|
|
Re: power, and more power...
Holly Swyers (nesn-info@CCE.ORG)
Wed, 13 Mar 1996 19:58:14 GMT
On 13 March 96, Mike Cahill wrote:
>Bureaucratic life is not primarily about researching
>our way, painstakingly, to better solutions to the problems, in this >case,
of
>poverty, crime, or social violence. It's about administering a received
>status quo.
Is bureaucratic power then at least in part about not allowing people to
realize that it is not really interested in them? Or rather (in this case)
power is about maintaining existing levels of poverty, crime or social
violence, since without poverty, crime or social violence, this particular
example would not exist. Let me sort out my thoughts a moment...
People who have power are interested in maintaining power at least, as you
say. If to maintain power, a person must also support the status quo, and if
a person gets power by saying they will change the status quo, does this mean
that power in some cases is about executing an elaborate sleight of hand -
masking the status quo as something else or maybe creating the illusion of
change? I need to think about this some more - but I think this goes back
in part to the issue of knowledge. Hmmm....
-Holly
|