Friends, I don't very often come across a philosophical thesis that I fully agree with. The one below, however, is not only 'spot on' in my view, but it is quite relevant to the dialog we have been having about human nature, spiritual awakening, and cultural transformation. I'll give you the article now, and my own comments follow. By the way, I'm saving up the many comments you have sent in, and we will get around to them soon I promise. rkm -------------------------------------------------------- http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_andrew_b_071211_power_and_corruption.htm OpEdNews December 11, 2007 Power and Corruption: Just What Is Their Relationship? By Andrew Bard Schmookler The idea that power and corruption stand in some meaningful relationship was encapsulated and as if carved into stone by Lord Acton, when he famously said: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." But I'm not sure that this statement, however famous it may be, captures the essential truth about the relationship. Or at least, that it captures all that is essential about the truth of how power and corruption are connected. In saying that power tends to corrupt, Lord Acton appears to be saying that if one adds power to a person's pre-existing character, that character gets changed for the worse. This is how people almost always use Acton's famous dictim, and I think it is only a limited part of the picture. Another part of the picture is suggested by the statement from the author David Brin: It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that power attracts the corruptible." According to this view, if we see a great deal of corruption in the arena of power --and regrettably we surely do-- it is because the kinds of people who choose to participate in power's games are a non-random and morally sub-par group. This view has a good deal of truth to it, methinks. Power is indeed an arena in which a zero-sum game is enacted, and it therefore attracts a disproportionate number of those who want more than their fair share. It would be comforting to think that the extent of corruption one sees in the sphere of power were solely a reflection of this process of selection and self-selection that brings the corrupt forward to fill powerful positions. If prison guards tend toward the sadistic, one might conclude, it is because the role of prison guard is likely to be sought by people who wish to fill a role in which their sadism can express itself. But then there's that famous Stanford study in which students were randomly divided into guards and prisoners for the sake of an experiment, and in which the guards began rather quickly to manifest sadistic behaviors toward the prisoners, who as a group were indistinguishable from themselves just a few days before. These "guards" were not an especially "corruptible" group who, because of their tendencies, were attracted to that powerful role. I'm inclined to regard power less as a transformer of people's character, as Acton asserts, than as source of opportunity: the possession of power permits people to make manifest a part of their nature that previously was hidden. Not that power corrupts. Rather, power gives people a chance to express impulses that others --those who are weak, and thus subject to the will of others, and those who act among equals who require them to stay within certain boundaries-- keep a lid on. This is a darker view than Lord Acton's. And darker also than Brin's. For it declares that there is corruption already embedded in the character of a great many people, and that giving such people the wider scope of action that comes with power simply serves as an invitation to put forth into the world the darkness that is already there. And then, as people are also shaped by the actions they have taken, Lord Acton's dictim comes in again: having enacted their worst impulses, people are also transformed into something more corrupt than they had been. Were those Stanford students undiminished by what they had done? Were Hitler's Willing Executioners not degraded by their crimes? Power, by enabling corrupt actions, does corrupt. Note, however, that I am NOT maintaining that such corruption is universal. Not ALL the prison guards in the Stanford experiment became sadistic. And not ALL the people who gain power in our world use it for corrupt purposes. Some rulers have used their power justly, for the good, without abuse, without corrupt and self-serving intent. But there's a final point to be made-- a point of a wholly different sort: when someone in power participates in corruption, it is not necessarily a sign of corruption of character. Imagine a person in a position of power who has reliable access to divine guidance. And suppose that the nature of this divine guidance is reliably moral in a consequentialist sense of the word. In other words, the guidance tells this powerful person which action among those available will do the most to make the world a better place. And imagine, finally, that this person invariably follows that moral/consequentialist counsel. This thoroughly uncorrupted person in power, I am asserting, will often be guided to choose a course of action that involves him in corruption. [Note: as I speak of "he" and "him" I wish those pronouns to be understood as also including "she" and "her."] If our hypothetical powerful and uncorrupt person possessed COMPLETE power, this would not be the case. He could simply decide always and only for the good, and so it would be. But in the actual world, no one's power is ever so total as that. And therefore, to to accomplish good, he will need to make common cause with others. If he were in an ideal world, making common cause with others in order to achieve the good would not require our sterling leader to become complicit in corruption. But the real world in which he must operate is far from ideal. And among the others with whom he must make common cause there will be some who