individual but I think this is only the case for a minority of society affected by the conduct of the majority. I find it hard to believe that a majority of society could not cause political change. even if the majority doesn't support a position I think a substantial number of people have to support it for it to gain traction.
Another case of false powerlessness I believe comes from parents. I think having a child is partially endorsing the society and world you are bringing them into. I think parenting is a position where you can create a good environment for the child before creating her. Or you can refrain from having children if you cannot improve circumstances.
Society is. Many are more powerful than one. The moral imperative, because this is so, is for society only to over-rule individuals when it must....
I think one problem is that people adapt too easily to things that are immoral and wrong in the society. When they happen on a societal level, suddenly things are tolerated as the "new normal". Just think the case of a civil war: the so-called reasonable people cannot fathom that people who before lived together in somewhat harmony or at leasthad the appearance of some social cohesion start killing each other. It is as if people suddenly went totally insane. Well, from one perspective that indeed is the case. But the vast majority just take it as reality and accuse those objecting the madness of being naive, living in an "Ivory Tower" and not grasping reality.
I suppose my suggestion would be then, that people are adapting to things by asserting power in some way.
By power I don't mean dominance though.
But rather that by using some powers they possess to go in a certain direction rather than being helplessly sucked along. But I think it is almost subconscious and they are in denial of what is happening. I suppose by power here I mean influence or withholding influence.
What also interests me is concerning what is power in this sense? How does one get power? Who is in control. Is anyone control?
I liked the horror film The cube where a mechanical torture apparatus terrorizes people but they couldn't trace any one person responsible because it was bureaucracy our of control. In a sense bureaucracy can be away of relinquishing power. Also you might say that there is good power and bad power.
I am not saying real powerlessness doesn't exist however.
I think the power of society is a collective power of individuals combining their wills. Should this ever be the case or should societies be run on reason alone?
I am not advocating an elitist run society but a society where some form of reason dominates debate and policy. Obviously sometime or lots of times politicians foster or pander to irrationality.
But consider medicine. Most people will allow a heart surgeon to be an expert and to control the patients treatment because they recognize his or her expertise and would not claim their own expertise here unless they were a crank. Outside of medicine and the natural science their is evidence in the social sciences that could inform social policy but it is undermined by political bias.
Maybe it is just a continuous natural struggle but I hope there is more to life than that.
I think a society is a collection of humans, so I expect it to run as though it was comprised of humans, not Vulcans. :wink: I don't think it's useful to wonder how societies should run, if our wonderings yearn for reason and logic, which are (in general) foreign to human beings. Yes, OK, we are capable of reasonable and rational thoughts and behaviours ... once in a while. But we can't and don't keep it up.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Then your society would not be composed of human beings, but some other life-form?
Feigning insanity is another power move.
Maybe I am paranoid but i can see power play in so many interactions. I do think we can aim towards reason. But ignorance and unreason can be good tactical moves.
I think we can become more reasonable by assessing or exposing power relations. To some extent this happens in therapy.
"The sleep of reason produces monsters"
Indeed. But why would/should we? People say these things on philosophy forums, but they don't seem to notice how uncommon reason is in our real-world lives. Yes, there is some reason present for some of the time. But maybe that's as much as we can manage or stomach?
Empirical evidence suggests that we do not - and will never - behave in a consistently reasonable manner. To do so is not characteristic of our human species. You observe that we could aim towards reason, apparently without pausing to wonder whether we could achieve that aim, whether we would want to achieve that aim, and whether we would still be human if we did. :chin:
I try and be as reasonable as possible. I would be happy for you to highlight something I do you think is beyond reason.
Empirical evidence may show that people behave irrationally but that is not the same as saying they can't be rational and are intrinsically rational.
I think you are engaging in power relations with me here in this argument to cast aspersions on how rational people can be to resign yourself to a position. I am a fan of The Freudian subconscious and I believe that people have ulterior disguised but discoverable motives for behavior. To me becoming more rational is to expose this.
Unfortunately it might mean exposing dark irrational forces and destructive desires. But there is not reason to succumb to them. But based on my own experience I think it is quite possible to live in a sate of reason, questioning and skepticism. I think the more reasoning or reasonable you become the more frightening everything else becomes and the more irrational it seems. It is like ignorance is bliss.
No, I don't think I will. I haven't observed you doing anything unreasonable. I have offered empirical data: humans behave rationally, but we also behave irrationally too, often. I have not offered the reasons why I think this is so, so there is nothing for you to question unless you don't think that humans do behave irrationally. [ I don't believe you could justify such a stance. ]
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I am not casting aspersions, I'm offering an empirical observation, nothing more than that. You stated that Quoting Andrew4Handel and I replied Quoting Pattern-chaser
So: why do you think we should "aim towards reason"?
