Power, Order, and Authority.

[Xunzian]

Sam Crane, a political scientist over at Williams College, has a blog entitled “The Useless Tree” where he tries to show the value of “Ancient Chinese thought in modern American life.” His most recent posts dealt with the notions of power, order, and authority and I think that they would serve as a good jumping-off point for discussion:

Power and Order

Today the summer program I have been overseeing for the month of July ended. My students have scattered to the four corners of the country, to return in about a month better prepared, I believe, to begin their four years of liberal arts education. They are a great group and we had a great month.

 The curriculum we developed for this program centered on four classes: political science, history, comparative literature and ancient Chinese philosophy (guess which one I taught).  To lend some coherence, we faculty all generally engaged a common theme: power, authority and order.  And, then, to make sure students were thinking about how the various disciplines were speaking to the general theme, we had them, in their final assignment, make oral presentations comparing a concept or text or narrative from one class to something from another class and demonstrate how that comparison shed new light on their understanding of power and/or authority and/or order.  All of this got me thinking in abstract terms about the interrelationships of these ideas.

 What seemed to emerge from several of the presentations was an assumption - perhaps more than an assumption, a belief - that order requires power.  That is, to achieve some sense of social stability or prosperity or harmony, a certain kind of power - conventionally a form of government or legitimate coercive force - is necessary.  Now they may be right but, in my role as a teacher I pushed back against them and found myself asking:

 Does order require power?

 Put that starkly, I think many people would answer "yes."  My students had read the Tao Te Ching, so they has at least one reference that could lead to a "no" answer, but they still tended in the direction of "yes:" order requires power. 

    In turning the question over in my head, I appreciated once again just how radical (in the sense of challenging conventional wisdom) the Tao Te Ching can be.  It really does ask us to abandon power and accept the "natural" order that would ensue.  "Natural" is, of course, a fraught term.  How we can know what is "natural" is far from clear.  Yet even with that uncertainty, the Tao Te Ching pushes in an anarchic direction.  (I also found myself asking my students why we reflexively place a negative value on "anarchy."  I guess no one reads Kropotkin any more.)  "Let nations grow smaller and smaller, and people fewer and fewer," passage 80 begins.  This is not a call for Malthusian thinning of the population but an aspiration for the dismantling of the territorial state.  We do not need large bureaucracies and extensive boundaries to live a good life.  The Tao Te Ching does not promise perfection and harmony everlasting.  The good life invariably continues to include much of what we would understand as "bad."  Indeed, it is impossible, for Taoists, to have one without the other.  But there is a sense that contentment can follow from the relinquishment of power and government.  The people in an idealistic, decentralized, naturalistic Taoist community would, according to passage 80: " ...find pleasure in their food and beauty in their clothes, peace in their homes and joy in their ancestral ways."  That sounds pretty good.

   The radicalness of the Tao Te Ching on the question of order without power stands in contrast to classical economic liberalism.  I found myself describing for my students Adam Smith's vision of an organic society, where each individual with his or her unique collection of talents and orientations finds a niche by specializing in what he or she does best and relying on a division of labor for the rest.   Yet even that image requires a measure of power, a "night watchman" of sorts to ensure that contracts are enforced and certain basic laws maintained.  Liberals and libertarians say "yes," order does require power, but not so much of the latter.

  Taoists are willing to press further.  They go furthest in their faith that, left to their own devices, people will find ways to manage their own affairs without descending into a Hobbesian "state of nature," where the life of man is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short."   There will, in a Taoist world, be some of all of those things.  But so, too, will there be sufficient amounts of their complements - collective, prosperous, friendly, civilized and long - to make for a good life. 

   We just have to yield to Way to get there.....

