September 3, 2003
Today I went for a stroll with a friend to Highgate Cemetery, famous resting place of famous bones such as those which used to be Karl Marx.
Why is it that people who want to reform the world usually end up leaving it
worse off than it was before? Their world-changing ideas might (or might not)
be excellent but if those who have the ideas also get the power to implement
them, something always goes drastically wrong.
Maybe human beings just can't be trusted to handle power.
We've seen again and again that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts
absolutely, yet we are still persuaded that poweris essential if we want to achieve
anything or change anything.
What if the opposite is true? What if powerlessness is the essential condition for
changes that are constructive rather than destructive? You know, the old Zen concept that it's when you stop struggling and straining that you suddenly hit the
target.
Article comments
1 - Murphy Horner
Why do you think that Karl Marx left the world worse than it was?
Are you talking about communist Russia and China and all the Cold War stuff that happened?
I'm not a Marxist, but I've taken some time to try and understand why his ideas were so compelling to so many people.
I began to realize that many of the communist ideas, filtered through different cultures in different ways.
Marx did not invent new things. He simply formulated a lot of ideas that were already floating around.
The capitalist/proletariat dichotomy that he put forth is not as relevant today. I am waiting for a new formula.
As for power, that is unavoidable. If you think of power as affecting the world around you (CHANGING it) then we are powerless to stop the power we have. We have mass, we therefore have gravity, and therefore affect other objects around us.
And that's LONG before choice and intention get involved.
2 - Augustine
Thanks Murphy. I agree with your points.
But I wasn't saying that Marx's ideas themselves were wrong.
I was talking about the tendency of all 'reformers', of whatever persuasion, to believe that the changes they want can be achieved by power being seized from the hands of X and put into the hands of Y, who knows how to use power better than X does.
This is where the bit about "leaving the world worse off" comes in.
The physical mass/gravity power you rightly point out we are all subject to is different from the pursuit and possession of power that some human beings are obsessed with.
Such individuals, if they reach their goal, generally become a threat and a danger to large numbers of other humans.
I was suggesting a rather more Zen approach which would be not to seek this kind of power at all but to effect changes in the way that water does upon its surroundings: by flexibly and endlessly flowing and falling.
3 - Murphy Horner
I read the Tao....I really liked it...except it seemed to passive. It seemed like there was no thrust to it.
Then I read "The art of war" AKA "The tao of war".
THAT showed how to use power effectively. The two books together really showed me something.
4 - Augustine
I haven't read 'The Tao of War' but will look it up.
I should declare, though, that I'm strongly anti-violence which also means anti-war.
I agree that a philosophy should have 'thrust" in order to be effective but I prefer to apply that thrust in creative rather than destructive ways.
5 - Joan Crist
Dear Augustine,
Unfortunately I am reading your comments after three years and I hope you will still respond. I am fascinated by the idea that small, seemingly powerless things are the ones that bring about real, positive change.
i would love to hear more of what you have to say in response to your own question at the end of the paragraph: what if powerlessness is the essential condition for changes...? (forgive me, in the words of Paul in the New Testament, when I am weak, it is then that I am strong)
6 - meysam atigh
when you see to marx ideas our all of ideas that want to change this awful world you should throw all the thoughts you have before,about social,economic,religes,family,love,truth and all the things you have here.
if you want to see like this you fall in wrong.