power

On peace

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1

On the painting, the Chinese emperor sits at the centre of the frame, calm and symmetrical. Behind, a dragon stretches in dynamic spiral, mouth and claws open, manifesting chaos.

2

Certain diseases spread with just one point of exposure. Most require multiple factors. The same applies to knowledge, and behaviour. The rule of thumb is that people attend an event if they’ve heard about it three times, and one of their friends is going. There is no simple causation. You need A + B + C for something to manifest.

3

You know the drill. Three types of networks. Beware central points of failure. Hail distributed resilience. Now quick, let’s embrace blockchain, open source, holocracy, or whatever latches onto the model.

This is probably the most widely shared image in ‘talks that make you feel smart’, since the rise of the Internet. Why should I abstain? Here’s my quick take on it. I see it as a way of understanding various forms of power, as exerted in a state, or in organisations. 

To the left, executive power. The capacity to get things done. When the crisis strikes, one person makes decisions, the rest obey. Flows of information gather on the one point. There’s one head of state. All group members recognise this one person as a shared figure of authority. All monitor their words and behaviour for guidance.

At the centre, judiciary power. Local conflicts and arbitration sorted through local courts and judges. But one central point monitors each of those for alignment. And if a matter cannot be solved locally, parties might see the Supreme Court, Top Judge, or whatever central entity keeps the system coordinated.  

To the right, legislative power. Each representative a separate node, forming a mesh. Parties and cliques make local clusters, as do regional affiliations, gender, religion, or all sorts of other bases for factional aggregation. Some nodes are more connected than others. But things remain fluid. Norms and information circulate peer to peer.

This model offers a different take on good old separation of power. Namely, that it’s not so much about having separate institutions for different functions. Rather, it’s choosing to structure a group through distinct overlapping networks of relationships.

4

Each of us holds multiple identities. Male. Female. Non-binary. French. Global. Australian. Suburban. Father. Grand-mother. Christian. Muslim. Atheist. Left-handed. Socialist. Conservative. Retired. Entrepreneur. Bike-rider. Car owner. Vegan. Fighter. Soprano. Bass. Cat person. Strong person. Gentle person. Dog person.

Each item in the list – and the list has no end – marks a different peer group. The difficulty lies in managing overlaps. How can I be part of the Melbourne community – with its extensive suburbs and cars – and a committed bike-rider? How can I be Christian and Gay? How can I be male and gentle?

Sometimes, we simplify. Melbourne is a green, progressive city. Car-owners don’t belong. Melbourne is an industrious, entrepreneurial city. Socialists don’t belong. Melbourne is a free-spirited city. Dog owners don’t belong. We cast a bridge here, we dig a moat there, and  before we know it, we’re up in arms to defend our precious sense of belonging.

War cements overlaps. Peace has tender boundaries.

5

Many westerners fear China. What would prevent their Supreme Leader from wreaking havoc around the world. There’s no rule of law. No separation of power.

I was talking with my friend Patrick, who coaches executives in Japan. Consulting companies headquartered in the US like to barge into the country to deploy their models, fire people and put process in place. Then they leave, and things collapse. The people were the glue.

Separation of power is a guardrail against excess. If a psychopath comes to rule, they’ll be kept in check. Add a layer of market ideology – greed is good, and people should do whatever they want if they can afford it – and you’ve created a situation where, indeed, we need a solid system to guard against all sorts of deranged appetites. 

So, with that friend, we ventured the following thought. What if limiting the rule of law, reducing process, and consolidating powers, created the conditions for more virtuous leadership? What if it was another type of guardrail against excess, one that must rely on internalized limits, and creates ideal conditions to cultivate restraint and moderation?

6

Clusterings of true believers have disproportionate influence. If 3% of a population hold firm, norms can shift. Canetti calls them crowd crystals. Stable groups with strong internal connections, shaping the culture, beliefs and behaviours of a much larger population.   

