#21 A Dead Philosopher just critiqued my life.

I have been reading a little bit of Soren Kierkegaard's essay called "The Present Age."  His present age of course was in the 1800s so we are talking about different ages.  But there was something striking about his thoughts on his age that seems to pertain to me.  I'm not sure I like it when a notoriously curmudgeon of a philosophers pegs my own fear so well.  Anyway this grumpy cat philosopher (Is this disrespectful to that cat or to Kierkegaard?) said basically this, "Mark, you are really good at reflecting on self and others but those reflects never really get out of your head into the real world."  Only he said it in German and not specifically addressed to me and not in those words.  This is just how I heard it in my head. 

I think I can reflect all day and night on something.  And if I have someone to reflect with it is even better.  I can talk for weeks about a topic if someone is interested.  Few are, by the way, and this can be a very frustrating thing to my wife.  Although she can do it, too, if it is on a topic she is passionate about, but alas, rarely do our passion for reflection overlap.  This is a good thing because otherwise nothing of importance would probably ever get done.  

And that is precisely my fear.  I fear that I have become so good at reflecting and creating abstract assertions (some of which are meaningless, see what I did there!) that I don't know how to do anything worthwhile in the real world.  I think it is exciting to talk about the implications of Trinitarian theology, but I'm not sure I ever go a live them out.  I love to talk about how feminist thinking has enriched our culture and still has some work to do (this my wife and I can talk about), yet what do I do in a concrete sense to make the world more equal?

I fear that in an action-reflection model of life, I have left behind the action part.  I fear that I have become someone who only lives in my own mind and does little in the real world.  I fear that my reflections are stunted because I don't live them and test them in a concrete way in the real world.  

This matters to me because Kierkegaard was wrong about his present age.  He said they would never start revolution to change the oppressive power structures of his day, but then the French Revolution happened, and many revolutions happened across German to unify the country.  He was wrong about his age, but is he right about me personally.  I need to break out of pure abstraction and test these theories.  I need to question current power structures while coming up with new ways of living on this planet called Earth.  I need to put on ideas and become incarnate in these theories, so that I can see if they are really worthwhile or just really fun to think about.  Practice makes perfect, right?  So I need to go practice so I can critique and evolve theories into something more true and more engaged to effect real change in this world.

#20 I Gave Away My Power.

I have been thinking a little about power.  Maybe because my church is doing a preaching series on the book of Amos. That's right, a minor prophet preaching series, that is meant to challenge us and our way of life rather that a series telling us God is good and we can get better.  It's refreshing...in a difficult way.

Anyway, power...I have not done any kind of real study on power.  I've a read "The Powers that Be" by Walter Wink, which I think I mentioned in a previous post.  But I haven't done any real study beyond reading an occasional book.  So this isn't any kind of authoritative survey.  Just my typical meaningless babbling that an average of like 10 people read (I'm sure a book deal is to follow from such an amazing readership).

I have come to think of power as similar to energy.  There is a finite amount of power in the world that can be spread out among many people or can be hoarded by a few.  There is power in each of us sitting latent waiting for the stimulus to push it into action.  There are obviously many kinds of power, economical, personal, political, etc.  Sometimes power is giving to people through votes or mutual understandings of a situation.  Sometimes power is taken by force or manipulated out of someone through systemic injustice (there is Amos!).  I believe the problem comes when the few have too much of the power.  When the few are able to control the many.  Power can shift from latent to kinetic in a short amount of time.  Sometimes getting out of hand as it does.  This happens in revolutions that end up going too far and ending with more of the same oppression that was fought against.  The latent power was converted into kinetic power that was eventual all given to one person or organization.

We can give our power away as I did at the beginning of this little rambling post by giving the little warning that I haven't studied this before writing.  I totally undermined my own power as the author in the process.  I think we do this all the time.  We undermine, manipulate, and steal power without even realizing we are doing it.  I don't think that these evil actions come from evil people, but often start out as a well-meaning actions that end up doing harm.  Sometime self-worth and self-esteem get in the way of our exertion of power and sometimes systems are perpetuated and prosper on keeping certain groups from realizing and living into their power potential.

How can we have a redistribution of power?  Does that have to happen violently? Can we get other people to give up power without having to forcibly take it from them?  It is only natural to want to keep a hold of what you have.  I believe that power structures can be challenged without the use of violence, and I have written about that before, think MLK and Gandhi (see #17). But it is probably the harder road to travel.  If there is a finite amount of power in the world, how are we going to distribute or re-distribute it?