How many people are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome where they end up misidentifying with an oppressive system (including the parent child one).
My main point is that people should acknowledge power dynamics because I value the truth and I don't agree with letting dynamics go unexamined.
i don't think a tendency for some irrationality is an excuse for aiming for no rationality and If you were to advocate I would see that as a power move for some personal reason you may have.
There are obvious reasons for aiming towards reason any way just for basic survival.
But another concern I have is unfairness. Power tactics are often unfair and therefore abusive.
So for example in my first example of the quiet argument I think it is wrong to let someone win an argument based on presentation and emotion rather than content.
Quoting Terrapin Station
You do put Foucault as one of your favorite philosophers though. I don't think power relation analysis needs to be ill-defined or entail banal analysis.
I think it is inevitable, that relationships between individuals and between individuals and society etc will involve a balance of power and ways of maintaining power, giving up some power or gaining power. This includes things like the feminist and gay rights movements.
I believe people are uncomfortable about exposing power interactions and analyzing relationships. For example 50+ years ago in Britain someone was attacked for insulting the Queen but that attitude has died away. But there are always stages when challenging norms gets a negative reaction.
It is not necessarily in someones interest to expose to themselves the power dynamics they are involved in.
Personally I would like more power but without having to trample over people to get it.
Yeah, as I noted it's not that I think the idea is inherently flawed, it's that most power relation talk, in practice, has severe problems (because it's almost never well-defined, it's typically ridiculously shallow/oversimplistic, cherry-picked, it often falls back on colloquial stereotypes, etc.)
I cast my vote for this.
As example, I drive a particular 4 mile stretch of road a lot. It's scenic highway on the border between city and country. The speed limit is 40mph, clearly posted.
I set my cruise control on 40mph, which makes me the slowest car on the road. Every time I see a car appear way behind me I know that within a few minutes it will be on my back bumper. Almost every time I drive this road (a 7 minute drive) I have to pull over to let some impatient tailgater go around. If I don't they stay 3 feet behind me. Sometimes they blink their lights or honk their honk to admonish me for my rudeness of obeying the law.
And yes, I've checked my speedometer, as they often have one of those speed recording signs up which uses radar to track and report your speed.
Politicians don't lead the society, they reflect the society. We feed them bullshit (give me more services and lower my taxes etc) and they mirror the bullshit back to us. We are the problem, the politicians are just a symptom.
Why don't you just drive with the flow of traffic?
It's illegal. I'm happy going the speed limit. I trust highway engineers to know more about traffic safety than I do.
I was responding to this....
Quoting Andrew4Handel
... using a real world example. The example illustrates that the group consensus doesn't really believe in rule of law all that much.
If no one is pulled over for driving over the speed limit in that area, then it's effectively not illegal. And in fact, all of the poilce that I know, and this includes Highway Patrol, would say that (a) it's generally safer to ride with the flow of traffic, (b) unless it's a problematic area, they generally enforce traffic flow, not speed limits, and (c) because of (b), there are areas where they're more likely to pull someone over for driving too slow and impeding the flow of traffic, even if the flow of traffic in that area is over the speed limit.
So it would just matter whether tickets are normally given out in that area. If they are, then gradually people will be slowing down because enough regulars get tickets that they're not going to risk it any longer. If they aren't, you're effectively being a jerk and causing problems, or at least increasing risk, by not going with the flow of traffic.
They get pulled over and ticketed all the time. But everybody assumes it won't be them, so the speeding continues.
In your scheme, where everyone is supposed to do whatever they see somebody else doing....
What's the point of posting speed limits?
What's the point in having traffic regulations?
What's the point in having traffic engineers?
What's the point in having traffic police?
Why even have the law at all?
Quoting Terrapin Station
No, that does not matter one little bit. The police don't make the law, they just enforce it as best they can within limited budgets. The law on this particular road is clearly and repeatedly stated, 40mph is the maximum speed allowed. Period.
Rationalizing bullshit as invented by each supposedly clever little person who comes along doesn't have anything at all to do with it. If everybody can make up their own law, we have no law at all.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Hey, you could shove this pathetic rationalization up your ass if you'd like, I won't complain.
Not my scheme. It's a fact confirmed by many police I know. It's not something broadly generalized and unspecific, it's about speed limits, and as I pointed out, even at that it's conditional.
If people are pulled over there "all the time" it wouldn't be the norm to speed there unless it's an area full of really wealthy folks or something (and a jurisdiction that doesn't give points on licenses with certain tickets)
Then the police you know should be fired. It's not their job to make the law. It's their job to enforce the law as it currently exists to the best of their ability, whatever their opinion of that law might be.