Power and Authority

 Following on yesterday's post [above], I wanted to mention another idea that came up in the course of my summer class.  We talked, in various ways, about the notion of authority.  I must admit, I do not often think of authority separate from power.  Must be an occupational hazard of a political scientist: we tend to think first about power and generally assume that much emerges from it or centers on it.  In the case of authority that is not so unreasonable an assumption. The mere possession of power often confers a kind of authority; perhaps not an authority we are comfortable accepting without further justification, but a sort of authority nonetheless.  Indeed, power-holders go to great lengths to describe their authority in terms other than power.  Legitimacy is fundamental to politics.  But legitimation simply ties authority to power.  The more interesting question is what happens when authority is sundered from power?

 And that is the question I found myself asking my students: can there be authority without power?  There was silence at first but gradually we talked our way forward.

 One student mentioned the possibility of the authority of expertise: a person might specialize in and have deep knowledge of a particular subject, an understanding that confers a certain authority.  But that knowledgeable individual may not be in a position of power.  He or she may be asked to serve those in power, or may even challenge those in power with his or her expertise.  We can all think of instances, however, where power ignores or trumps this kind of authority.  Indeed, most intellectuals and academics know very well the impotence of their expert authority. 

 In the course of this conversation, I found myself thinking of the term "moral authority."   Someone may appeal to a notion of right and wrong and do so in such a persuasive and appealing manner that, even though the protagonist has little or no power, listeners find themselves accepting or working for that appeal.  In its grandest form, moral authority rises up from the population at large, building into a righteous people power.  The US civil rights movement comes to mind.  The authority of right ultimately affects power.

 More often, I am afraid, the term "moral authority" implies impotence.  To say that someone or some organization possesses moral authority is to suggest the absence real power.  The UN has moral authority but its power to shape international relations is dependent on the interests of states.  The Dalai Lama has, for many Americans and Europeans, a certain moral authority but it is unlikely he will ever return to Tibet or if he does it will be because power holders in Beijing see it as in their interest to allow it.  

 And this all brought Mencius to mind.  He, and Confucius before him, construct a moral authority: they speak truth to power, moral truth as they understand it.  Mencius in particular seems never to shy away from pointing out to a kings or dukes the moral failings of their rule.  Indeed, Mencius and Confucius work to fuse moral authority and power.  They argue that the virtuous should rule and that the rule of the virtuous must be constantly held to high standards of benevolence. 

 In the end, of course, they failed.  Neither was, in his time, able to establish himself politically, nor cultivate a truly benevolent ruler - a "true king" - for very long.  Their moral exhortations live on, and continue to instruct us today, but power, in all too many places in the world, floats free from authority, both expert and moral. 

 We see this most clearly at present in the US, where the apparent exigencies of power convinced political leaders to accept a bad war and to abandon long established principles of humane treatment of prisoners of war.  Mencius would understand the frustration of those Americans who yearn for a reconnection of power and authority.

So, is power necessary for order and if so, what sort of power? What relationship does this power have with authority?

[bike_seat]

[realunoriginal]

@Xunzian

So, is power necessary for order and if so, what sort of power? What relationship does this power have with authority?

First of all, the speaker you quoted doesn’t seem to understand that there may be different types of power in the world. Mayhap there is direct vs. indirect power, active / inactive / reactive power, or known vs. unknown power, etc. Is power quantitative or qualitative, or both under certain contexts? Power is a general term and I conceptualize it as a “thing of force”. So then, it relates to a definition of “force” and onward and onward, until definitions stack upon numerous other definitions (that are changing) and you get nowhere without a pragmatic ideology. Therefore, the first problem with power itself is practically defining it so that it may be discussed by a group of intellects.

What is [power]?

For now, I will just say it is a “force that compels living beings to act in any way, passively and / or / nor actively”.

Thus, “is power necessary for order?”. Now there is the problem of defining “order”.

What is [order]?

Here, I will say that it is a “mental categorization of the human mind to act in a manner that is expected and especially anticipated”.

