Wellness Calendar: Saturday 7 June

The problem of giving power away

Once an entity has power, they’re reluctant to give it away. In 1870 Frederick Douglass wrote the words “power concedes nothing without a demand.”

Knowing how hard it is to prise back power once it has been given away, perhaps one solution to this problem is not to give it away in the first place. This would require people to be up to speed on all forms of power and to be vigilant and guarded against others attempting to make a power grab. Another answer to this dilemma could be setting up whatever organisation you’re engaged in as a flat hierarchy, beginning life with all participants as equals.

Thomas Jefferson, the third U.S. president, was aware of this problem when he said, “The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one but to divide it among the many.”

If we were to divide and sub-divide power over and over again until each person and each voice mattered, could we help to prevent abuses of power? What do you think?

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