Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Trust and Power: How to Avoid Unprotected Intercourse with the Powerful

I take this to be a "manifesto for the powerless", which is why i find some of the laws intriguing, but the idea of trust in relation to power interesting. 

The powerful do not need to trust. From the perspectives of Nietzsche and Machiavelli, those who have power simply use them either for good or for evil. It is only those who lack power that can then deploy their trust in the hope that some crumbs of goodness will fall from the table of the mighty.

If this is correct, where then do the powerless get their bargaining chip from that will, for instance, allow for Laws 1 to 4? Why, for example, with reference to Law 3, would a powerful being want to democtratize its power? Isn't the essence of power to be deployed over the will of others? Law 1 stretches the deployment of that powerful, by false necessity, to harming the other. Even Machiavelli agrees that the Prince can be kind to others. And trust, conceptually, looks to the good side of human nature. With Law 2, the binary of the powerful/powerless itself breaks down once there is a countervailing power to be opposed to a reigning power. I agree with Law 4 only if, following my last sentence, we emphasize the potentiality rather than the nexessity of injustice because we also need to trust power to bring about justice. Law 5 is deep but it makes me reflect about the philosophical basis of democracy itself in representational trust. How does this Law apply to the working of a democratic government, on the one hand; and the argument that, in the final analysis, the vaunted demos may actually not have a clue about what is in their best interest? Law 6 sums up the dark perception of power which underlies the entire piece itself. I doubt that Machiavelli himself has such a dark perception. Remember that Machiavelli, in the final analysis, desired the restoration and firm establishment of republican Florence. And Law 8 takes me right back to my initial worry about how the powerless can ever hope to negotiate with the powerful if the trust for the possibility of deploying power for the good--inherent in democratic theory--is not accepted. "Defang" power? How?

Again, if this is taken to be a "manifesto of the powerless" then we need to begin to (re)think the significant place that trust plays in that delicate relationship. Outside of a revolution, trust is usually the first condition of hope, that conceptual architectonic of expectations that sustains us all.

This is really interesting, and its implications branches everywhere.

Adeshina Afolayan

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

On Wed, Mar 22, 2017 at 2:34 PM, Nimi Wariboko

<nimiwari@msn.com> wrote:

Trust and Power: How to Avoid Unprotected Intercourse with the Powerful

 

By Nimi Wariboko

 

Eight Everyday Laws of Resisting Power

 

1.     Do not trust anyone who has power over you, who has the power that can hurt you.

2.     Do not trust anyone who has power over you when you have no countervailing powers of your own or you are not part of a group that can effectively stand up against the power over you.

3.     Do not trust anyone who has power over you and he/she/it is not willing to democratize such power or to disarm.

4.     Never forget that wherever there is power differential there is a huge potential for injustice, so says the ethicist (Niebuhr).

5.     No power is in your best interest when it is in the hands of others who want you to believe that they have no self-interest in keeping that power out of your hands.

6.     If power can hurt you, it will eventually do so unless you protect yourself against it.

7.     When any or all of the above conditions are present you have an Us-Them situation. Do not be under the hegemonic ideology of the powerful and believe that there is only a monolithic "Us" or you are part of the "Us." Protect yourself!

8.     Love and not hate the powerful, but always work to defang them, rending their powers over you.

 

I wrote the eight principles down in the first week of November 2013. My colleague at Andover Newton Theological School, Professor Carole Fontaine, an eminent scholar and feminist, and I were having conversation about power and oppressions of women and I expressed views along the lines of the everyday laws of resisting power. She then challenged me to collate them and write them out so she could send them to feminists. After reading them, she said to me: "Nimi, given your principles women should never trust men."

 

Should Nigerians trust persons who have power because they say they hold such power to the glory of an ethnic group or God? Should Americans trust anyone who has immense power because he/she says he/she holds such power to the glory of Almighty God (faith) or hints that he/she holds such power to the glory of a race? I hope all of you out there exchanging stuffs and inter-coursing with the powerful are protecting yourselves, your faith, and your race or ethnicity.

 

 

Nimi Wariboko

Boston University, USA

 

 

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