When things are “ordered”, then they are understood by the common human animal as “common sense”. Such actions are predictable, that people like to eat at McDonalds, that they like to drink Pepsi, that they like to defecate in privacy, that they like to watch television / use the internet, and that they will do these things where & when they are accessible and it is appropriate to do so. This is order, that certain things are expected, versus chaos, that certain things are unexpected. School shootings used to be unexpected and therefore “chaotic”, but since the mentality is now understood, people now commonly (unless I underestimate the public) understand how & why young male teenagers go and kill others and then themselves. Generally, they suffer from social nihilism along with tendencies for revenge against those “bullies” who wronged them. So, there is even an order to violence, once properly / commonly understood.

Is power (a thing of force) necessary for order (mental categorization of the human mind)? The answer is soundly “yes”. Forces occur with or without people knowing about them, so the implicit reason for any event to which we categorize it to make sense of the greater world must contain a context of power, or forces at work, in “order” for people to comprehend the event itself. How it happens is that a force impacts the mind to think in an environment of order (expecting what is predictable like the sunrise / sunset) vs. chaos (not expecting what is not predictable like your immediate death). Explaining these “forces” is the key to understanding both power & order and how they relate to each other, which is exactly what physicists attempt to do and describe on a daily basis. However, forces come in many shapes & varieties: physical force (to work), mental force (to think), spiritual force (to act), etc.

“So, is power necessary for order and if so, what sort of power?”

Power is necessary for order in the same way that it is necessary for every kind of thing, and it is the sort of power that uses “force” as its definition.

“What relationship does power have with authority?”

This can be a very short answer or a very long answer, but I will pick the short answer for now. If power is a “thing of force”, then must authority relate to force by definition? My answer is “yes”, because the meaning of authority is a “force that you must respect”. You may obey or disobey an authority, but regardless of that reaction to a command, the authority is necessarily respected by you. To claim that a person or thing is authoritative necessarily means that it should be listened to by any particular individual and there are supposed consequences for not doing so. The authority itself rests upon its “supposed consequences”, that if I don’t believe in Heaven / Hell that the authority of God is completely diminished by degree and as such, loses His divine authority.

[Xunzian]

In your first bit, I think you are conflating authority with power. Power simply does, authority is the means whereby it does.

[Mastriani]

Even authority is dependent upon power, in the sense that the authority has the ability to express power.

Genetic dominance, through social agencies.

[Xunzian]

Authority can be dependent upon power, though I think that “integrity” might be a better way of conceiving it. There are plenty of authorities that don’t do much, like the academic and/or moral authorities that were discussed in the second section. Likewise, there are things that are done (power is manifested) without any appeal to an authority in the system – see natural processes.

[Mastriani]

Hrmmm.

Before I openly disagree, which are you talking about ~

Expressions of power/authority in the natural realm, or the distortions of human social structures that attempt to order both power and authority? (Which actually confuse both, and neither are used correctly.)

[Xunzian]

I don’t make a distinction between them.

[Mastriani]

But they are inherently different Xunzian.

In nature, expressions of power are all the authority that is ever needed, granted that the power actually exists.

In the human social construction, those lesser creatures can attain the ability to express power through deceptive social manipulations. This is not power in the actual sense, rather a distortion of the genetic expressions of nature.

[Xunzian]

False distinction. Socialization is a perfectly valid survival strategy and therefore can be said to have benefit in a selective manner.

[realunoriginal]

Authority and power are directly related, but power is the source of all / any authority.

An academic authority may or may not be relevant to a particular context, but that doesn’t mean his authority doesn’t rest on a power of assumed truth – that a physicist knows what he’s talking about concerning weight & volume formulas, etc.

[Mastriani]

@Xunzian

False distinction. Socialization is a perfectly valid survival strategy and therefore can be said to have benefit in a selective manner.

There is an actual distinction between force and coercion, feel free to look it up.

Force = power.

Coercion = social manipulation/psychological tactic.

I didn’t say socialisation wasn’t part of survival strategy. But aberrant outcroppings of socialisation aren’t beneficial, especially in anything other than a “selective” perspective.

