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power dynamics

  • pete avatar

    American aristocracy could learn some things from the old world. A big American founding myth is that we eliminated the aristocracy from our government, but the real American innovation is making it much easier to join the aristocracy starting as an outsider. 

    Sure, great. A little closer to meritocracy, one hopes. 

    But governance is complex enough that you’d ideally want to be trained from birth to do it. Programs of similar intensity to olympic training, for example. 

    That was a potential upside of the previous method. You had a limited set of preselected kids who were almost certainly going to rule one day, so you could put them through the training to do so. It often worked pretty well.

    Now anyone who is good at twitter can ostensibly rule without knowing anything about how to do it. 

    Remember Boaty McBoatface? Our current timeline is the spiritual equivalent of running an internet poll to determine who is in charge of a nuclear reactor. Except orders of magnitudes more reckless and dangerous than that. 

     We need a better synthesis. 

    #DeepTakes

    blakeSA•...
    I'm also chewing on something around "governance", "rule", "in charge." Reading your post, those aspects of reality, someone ruling or being in charge, seems assumed, and I think probably in some way that's totally right, but in some way I'm imagining that part of the synthesis...
    leadership
    governance
    power dynamics
    Comments
    0
  • annabeth avatar

    Oppress me. Is it possible? Can you oppress me right now?

    Context:
    The guy I’m dating (Ken) had said he was frustrated with the Austin School District teachers that he’s teaching Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to because they were all giving wrong answers to the question, Who is the oppressor in your classroom? According to Ken, and apparently according to the book the teachers had been assigned to read, the oppressor in a classroom is the teacher.

    Last night I was telling my friend Arun about it and he said Oppress me! Right now!

    All of this post is rooted in my discomfort with the premise that all teachers are oppressors in their classrooms. I can see the roots of truth of it, but making that its own conclusion point looks wildly flawed to me.

    tommySA•...
    In order to oppress someone the oppressor needs to hold some kind of power over the oppressed right? I think the only way for me to oppress you would be to use my power from being employed at uptrust to bid for your comment to be removed and your voice to be silenced....
    social justice
    power dynamics
    oppression
    workplace hierarchy
    Comments
    0
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