Power, authority and knowledge
Seth Godin wrote:
Starting at the top seems like great advice. Deal with the people with power and authority.
Except…
Power and authority aren’t often in the same place.
The real power is usually foundational. What happens when humans interact. The way things are around here. Often, the people who are ostensibly in charge are simply choosing from a few culturally acceptable choices, and those choices are dictated by the foundation.
It might seem like a detour, but it’s actually the cause of change.
Power and authority aren't the same thing. Authority is a social construct, a story we agreed upon. We give an external entity (be it a person or an institution) authority over our lives, but we can always take it back, we have the power to do so.
People in positions of authority are powerless, unless we surrender our foundational power to them. They indeed have a few options. Their last one is to keep the masses under the impression that they are powerless. Therefore, a costly propaganda machinery is put in place to maintain that illusion.
Certainly, real and long-lasting change is only possible when it comes from the bottom up.
However...
“People like us doing things like this” must first realize their own ability to make an impactful change. The impact comes when a critical mass do something about a particular problem, no matter how apparently insignificant it might be at the individual level.
Delusional, frightened and powerless (i.e. self-inflicted powerlessness) individuals never bring about change, they just comply. They do what others do, they need to fit in at all cost.
They comply and then brag about their complaint behaviour as they seem to believe, with a bizarre unshakeable certainty, that it is the smartest and morally correct thing to do. That's just what the autocrats need to stay where they are, keeping the vicious cycle going.
And talking about changes and events triggering them. Mexican Independence Day is celebrated today, September 16th. According to history books, the 11-years long war against the Spanish monarchy started a day like today, 212 years ago.
I always thought we should celebrate when the armed conflict ended rather than when it started, simple because start something is easier than finish it. But I don't have the authority to have a say in that.
More than two centuries of being an independent country. Things are not great now, but I guess it was worse under the Spaniard's ruling.
However, I do believe we stopped being the colony of an empire just to become the backyard of an emerging superpower.
Interesting to remember that, for a few years after the Independence war and before the next major conflict occurring exactly one century after—the Mexican Revolution—Mexico's territory look something like this:
Anyway, I don't celebrate this day as the majority of my compatriots do it. I don't celebrate, actually. But it is a good time to give some thought about my own culture, particularly now that I'm able to observe it from the distance.
Also, a good reminder that understand our own history is a great source of power.