Much has been written about weak ties, connectors, and the spread of information. Social transformation, however, needs the strong ties of a close-knit group. Sound waves amplified in its echo chamber.

7

The Polynesian world expands over the open sea. We can learn from ancient navigation techniques. Set the vision, meet the team, consider anchors, anticipate islands along the way, and look to the flying birds that indicate land nearby. This is the wayfinding model proposed by New Zealander Faumuina Felolini Maria Tafuna’I, to rethink innovation and development.

 Certainly, here is a wisdom tradition that we can learn from. It is, in fact, highly compatible with our Western world shaped by navigators, where future projects unfold on virgin islands beyond the ocean, waiting for humans to settle. This is a model for enlightened sea-steading, space colonisation – entrepreneurship even – predicated on there being more space, out there, unclaimed.

The model is useful, certainly, but incomplete without an Australian counterpart. One based in aboriginal wisdom, and continentality. One where slack lies not beyond the shores, but in the shifting patterns of a saturated world.

8

Multiculturalism embraces different communities sharing the same space. I wonder though, what would an intercultural society look like? What would it take to create a world where strong ties are not based on cultural similarity, shared origins, or mutual predictability, but open-ended delight in exploring subtle patterns of distinction and overlap.

9

The human brain differs from other species by the size of its frontal cortex. The key function of which is inhibition. 

Beyond Justice

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The curfew broke my spirit.

Saturday late afternoon, I was with a friend in Princes Park. We sat down in the middle of an oval, and drank a bottle of wine. Sunday, I was out on the MCG grounds. I sat on a bench to meditate, then read a book, walking. It was sunny, people were out, in pairs or small groups, some with their masks off, smiling. I came back home and told Philip: ‘This time around, it feels like the lockdown is so much more humane. That’s good, that’s what we need.’

In 2020, I dreaded the police. I was a mess back then. I was leaving a Green Tech startup that turned out toxic, put the final touches on a PhD, co-wrote a book on governance innovation, and kept an eye on the charity that I founded. All difficult and complex projects, all for the greater good, each one a leap of faith.

Keeping my mental health stable was a stretch. To cope, I would often go for long walks, beyond the allocated two hours. I avoided crowded places, wore a mask, and stayed within my radius. But I broke the letter of the rules, and didn’t want a fine I could hardly afford. Police were not on my side.

Back in primary school, when the class went into chaos before recess, the teacher would sometimes look at us and say: ‘nobody will go out until you’re all silent.’ Silence took a while to settle. I always experienced this as injustice. I didn’t speak, or not much. Why punish everyone for the failings of a few? Every time, I felt my default allegiance shift, from the teacher to the rebels. In the face of authoritarian excess, resistance starts to look very much like virtue.

One sure way to gain short term control, as a government, is to set harsh rules, and enforce them loosely. The Chief Health Officer told it very clearly. In itself, the curfew serves no purpose. It sends a message. It’s the teacher shouting at the class, imposing order through the threat of punishment.

As an adult, I understand the urgency. I feel compassion for the Premier too. Imagine running a state through one of the world’s harshest lockdown, successfully bringing case numbers to zero, spending months in hospital with fractured ribs, facing another outbreak – and then watching videos of drinking crowds on the streets and large engagement parties? I would certainly start shouting.

So, the strong measures and strong language make sense. Sending a strong signal makes sense. Both in terms of their intended effect, and our leaders’ mental state. But it is not fair. And as happened when I was a child, I sense a shift of my allegiance towards the rebels. Power is a subtle balance. Stray too far from justice in the name of efficiency, and you risk losing public trust.

I love Melbourne and Melburnians. I love our sense of civic virtue. I built a charity to promote intercultural understanding, nurtured by the spirit of our city. I have made a deliberate choice to devote my professional life to the complex systemic problems of the 21st century – whether I get paid for it or not – again, nurtured by Melbourne. I am not alone. Many of us, inspired by a city that believes in collective thriving, go beyond the letter of the rules, to support each other, and create a better environment for all.

