What does it mean to have personal power today? Not so long ago, personal power used to be concentrated in a handful of politically connected, wealthy, and military actors. Going further back in time, personal power as well as group power was the near-exclusive realm of political actors – with their birthrights and ties to “influencers,” not unlike those of today, in a food chain that clearly favored those at the top. Today, personal power is becoming increasingly dispersed throughout every society, including the more-repressive ones. Even in the poorest countries, if you have a cell phone you are a “player.”
Especially in the US, people have wanted to believe that if they followed certain rules and set themselves up with certain conditions – credentials and the like – they should have reasonable control of their own fate. Even in the relatively free-wheeling society of modern America, some degree of security is attainable. This has actually been increasingly untrue over the last several decades. Too many forces – social, economic, and technological – have run unchecked and uncoordinated to hold a “predictable” system in place. The current situation has not so much arisen by intent, good or bad, but through inaction resulting from a combination of ignorance and lack of institutions to meaningfully manage such evolving situations.
Meanwhile, with the waning of political influence, economic systems fill much of that void and mass communication channels claim most of the rest. People can now just decide to do the things that feel most right to them, and in doing so, person by person, the economic system, at least, must follow or be reduced to irrelevance. This of course does not always lead to what we might consider a good outcome; but it is a part of our evolutionary path.
As these changes in empowerment happen, they define what is now the new responsibility of personal empowerment. One key, relatively simple aspect of this is that the “market,” made up of multiple individual buying and selling decisions, is an alternative “voting” mechanism and arguably more powerful than traditional political channels. The market is much broader, dynamic, and powerful than we tend to imagine. Every individual decision is an “order” for others to fulfill. Those who fulfill the orders might seem to have authority but they are compelled to respond as directed. Individual orders come about through what people choose to buy, which is a substantial influence on the overall market in itself. Combined individual buying choices can also be institutionalized through participation in organizations, opinion polls, structured strategic planning processes, and even actual voting – although the latter has become increasingly irrelevant.
Powerful as the economic system is, do we have any truly definable “system” within which the world functions from day to day? Life goes on and the crucibles of life – individuals, families, and religious, civic, and economic institutions, food chains, and information dissemination – ebb and flow as their fortunes shift. Any “order” that emerges from this is mostly a matter of just-adequate levels of mutual self-interest playing out, in just enough places to stave off chaos. The veneer of what passes for this type of civilization is paper-thin. A nudge off to one side, from a major natural disaster, challenge to political legitimacy, etc. can blow the protective cover. We don’t think about things like this, but most people innately sense a growing awareness of our vulnerability. Nevertheless, this is what we currently have available to work with.
This lack of a real, consciously structured system of world order is, naturally, fearful for most of us. Events around us seem increasingly beyond our control; so who is controlling – and what are “they” doing? The default response to this is to “join up” with whomever seems to be, possibly, most able to stand up to the confusion and stake out some semblance of control. Make no mistake, this choice is a blind alley that only serves to entrap you in a web of deceit that you must then also deny. “Hopelessness” does not begin to describe your fate under these circumstances because you have forced yourself to become blind to what was dysfunctional about your “cause” to begin with.
We are by no means locked into this kind of fate. Certainly, today, most of us simply have much more freedom now to be the person we want to be. You can start with these five steps:
Accept that, naturally, you are at least a little confused about your direction. (Those who are seriously confused are really not helping, and worst case are adding to chaos.) The world’s “way we have always done it” is littered with failures big and small. New, “creative” concepts to solve various challenges in the world tend to be narrowly focused, as is most innovation, while we continue to avoid tackling the major social, environmental, and other problems we face. True creativity starts with you confronting yourself, where you stand right now, and facing up to options that are actually more realistic as well as valid.
Recognize that if you knew what you needed to know in order to do what you needed to do, you would be doing in now, and becoming what you wanted to be. So,
Look into what you deserve to know more about, and engage with educating yourself on your own terms.
Recognize and adopt new possibilities in personal empowerment.
Relate to your world and its mass confusion with objective compassion as you rise above that confusion.
Comments