are corrupt. A prototypical instance of this is the need, in World War II, for the democracies to make alliance with Stalin, a tyrant on whose hands was already the blood of many millions of his own (Soviet) people before the war had even begun. Another instance is how the creators of the New Deal required as allies the segregationist powers of the Jim Crow South. Such instances could be multiplied almost endlessly. This is always one of the consequences of choosing to operate in the realm of power-- at least for those who are willing to accept that part of the responsibility that comes with power is the duty to achieve as much good as possible for the world, even though accomplishing that means inevitably that one must get one's "hands dirty." This, incidentally, presents one of the greatest challenges facing citizens in their search for good leaders: how to differentiate between those who indulge in corruption because that suits their purposes, and those who participate in corruption as the necessary means of accomplishing truly good purposes. So we have a fourth dimension of the relationship between power and corruption. Lord Acton is probably right that power tends to corrupt, and Brin right that power attracts the corruptible (and the corrupt). And power also affords people the opportunity to show the corrupt tendencies they'd previously kept hidden. And finally, participation in power also requires even the uncorrupt to participate in the corruption of the world. Authors Website: http://nonesoblind.org/ Authors Bio: Andrew Bard Schmookler's website www.nonesoblind.org is devoted to understanding the roots of America's present moral crisis and the means by which the urgent challenge of this dangerous moment can be met. Dr. Schmookler is also the author of such books as The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution (SUNY Press) and Debating the Good Society: A Quest to Bridge America's Moral Divide (M.I.T. Press). He also conducts regular talk-radio conversations in both red and blue states. -------------------------------------------------------- rkm comments continuing> Schmookler concludes from his analysis that we need to exercise great care in choosing our leaders. In this sense, Schmookler remains entirely 'inside the box' as regards cultural or spiritual transformation. His suggestions might help to 'improve voter judgement', but not enough, under our current circumstances, to make any real difference. I'd like to summarize his excellent analysis, and then take it in a different direction. What he is telling us is that power corrupts everyone, but for different reasons. Nearly everyone has an inherent 'dark side'. If it's an overt dark side, then the person actually seeks power so that he can 'do more evil'. If it's a latent dark side, then the darkness gets amplified in any position of power, leading again to 'active evil'. Even those very few who have no dark side, if in a position of power, end up participating in 'evil', passively we might say, in order to 'get anything done' in working with other more typical (actively evil) power holders. This is something I've believed for some time, but was never able to express so clearly. To begin, let us note that our modern cultures are permeated, from top to bottom, with positions of power. That is how our societies operates; that is our culture's 'philosophy of organization' . Every institution, every corporation, every government agency at every level -- and even many of the clubs and organizations we might join -- all of these function under the direction of power holders, who while in power typically make their decisions according to their own judgement. In light of Schmookler's analysis -- power brings out 'the dark side' -- this means that our society operates at every level under the corrupting influence of the dark side. So what can we do about this? What can we do to tame the dark side? If we don't do something, the dark side is going to continue leading us toward global disasters of many kinds. We have heard from many voices, in our recent dialog, that the only path to salvation is spiritual transformation, which in our current context means 'eliminating the dark side from human nature'. Is this a realistic path to pursue? Buddha, Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and many other great souls have tried, given it their all, and here we are nonetheless in our current crisis. Are we better than those great souls? Are we more likely to succeed? Does a knowledge of 'spiral dynamics' better equip us? Does assigning a color to higher consciousness empower us to change human nature? I cannot help but be highly skeptical of this approach. I cannot help but see it as wishful thinking, arising out of the desperation of our times, and the frustration of not being able to think of anything practical we can do to fix things. I see it as an example of the 'foxhole syndrome' -- "There are no atheists in a foxhole". That is to say, if shells are exploding all around you, you remember your childhood bible lessons and turn to prayer, there being no other hope. And that's exactly our situation as citizens. Crises are exploding all around us, local ones and global ones, and we are as helpless and vulnerable as the soldier in the foxhole. It is understandable that we turn to wishful thinking, but 'changing human nature' is only wishful thinking nonetheless, in my view. Of course any agenda aiming at social transformation can be characterized as being at least partly wishful thinking. My own agenda, about community harmonization, is admittedly a long shot. And I probably wouldn't have pursued that line of thinking if I weren't also in a foxhole. There may turn out to be no way to overcome the power of today's all-powerful elites. We may in fact be doomed. Nonetheless, we have no choice but to pursue hope, no matter how dim it may shine. But we do have the ability to employ reasoning, and historical observation, in deciding