Soul Bound

1        Soul Bound

1.3      Making a Splash

1.3.1    An Obligated Noble

1.3.1.17 Sharpe Lecture: Power (part one)

When Kafana had entered the lecture theater where Dr. Lewis Sharpe delivered his “effective political activism” course, the stage was more crowded than usual. On the left side was a volunteer wearing a purple sash, who was slowly constructing a tower from a pile of wooden blocks standing at his feet. To the right was a second volunteer in a green sash, who was doing the same. In the center was a far larger pile of blocks and, from the way both volunteers kept glancing at the central pile, it was clear they wanted more blocks for their tower.

As people arrived and sat in their seats, the main lights in the theatre started to dim, leaving everyone quietly watching the two volunteers, who had spotlights shining down upon them from above. 3 blocks, 2 blocks, 1 block…

As the volunteers finished emptying their piles, leaving their towers the same height, a third spotlight snapped on, showing a small remote-controlled toy car with a block balanced in its seat.

“What is power?”

Dr. Sharpe’s voice spoke from the darkness, in a tone of mystery and promise.

“Anyone can decide whether they want this extra block to go to green or purple.”

The purple volunteer gleefully held up a remote control box with a small steering wheel and a large button marked “Go”. He pressed the button with a dramatic movement, then frowned as the car failed to move. He stabbed it several more times and then threw it on the floor in disgust.

The tall figure of Dr. Sharpe moved into the light, dressed as usual in a well tailored suit. He picked the box up and held it up for all to see. In his other hand he revealed a battery.

“Power is the capability to have your decision affect what happens.”

He inserted the battery into a slot in the back of the box, and it flashed red.

“Not everyone is willing to use it.”

He used his thumb to hold down the “Go” button, and the car started to move.

“Not everyone has the ability to use it effectively.”

He turned the wheel, directing the car towards the green volunteer, who took the delivered block and added it to his tower.

“The amount of power a person has doesn’t even stay constant. Usually a person with a gold bar has a greater capacity to influence a situation in the direction of their desired outcome, than a person whose only possession is a fishing rod. But put them both on desert islands, and that changes.”

“But despite that, if a situation only requires dealing with an environment and your power over objects and your own body, there’s usually not a lot of mystery over who has power and what the source of that power is.”

He grinned and waved a hand, as a third volunteer entered the lit area by the central piles. She had two sashes, one green and one purple but, instead of wearing them, she held one in either hand and appeared to be weighing them up.

“What about power over people? What if, instead of there being a toy car that can be used to bring you blocks, the only way to gain blocks is to persuade another human being to bring them to you?”

She picked up a block and looked at it.

“People are often not aware of how much power they have in a situation, or how valuable that power is to others; others who don’t have any direct power, or who don’t have as much as they’d like, or who just care a great deal about the outcome.”

She dropped the block, uninterested, and started buffing her nails.

“We can classify the tactics used to motivate people, according to the type of need they manipulate.”

The green volunteer held up a chocolate bar and a sign saying “Bring me blocks and I’ll feed you.” to which the purple volunteer responded by holding up a super-soaker water pistol and a sign saying “Bring me blocks or I’ll shoot you with my gun.”

“The most fundamental needs are safety and survival. In dire times, influence from promising help or coercion from threatening harm can both be sources of power. But that sort of power is unreliable in the long term, because people look for alternative places to go, where there’s less risk of starving or being murdered.”

The two volunteers reluctantly lowered their signs.

“Manipulating people’s needs to belong to a group and receive the status or praise that comes from the group’s approval, is more promising.”

The purple volunteer held up a sign saying “Life is fun with the Purple Gang.”, then summoned the wavering volunteer over to him, and placed the purple sash over her neck.

“Not only can you use promotion as an incentive, or shunning as a threat - it also opens up a third source of power: authority.”

The new purple worker straightened up and saluted the purple leader, who held up a sign saying “As your leader, I have the right to make the decision, and as my loyal follower you ought to comply with my authority.”. The worker wandered over to the central pile and brought back two blocks, which the purple leader ceremoniously added to the purple tower. That put it ahead of the green tower, to the green leader’s consternation.

“The source of authority might be tradition, or law, or won by the leader persuading the follower that the leader genuinely makes better decisions and gaining the follower’s consent. But for so long as the follower believes they are obliged to comply, they are likely to lend their power to the leader even when the leader makes decisions that differ from those the follower would have chosen.”

Dr. Shape looked around the audience, his voice changing.