If the police feel a particular speed limit is inappropriate and want to express that opinion through the proper channels, ok, fine. I wouldn't object to that and would be happy to consider their opinion.
Here's an experiment you can use to confirm what I'm discussing for yourself. Get out on the Interstate and set your cruise control at the posted speed limit. Now have your kids in the back seat count how many cars you pass, and how many pass you, a fun game to keep them happy.
The vast majority of other drivers will pass you, because they don't care what the law says, but only with what they think they can get away with.
That's the mindset which forms the foundation of an immoral society. Everything is all about me.
Quoting Terrapin Station
You are both right.
The posted speed limits are real and are rationally determined. People can and ought to obey the traffic laws. On the other hand, mass-traffic is no longer an individual matter; it's much more like a fluid in a pipe. If the mass of traffic on given highway is moving at 40, 60, or 80 mph, (never mind the posted speed) individual drivers will tend to go with the flow. Bucking the flow by going much faster or much slower causes perturbations in the flow and if it doesn't cause accidents, it raises a lot of blood pressure.
There is also a difference between freeways, which are (supposed to be) engineered for a higher average speed, and 2 lane secondary roads which serve local traffic. Exceeding the speed limit on 2 lane roads (especially curvy, hilly, narrow roads) is much more reckless than traveling over the limit on freeways.
Exceeding the speed limit on urban streets is more dangerous still.
Technology offers methods to detect and identify the license plates of speeding vehicles (or vehicles that disregard stop lights), but these methods have run into successful court challenges in some jurisdictions. Cameras and computers can identify the car owner, but they can't identify the driver (yet, anyway), and there is often a mismatch.
True. The problem that highway patrols have is that their policing territories are too large for the number of cars and officers to be able to ticket individual drivers on secondary roads, let alone ticket individuals on freeways. They do ticket, however, and the spectacle of ticketing tends to slow down traffic for a little while.
Declining oil supplies and global warming will resolve the issue over the coming century.
No, no, no and no my friend. "Never minding" the posted speed is why people who are willing to obey the law have to contend with those who aren't.
In my bombastic blowharding opinion, this topic appears to be a classic case of philosophical overthinking. You guys want to make this complicated, sophisticated. But it's not. The law was determined by a democratic process. The speed limit law is simple, easily understood, clearly stated, and readily available to all drivers.
1) We choose to obey the law, or...
2) We choose to defy it.
That's all there is to it.
No fancy philosophy required. Fancy philosophy gets in the way of clarity in such cases.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yes, true for sure. However, I can solve this if anyone would like to be further outraged. :smile:
I drive with the flow of traffic.Quoting Jake
Holy cow. When I encounter people like this online, I'd love to meet them in person, because I just can't imagine how you must come across in person.
I accept your surrender. Better luck next time.
I'm serious, though.
I just don't believe that everybody, including the police, should make up their own traffic laws as they go along on a case by case basis, that's all. Nothing too radical really.
You are encountering them in a setting where there is no interpersonal nuance. Were we all to meet in a bar for a few beers, we'd all get along just fine.
Quoting Jake
No, not overthinking. You are underthinking this. Anyway, it's not philosophy, it's traffic engineering. Here, look:
Interstate 80 near Berkeley. Above. very little individual choice; dictatorship, tofu, vegans, commies
Interstate 80 in Iowa. Below. Lots of individual choice, freedom, corn and pork, crypto-fascists
Jake, I'm not arguing in favor of people disregarding the law, or Iowa vs. Berkeley; and I'm not lauding heavy traffic as a good thing. It's just when you have 1000 drivers in a limited space all going the same direction, they can't exercise individual choice any more, even if they want to. They have formed a fluid. Where there are few drivers, individual choice is much more important. There is no mass controlling movement on the road.
Too many bicycles on greenways, crowding pedestrians in shopping malls, 1000 rats exiting the sewer, ball bearings in narrow race tracks -- all behave the same way.
Well, let's try it and see.
Right. So they should stop exercising individual choice. They should submit themselves to the law, which has presumably been thought through by traffic safety engineers who know a lot more about it than they do.
Please note, I'm not talking about going 20mph in a 50mph zone. I'm talking about going the maximum speed allowed by the law, and no more.
It sounds to me like what you are talking about is "executive agency" -- the capacity of an individual to decide to do something and then carry out the plan.
Executive agency does require some power. For instance, some jobs leave employees with zero power, except for the power to walk out the door and not come back. Other jobs entail a lot of executive agency and people tend to like those jobs better, not because they have so much power, but because they have enough power to do what they think best (or goof off for the afternoon...)
