“The power comes from the barrel of the gun.” (Mao Tse Tung)
In this post we will look at contemporary political power common to most democracies, therefore we focus on these three basic steps:
Economic Power> Media> Political Power
Power: the positive possibilities of enforcing OWN interests and enforce the own will. The OWN interests and wills may be those of an individual, group or a people, a State, a community of states or of all mankind.
In a world where everything is quantifiable in monetary figures, where the only value is dictated by this number, economic power is the power in the strict sense: the money is the medium for power, as the club was the instrument in Prehistory and the barrel of the gun it was from the IX – take note that even with money you can buy clubs and firearms.
In contemporary democracies, the power struggle does not occur primarily in the context of physical warfare, with weapons, but it crossed the consensus: who gets most votes will win political power, the power to defend their interests and own will, more or less authoritarian, according to law. Of course they are the same laws and, in particular the Constitution that “protect” a State – or other government entities – by a tyrannical exercise of power but, for different reasons than maybe will develop another time, these laws are in partially or completely unable to follow his vocation: why outdated or easily “legally” circumvented or illegally circumvented by corruption and therefore incapable of being laws, real laws, but especially for one simple reason: political power is the power to make laws (and change the old laws).
Therefore, in a condition where as we will see the economic powers are those have political power, the real protection of the common good of a group that wants to elect their representatives may not be the law, but the awareness of voters, the ability to understand which candidate might really work for the common good of the community to which he is called to lead. And here is the focus of this discourse: the relationship between individual conscience, in this case expressed by the individuality of the vote, and the memosphere where undisputed kings are the mainstream media (TV, newspapers, radio).
The ontology of the concept of consciousness has been debated throughout history in various disciplines and schools of thought and although it is a very interesting topic but a digression in this field might deviate us too much from the speech in space and time … So give a brief definition of Meme, a key concept for understanding the relationship between consciousness and memosphere we intoduced here.
A Meme is “a unit of information transmitted from one mind to another” an idea, and memosphere is, metaphorically, the universe of memes, the set of all vehicles through which memes are spread. Finally consciousness, the mind, is the place of our memes, where our ideas through which we make our decisions.
(For more information, you can search on Wikipedia and you can read “Consciousness Explained” by D. Dennett and “The Selfish Gene” by R. Dawkins)
The mass media are the biggest part of the memosphere because the influence the majority of consciences, so that whoever gets control of the mass media has greater power to influence the minds of voters (spreading their memes, ideas) and winning the legitimacy of political power.
If we do not want to question the democratic system as a whole, at least we should note that the majority of voters (of a nation or, in theory, of the universe) can’t have a profound self-consciousness about the majority of issues relationed with the political debate of an election campaign (medicine, law, education, art, ethics, urban planning, architecture, economics, …) and therefore from these premises is natural that their choices are constrained by what they hear in their memosphere in which the mass media, as mentioned, are part predominant. And if these big media are the memetic product of wills of the major economic powers, and therefore transmitted the memes that promote the power of these powers (or why they are funded by the major powers or because they are a direct part an economic power), therefore, what we call democracy becomes an oligarchy in a vicious cycle where economic power is found to be political power.
Have you ever wondered why in all countries although all voters declare themselves dissatisfied with the policies of previous administrations, are always two or three political parties that alternate in power and that often differ more in theory than in practice?
The only way to break this spell is either changing the media mechanism, make the media to be the scene of a serious discussion of ideas, but above all a place of equal debate between all parties and political positions.
If we do not want to fall in the Utopia, at least we denote the contradictions: we must stop to call “democracy” democracy, “right” right, “value” value … perhaps the first step is to finding new “concepts” that really reflect new concepts – as soon as possible and better than before …
I leave you with this two things founded on te web:
Paint of Vincenzo Conciatori titles Il potere (the power) with the consense of the autor:
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Il Potere - Vincenzo Conciatori
Interpretation suggested by the Author:
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The power, defined as achieving a long and hard struggle in society, It’s hard to be obtained, even more impossible to achieve directly (the central column that does not support points). Therefore there are only two possible paths to follow: one on the left, the iter bureaucratic and hard at sunlight and one on the right, darker (having “contacts” and “friends” in the power to help you). in the two paths…. there is always a barrier of “guards” that will prevent access to the upstairs. Upstairs there is a floor at sunlight, surrounded by beautiful things……
y les dejo esta tambièn esta otra frase:
“… To some extent, power is in our pockets .(…) if, through an information, all voters would realize that power can be really in the hands of citizens, this latter would be more responsible. It will not be an easy battle, but would have to fight, not surrender, saying that money is “everything.” The paper on which we express the vote also has some value! We have it on hand and we have to use it. ..” (Augusto Graziani)
This article is related to earlier Philosophy and Society:
Popularity: 19% [?]
Related posts:
Muy buen analisis del poder.
Me soprede cada dia ver como estos “memes” pasan de medio a medio, del diario a la tele, de la radio a internet y de todos a miles de personas. Pero lo que me parece mas sorprendente es ver como se repite en todos, una y otra vez.
Pero no todo es tan negativo, la tendencia pareciera esta cambiando.
las monedas que aparecen en la bandera son una buena metafora tambien…ja pero ese poder me parece que viene de la prehistoria
Muy buen post che!!
Saludos
Los verdaderos amos del mundo ya no son los gobiernos, sino los dirigentes de grupos multinacionales financieros o industriales, e instituciones internacionales opacas (FMI, Banque mondiale, OCDE, OMC, bancos centrales). Además, estos dirigentes no son elegidos, a pesar del impacto de sus decisiones sobre la vida de los pueblos.
El poder de estas organizaciones se ejerce sobre una dimensión planetaria, siendo que el poder de los Estados esta limitado a una dimensión nacional.
Por otro lado, el peso e influencia de las empresas transnacionales en el flujo financiero ha sobrepasado al de los estados hace mucho tiempo.
La dimensión transnacional, más ricos que los estados, pero también principales fuentes de financiamiento de partidos políticos de todas las tendencias y en la mayoría de los países, estas organizaciones, de hecho, están por encima de las leyes y del propio poder político, por encima de la democracia.