where to place our hope. If we could eliminate the dark side from human nature that would be wonderful. And similarly, if we could eliminate positions of power from our cultures, that would be wonderful as well. In either case, we would have a realistic hope of freeing our societies from domination by the dark side. In the first case we would eliminate the dark side itself. In the second case, we don't give the dark side a vehicle of expression: the 'overtly dark' can cause trouble only for their family and immediate neighbors; the 'latently dark' aren't put in a position where their dark side comes out, and those without a dark side aren't put in a position where they must compromise with evil. So which is a more feasible quest, changing human nature or changing our cultures? Both are admittedly very tall orders, but is one more feasible than the other? Is it possible that one is like migrating to Mars, while the other is merely like climbing Everest? If so, then we'd be smarter to attempt Everest than to attempt migration to Mars. It is worth our time to apply a little reasoning and historical observation to these questions and distinctions. The fact is that there has never been a time or place in the long history of homo sapiens where people have not had a dark side, or where human nature has been different than it is now. Human nature, for better of for worse, seems to be genetic. There have always been a few 'enlightened ones', as there still are today, but most of the people in every society, primitive or modern, large or small, have always had a dark side. From an historical perspective then, the quest of 'changing human nature' can only be seen as an attempt to migrate to Mars, something that has never been done in all of human experience and something that we don't even know is possible -- and all the available evidence indicates that it is not possible. On the other hand, history shows us thousands of societies where the dark side did not dominate, where there were no positions of 'power over others'. For hundreds of thousands of years, in fact, that was the only kind of society there was, and even today many such societies still exist, albeit in remote areas that are blessed with an absence of marketable resources. It seems clear to me that changing our cultures falls into the 'climbing Everest' category. The kind of cultures we need have existed before, and they are consistent with human nature as it is. Although still formidable, I suggest that 'cultural transformation' is the more feasible of the two quests. I'm not suggesting, by the way, that we become hunter-gatherers. That would be idiotic. I am suggesting that those societies can provide insight into 'models of governance' that we might be able to adapt to modern circumstances. History also shows us that cultures can be transformed by means of grassroots movements, and in many cases the transformation has come rapidly, and in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. The British never thought the American Colonists would be able to throw off the royal yoke, and yet it was accomplished in only seven years or so by rabble guerillas, leading to a more participatory culture instead of an 'absolute ruler' culture. Marie Antoinette never dreamed the Bastille would fall, and that the people of France would create their own new culture (such as it is). Most of us never dreamed the Soviet Union would collapse, and certainly not so rapidly. Cultural change does happen through grassroots action, and it can happen in extremely hostile circumstances. Our problem, historically, is that we have not changed our cultures in the right ways. We've demonstrated that we-the-people can make changes, but we haven't yet learned how to do so in a way that eliminates positions of 'power over others'. The fact that we exist in a 'foxhole mentality' -- ie, in the midst of global crises beyond our control -- means that energy is available for grassroots action, if a path of hope can be found. That same foxhole mentality, however, is not particularly conducive to the achievement of enlightenment. Fear generally leads to a contraction of consciousness rather than an expansion of consciousness. So for yet another reason, it seems that 'changing human nature' is our less feasible option. As I see it then, based not just on opinion or sentiment but on reasoned analysis, is that our best hope lies in trying to figure out how we can transform our cultures -- through grassroots initiatives -- in a way that can eliminate positions of 'power over others'. In other words -- can we learn how to govern ourselves collectively? Can we find a way for our societal policies to emerge as a consensus out of our 'collective considerations', rather than having our policies determined by some set of power holders, who inevitably must be corrupted by their overt or latent dark sides? In recent postings I have outlined in some detail how we might pursue such a path of cultural transformation. That particular path is not one I discovered myself, but one that folks like Jim Rough, Tom Atlee, and many others have been exploring on behalf of all of us. Those are people who have been touched by a bit of spiritual enlightenment, and I think it is in that way that enlightenment CAN be part of the solution -- we can pay attention to those who have the capacity to show us the way. in hope, rkm -- -------------------------------------------------------- Posting archives: http://cyberjournal.org/show_archives/ Escaping the Matrix website: http://escapingthematrix.org/ cyberjournal website: http://cyberjournal.org How We the People can change the world: http://governourselves.blogspot.com/ Community Democracy Framework: http://cyberjournal.org/DemocracyFramework.html Film treatment: A Compelling Necessity http://rkmcdocs.blogspot.com/2007/08/film-treatment-compelling-necessity.html Moderator: •••@••.••• (comments welcome)
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