Civic participation is what makes Melbourne one of the world’s greatest places to live. Neither market nor government can fund or manage this adequately. It is too deep, and elusive. Besides, civic participation, social innovation, community care, all require some bending of the rules at the edges. If only because we have no market signals to guide us.

I have compassion for the Premier. I also have compassion for the rule benders – including myself. We’re tired, and well aware that there is much work to do. To preserve our own mental health and that of others. To support the small businesses we love, keep contact with the people we love, and stitch what is left of the civic fabric, so we can weave it back quickly. All this for its own sake, but also so we can tackle climate change, and refugee challenges, as the recent IPCC report and return of the Taliban reminded us.

Some probably stretch too far. Large engagement parties and pub crawls are probably too much. But are they born of pure selfishness, or a confused and somewhat misguided desire for civic rebirth? And do they really call for punitive language and harsher measures imposed on a tired population that tries its best, or compassion and gentle reminders?

People will often take on the roles you cast for them. Are we a city of mindless rule breakers, adamantly pursuing our own selfish interest? Or a global beacon of civic participation, trying as best we can – and sometimes failing – to find the right balance between our needs, individual and collective?

Right now, I feel like calling a strike on civic participation. ‘Is this how you wanna play it? OK, let’s all stick to the rules, and see what happens.’

That curfew broke my spirit. I hope it mends.

Values cards project – power

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All through 2019, following on the reflections and practice I conducted in 2017-2018 on Christian, Confucian and Buddhist virtues, I had a regular (weekly-ish) Skype conversation with my friend and ‘virtue-buddy’ Patrick Laudon in Japan, to reflect on values. We did this simple thing: each time we spoke, we pulled a card out of a ‘values card’ pack, and had an improvised conversation to try and figure what we thought of that value. I took some notes during those conversation, and am now sharing a reviewed version, which I present in dialogue form. Those are neither a full transcript nor a perfect representation of our conversation – even less should they be understood as showing distinct positions in a debate. They’re no more than loose fragments of a conversation saved from oblivion.

A: When I think about power, the first thing that comes to mind is, I’ve wondered about the word empowerment. It’s not a word that exists in French. But I’m interested in this idea, this word, that the question of power has to do with, it’s not only who has it, but how it might be given to someone. The word, empowerment, it’s often used in the context of racial difference or disability. And the idea here is that some people have less power, for whatever reason, and they should be given that power somehow.

B: So, that’s interesting, because it’s more about equality. While when I think of power, I tend to think of it as being conceptually related to liberty.

A: Well, if you look at the sustainable development goals, it’s about building a society where nobody’s left behind. And if you think of it in relation to power, it’s not just about you deciding for yourself, but that everyone has access to conditions where they can make use of their power. Maybe there’s something there. That ideological void we’re facing now, left and right, particularly on the left. We’re heading out of Marxism, so what on the horizon for left-wing thinking? We need to find new concepts, and maybe that will be power, empowerment, governance.

B: So you’re saying, we need reflections on power, how it is distributed, what conditions we need so that we can exercise it?

A: Maybe. Also, power is more difficult in a world that’s full of complex systems, and all our daily lives depend on those systems. This complexity stands in the way of political initiative, because you can’t really take initiative, everything is part of a system.

B: Well, one of the big problems today, when you talk about governance, it’s the void of power – not just ideology, but power. Do you know Moses Naim? He was a Minister in Venezuela, and he wrote a book called ‘The end of power’. He writes about something he calls the Gulliver Effect. That it’s harder today to get anything done, because all sorts of little groups are able to block you. Nobody’s got enough power to get anything done, only to veto you. And so, nothing changes.

A: What that makes me think about is the structures of the EU, and other international institutions. We’ve attempted to develop this globalized economy, as a way to support peace. The idea is that once we’re interdependent, there will not be war. But then, those visions are just a big system, that’s not really working well. And so you’re torn between two visions: the machine exerting power, or then a nationalist vision that defends choice, liberty. That’s Marine Le Pen, and nationalist ideology.