[Xunzian]

Realun,

Does it matter if no one listens? Can power manifest itself in a vacuum?

Mastriani,

I still think you are creating a series of categories with no meaning. How isn’t coercion a manifestation of power?

[anon]

Power, order, and authority are all natural and unavoidable. I think texts like the Tao Te Ching suggest the possibility of what they consider to be a healthier relationship to these principles of natural hierarchy. I think forced egalitarianism would be considered one extreme and excesses of raw power the other.

[realunoriginal]

@Xunzian

Realun,

Does it matter if no one listens?

…no one listens to whom? Whenever somebody seeks knowledge in a person, there is always an assumed authority.

It merely depends on whether Average Joe judges that the authority of the physicist is correct over the authority of the pastor, on a given quandary.

@Xunzian

Can power manifest itself in a vacuum?

What is a “vacuum”, something without context I presume? Everything has a context, especially power.

That’s why morality & ethics are often failed to be conveyed / expressed by hypothetical situations.

[Xunzian]

Realun,

Now you are starting to get somewhere. Now apply that back to what you wrote, and tell me what you come up with. Especially with respect to how seeking vs. being sought plays into it.

Edit: Apologies. That was overly snarky. I hadn’t eaten all day and was rather cranky. What I meant to say was that while your position is all well and good, there is a problem with your ordering. If authority needs to be recognized before power can manifest itself and power brings about order, but at the same time order is necessary to give the context whereby authority is recognized. You see the problem.

Anon,

I am inclined to agree with you that they are all interrelated, but that isn’t a very provocative thesis, now is it? Is there order in life? Can someone name a power driving this, or can the order be said to arise spontaneously? Is there an authority in relation to this order and/or power?

[realunoriginal]

@Xunzian

Realun,

Now you are starting to get somewhere. Now apply that back to what you wrote, and tell me what you come up with. Especially with respect to how seeking vs. being sought plays into it.

As Satyr would say, seeking implies a lacking … therefore any & every entity is compelled to a given direction because it needs something pertaining to that direction. What is being sought is the “mass”, “gravity”, or “source of energy” that exists passively. A comet smashes into a planet, because it is compelled to its “gravity” through supposed bends in space-time. But from another point of view, that comet smashes into a planet, because it needs to – by “force”, “cause”, or “reason”.

@Xunzian

Edit: Apologies. That was overly snarky. I hadn’t eaten all day and was rather cranky. What I meant to say was that while your position is all well and good, there is a problem with your ordering. If authority needs to be recognized before power can manifest itself and power brings about order, but at the same time order is necessary to give the context whereby authority is recognized. You see the problem.

Power brings about order; order brings about authority (mutually). Order and authority work inclusively, but both rely on power.

I don’t see the problem that you’re referring to. Authority may or may not be accurately realized by a person, but still exist (as in a social hierarchy).

[Mastriani]

@Xunzian

Mastriani,

I still think you are creating a series of categories with no meaning. How isn’t coercion a manifestation of power?

Because it has less to do with the individual, than with hidden agency of operating within a group, whose intended structure is to limit power.

Force to power is the natural state. The tiger does not coerce, it simply impugns its prey’s inability to overcome, forces the prey to accept its overwhelming power, (death). Take any apex predator, the same will apply.

All socialisation allows for is limiting power, by coercion of a group. Manipulation, strategem, tactic … coercion by false perception of something being “power” that is actually agency of institutionalisation.

[Xunzian]

Said the bacterium to the nematode . . .

[anon]

@Xunzian

Anon,

I am inclined to agree with you that they are all interrelated, but that isn’t a very provocative thesis, now is it? Is there order in life? Can someone name a power driving this, or can the order be said to arise spontaneously? Is there an authority in relation to this order and/or power?

Yes, there is order in life.

There are innumerable powers driving this. So many, and so interrelated that order could be said to arise spontaneously.

There is always authority related to order and power.

No, it isn’t very provocative. Maybe when I’m in a more provocative mood I’ll say something more provocative.