“But there is another approach.”

The green leader held up a new sign, showing a picture of a magnificent tower and people happily playing around it. Above the picture were the words “Do you share our vision?” and beneath it, in simple letters, was the message “Come build a better tomorrow with Green.”

“It is an approach that does not depend upon manipulating people to go against their choice. Find people who share your values and provide them information they previously lacked. Make them aware of their own power, and help free them to choose.”

The green leader smiled at the female volunteer and mimed cutting a sash with a pair of scissors. A look of dawning understanding crept over her face.

“It is the difference between personal loyalty to an individual leader or organisation, and commitment to a cause or movement. Improving your own power to influence a situation does not require taking power from others. It does not require commanding them, fooling them or diminishing them. People differ from objects in that they have a will of their own, and can change their values and opinions. The most valuable sort of power for an activist to gain, is power over the imagination - the power to persuade others to want what you want, and to see the world the way that you see it.”

The volunteer removed her purple sash, despite angry gesticulations from the purple leader, and went to work alongside the green volunteer, both carrying blocks and both making decisions on where on the green tower to place them.

Dr. Sharpe thanked the volunteers and went to stand back behind his podium.

“It doesn’t require deception,”, he repeated. “but power over the imagination is not always used benignly. Some people out there will deliberately set out to not just influence which options you pick, but limit which options you see as being on the table.”

He brought up a slide showing a large bellied man, next to the quote “The way to have power is to take it. --Boss Tweed”

“In warfare, the spoils are valuable items owned by an enemy, which the victor claims as a prize for winning the fight. In politics, the spoils for winning an electoral battle are often the well paid government jobs requiring little work, that the winner can now award. Systems of government allowing this, such as certain types of democracy, tend to develop ‘political machines’ - organisations devoted to exchanging the promise of patronage in return for the loyalty of low level political operatives, known as ‘heelers’, who put up campaign posters and apply any influence they might have with specific groups of voters.”

“In the 1840s, William Tweed started his political career as a heeler, using his influence as a member of various private social societies and as the foreman of one of New York’s highly competitive teams of axe-wielding volunteer firefighters, to gain the attention of politicians and, after a lackluster go at becoming a politician himself, he eventually gained himself a much sought-after seat on the county’s powerful ‘Board of Supervisors’. From there, in a series of increasingly audacious moves, he proceeded to leverage his way to the top, using each role’s authority to extort money from any individual or company dependent upon him, which he then used to bribe his way to greater heights.”

“By the end of the 1860s, he was boss of the Tammany Hall political machine, a director of more than a dozen companies, ranging from banks to railroads, the third largest landowner in New York and a very very rich man. The thing he learned is that it wasn’t necessary to bet everything upon the success of a single candidate, then work hard to ensure that your candidate won. It was far easier to ensure that all the candidates available to the voters to choose between, were men who owed you favours.”

He brought up a new slide, showing several cartoons of Tweed, together with a pair of quotes:

"As long as I count the Votes, what are you going to do about it?"

“I don't care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating.”

“Why am I telling you about such a man? Do I want you to emulate him?”

He paused to look around the audience, giving them time to think.

“Boss Tweed died in prison, a broken man. The credit for bringing him down goes chiefly to one person, the cartoonist Thomas Nast. Many of the voters commoditised by Tweed were poor immigrants with no time for reading long newspaper articles, but Nast’s caricatures of Tweed as a corrupt thug didn’t require words to understand, and they were memorable. Once the spell was broken, once people no longer saw Tweed as untouchably powerful, attention could be paid to those earlier audacious moves. Tweed tried offering Nast a bribe, disguised as a $500,000 gift from ‘benefactors’ to go study art in Europe, but Nast rejected it.”

Sharpe brought up a slide showing a short thoughtful man with a bristly moustache, by the quote “Well, I don't think I'll do it. I made up my mind not long ago to put some of those fellows behind the bars”

“Nast isn’t the first person who used a position in journalism to take effective political action, nor the first to be offered a bribe. A subtler man than Boss Tweed might have tried to influence the editor of the Harper’s Weekly to focus on a different cause, or tried to purchase the paper from the four Harper brothers who owned it. Perhaps he did - history doesn’t say - but I doubt it. Tweed believed everybody was human, by which he meant that everybody has a price, if you can just find out what motivates them and where their self-interest lies.”

Sharpe looked out again, and Kafana felt his eyes boring into her like a drill.

“What is your price?”