B: Maybe, we need to consider the limits of democracy. It only works up to a certain level. It’s very good for local, but not when you look at the bigger issues.

A: I wonder. Are there any global issues that could be properly handled at the national levels? I think there isn’t anyone, not environment, not immigration.

B: I don’t think there is, but we wish there was. And that’s what’s behind this nationalist ideology.

A: Another direction I’d like to take is, our relationship to power has a lot of influence on the way that authority works in the family. In France, we have this vertical relationship to power, and it’s the same in the family. I see that with my kids: when there’s a bit of tension, I just use that kind of vertical authority.

B:  Well, it feels to me like, in Southern European societies, it’s more about a family network, and a more matriarchal type of power. There’s formal power, sure, but also there is informal power, norms to follow, and the women are mediating that.

A: Well, in Japan, women are not allowed to work, but the husband gives his salary to his wife at the beginning of the month, and she makes all the decisions for the house. The husband just receives some pocket money, but he makes no decision on children’s education, or how to manage the household finances.

B: It’s something I’ve always wondered. Whether there is some ‘hidden power’ given to women in those circumstances, or not. My grand-mother used to repeat ‘I am a slave, I am a slave to your grandfather’. But meanwhile, my impression was that she ruled the house. And I always wonder, whether that litany she repeated was a way to hide her real power – like you do things to avoid the evil eye – or whether that was her actual perception.

A: Well, if you look at Confucius, he says everyone must play their role. It’s not about individual freedom, and it applies to everyone, the husband and the wife, the children and the parents. It’s not like one has power and the other doesn’t. Rather, power happens someone in the form of their relationship, if they play their role properly.

B: And in the same way, without a network of norms, and without a common language, there is no power anymore. There is no way for anyone to manifest their freedom.

A: So maybe power is about convincing people that what you want, or what the collective wants, is also what they want?

B: There’s two questions we might look at here. First, we can look at who’s got power in the group? And then, does the group itself have power, and is it able to transform the world in depth, and in the long-term?

A: If we go back to the question of family then, what’s the purpose of family? In traditional family forms, women have a structuring role, like a glue, and their role is to make sure that the members to hold together. While the men bring in the resources so the family can continue to exist as an organization. At least that’s how it is in my model.

B: Well, that’s not how I see it. I have this image of the family which is not primarily nuclear, but extended, like a network. And the goal here is to maintain a comparative advantage for the members of the group. What that requires is a form of stability, and sharing resources among the members, so that they can do better than other families, or people who have no family.

A: A thing there is that power always depends on size. China, Google or the Catholic church are more powerful than Switzerland or a small hedge fund, even if they’re very well run, more effective, faster, or more profitable. They may be more profitable, but they won’t be more powerful, until they grow big.

B: What about we think of power as about continuity over time? Maybe that’s what a family is about: its goal is just its own continuity over time?

A: That would apply if you look at successful families, like Hermes. The brand was started by protestant upper bourgeoisie, and it’s still in their hands. So here’s a successful family, they succeeded financially, and as a family.

B: Could we say that in a small business, there is more freedom? And there’s a sort of continuity between nuclear family and small business. While a larger structure requires more effort to maintain itself and coordinate, understand how things work. But it’s also more solid, and more welcoming to diversity. While a small business or a nuclear family works very well if people are benevolent and intelligent, but it’s catastrophic otherwise.

A: Maybe we can look at this, that in American companies, there is great apparent freedom, but de facto autonomy is very limited, because there is so much process involved. While in a Japanese organization, there’s a lot of formalities, but much more real freedom than appears on the surface. And so what this is about is that without trust, you just can’t execute, or operate. That the purpose of rituals that are about forgiveness, they have to do with maintaining trust. And without that trust, there is no way for power to work.