I don't find "power" all that helpful a feature to analyze; most of us have a modicum of personal power to run our lives, go to work, raise a family, etc., but very little power beyond that. We can get more power by uniting with other people to accomplish something. "One man's hands can't tear a prison down. But if two and two then fifty then a million, we'll see the walls come down..." labor organizing song
It isn't what we should do or even what we want to do when we are individual drivers in the middle of a dense traffic flow (or individual pedestrians in a dense crowd): The flow of traffic determines what we will do. If you are in a 65 mph zone and dense traffic has slowed to 45 mph, you must slow down with it. If it speeds up to 80 mph, you have to speed up with it. If you ignore traffic conditions, you are likely to be in accident. The life you save may be your own. Go with the flow.
Now, when you are in a low density traffic flow, like in Iowa (see above) you CAN choose to follow the speed limit, exceed it, or travel below it.
For pedestrians, the worst thing you can do when you are caught in the mass movement of a crowd is resist it, stop, demand to exercise your rights. People who do that get trampled. People who travel with the mass survive.
Our lives present more opportunities to exercise individual choice than we have time to use. Most of the time we can exercise individual choice without adverse consequences. But, sometimes not. If the sign says, "Crumbling rock on edge of canyon. Do not approach rim." you are well advised to forgo the great picture you would get by standing right on the edge of the crumbling rock. But go ahead. Get right out there, it's your choice. You have a right! Be sure to upload the picture to Facebook while you and the camera plunge to the rocks far below.
Since you are an avid hiker, I am sure you observed such signs--as all reasonable, intelligent, charming persons did. The ones who didn't are no longer with us.
I think this is a false fatalism and apathy.
I am not referring to power as a spectrum from small to great and I am not advocating people do anything revolutionary. I am referring to every power interaction involved in living. I think apathy is one of the most demoralizing things and also a power tactic. Apathy can amount to discouraging action or encouraging inaction.
I might have to go into a long analysis to highlight what I mean. Firstly though I don't think having children or raising a family is inevitable. Having children has a wide impact and the child parent power relation is of massive importance. Society is created by creating children and I see this as a political act in itself. In some situations and societies people have children with specifically political or religious aims.
So by not having children even if you cannot escape your own oppression you can prevent it happening to someone else so I think this is a false apathy. People can and do walk out of jobs and their are trade unions and other bodies protesting on behalf of workers. One thing that creates work related oppression is peoples insatiable consumerism, apathy about the exploitation of resources and people elsewhere. As with the Jordan Peterson example. Society reflect the culmination of the desires large numbers of people.
I had no power as a child and my parents were able to have total authority an control over me and even use physical threat and violence (hitting).
Someone can gain power in many different forms including simply mental freedom. Freedom from anxiety. Every day freedom from coercion, stress and threat. And little bits of freedom can lead to more personal empowerment and self direction.
Society is said to control people but society is people. If it is controlling people then it is one group of society controlling another. Like most people I could go probably out on a killing spree tomorrow but I restrain myself from antisocial acts. We cooperate to some extent with society but there has to be an incentive. The presence of some good and campaigning in society is one incentive not to become completely antisocial
(I am in the UK btw)
Meaning no disrespect to you personally, I utterly reject such blame shifting operations. These kind of rationalization systems are exactly why so many accidents happen, not people obeying the law.
I don't know why you think I was being apathetic or fatalistic.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I quite agree. Apathetic people (individually or in mass) are much easier to control or conversely, they tend to leave one alone. Apathy is extremely disempowering.
I get what you are saying about children -- having or not having. I'm neither a heavy-duty pro-natalist nor a heavy duty antinatalist. I never had any intention of having children, though.
The solution to these speeding scofflaws is not to quintuple the number of patrol officers or put more cameras in place. The solution is to get rid of the auto. Granted, autos are very convenient. But autos are part and parcel of other processes like suburbanization by which a tremendous amount of money was made selling land and houses. Work has remained centralized (or at least not located near to most workers) so a tremendous amount of travel is required by millions of people at the same time. Bad planning.
There are options for urban travel that a lot of suburban Americans find unappealing -- buses and trains. And well they should dislike shoddy service, which is what they have often been offered by public transit. But when its well done, people will leave their cars at home and read or chat on the train.
Inter-urban travel used to be accomplished by long-distance trains and long distance buses. When those services were first rate, people liked them. The same way that people used to consider getting on a plane and flying somewhere a special event. I think it's safe to say that few people find flying much better than taking a dirty Greyhound bus.
(Inter-urban train travel was not particularly good at the beginning of the 20th century. Trains went just about everywhere, but travel required a lot of tolerance for inconvenience. Further, a lot of the trains were not pleasant. The heyday of train travel was post WWII. It didn't last, because the American model is "make a profit for us or go to hell". By 1970 private passenger train travel was over; enter Amtrak (which actually is pretty decent, to the extent that Congress doesn't starve it and the companies that control the railroads let them get to the stations on time.