B: That’s exactly what I say about Italian style apologies. You apologize not because you feel guilty, but to show that you respect the established order, and that you broke it. You assert that you want to continue existing in the same world. And that’s another condition for power – that people belong to the same world.

On animes

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When I was ten, I spent a lot of time out of class watching animes. I was an only child with two working parents. They had nothing against TV. My father said if I had freedom to choose what I watched, I would learn to make better decisions. My mother believed in giving me free rein as long as I did well in school.

At the time – it was the late 80s – Japanese animes, dubbed in French, were playing back to back. I watched across genres: sports and friendship, school adventures, magic and pop stars, robots and aliens. Looking back, there was a clear favourite: Saint Seiya, which I knew then as ‘Knights of the Zodiac’. I avidly collected figurines, recorded episodes on the family VCR, and impersonated the fights of Pegasus and Phoenix with my school friends at lunchtime.

Today, I decided to watch the first episode of the series again. I wanted to look back on what I learnt as a child – role-models, attitudes, values.

In the first ten minutes of the series, young Japanese Seiya fights a Greek giant among broken columns. The stake is the sacred armour of Pegasus. Against all expectations, Seiya triumphs. A flashback sequence explains how he developed his power. His mentor, a red-haired woman with a silver-mask, tells him of the relationship between the cosmos and his body. “To break a stone with your bare hand,” she says, “you must feel its atoms. Concentrate on the point of weakness, concentrate on your hand, then hit.”

Raw strength is not enough in Seiya’s world. Armors are only metal, they need human will and intelligence. True power comes from understanding the structure of things, through concentrated efforts of perception. Victory comes to those who can pause, watch and understand. This wisdom, I still apply today, and might have learnt from anime.

On voluntary servitude

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“How is it possible that so many people, so many towns, so many cities, so many nations, can endure a single tyrant, whose only power is that which people give him; who cannot hurt them, except inasmuch as they will endure it; who would not cause any harm, except they would rather suffer than contradict.” This passage appears in the first pages of La Boetie’s Treatise on Voluntary Servitude. No wonder Montaigne had a crush on the man.

This text is not offering a solution, but forcefully raising the question of our submission to power. Why do we yield? Our countries, let’s call them Western democracies, have grown out of political tyranny. But how many families, neighbourhoods, or business units live in fear of a single despot.

Power is a relationship. It may be cast in layers of regulations, property deeds, and privileges. But the fundamental premise remains. No single individual will ever contain their own power. Mana does not emanate from a sacred space within the tyrant’s body. Its existence depends on a complex network of relationships, glued in fear and hope, of which we form a node. And the first step to freedom may be no more than acknowledging this, always – you’re only powerful because people let you.

On power, justice and commonsense

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Power may not be just, justice may not be powerful. In the end, power may triumph. But it is essential that we keep them separate in our minds, if we must keep our spiritual freedom.

In a piece about the current dire state of Chinese universities, Muran identifies a root cause to all forms of anti-intellectualism: what he calls authoritarianism or, in Chinese, 权力注意. This doctrine, he says, takes power as its only touchstone and only point of focus. Under its impulse, the sole purpose of the human spirit is to justify power.

Westerners easily criticize Chinese authoritarianism, brandishing human rights, free press, democratic elections, etc. Yet the Middle Kingdom does not have a monopoly on anti-intellectualism. But in our countries, it takes a different color. What people want is what we give them, as market-democracy proposes. And shouldn’t we trust the wisdom of crowds? So truth and beauty submit to the power of the masses.

Democratic traditions, for all the joys of equality, easily suffer the lack of an aristocratic spirit, pointing its finger at beauty, justice, truth. These ideals are too different from what is, and sometimes too sharp on the tongue for the taste of many. And so, we point the finger down: we stay grounded. Our spirits are no longer invited to run free, but will now serve the power of commonsense. Gravity rules. And it imposes its dumb earnestness or – in chaotic times – the tidal waves of murderous opinion.

(January 2 2016)