There isn’t anything that I want to do, as work, for someone else that I can’t do as my own boss. (I guess – prove me wrong here)
I should be able to do what I want. I want to be respected, to have a voice, to have a place where I have a degree of power, money, and respect that makes me feel good about myself. (That is all that anyone wants, by the way, to have power, money, and respect in sufficient quantities to make them feel good. Substitute love for respect if that makes you feel better.)
I want to be loved, to be free to act out my will, and wealthy enough (or destitute enough) to support both of those.
How can that happen? I think I understand how it happens, but I also wonder if I know how to make it happen.
I understand that power comes from the combination of four factors – force, finances, reputation, and culture. These four things combined amount to the power to act with a degree of autonomy in situations of society and nature. They are naturally divided into pairs, and these pairs are involved in opposing cycles. The force-financial pairing is the weaker, more brutish pair, while the reputation-culture pairing is ultimately more versatile, but slower to cycle, and less potent initially. These pairs, in turn, generally fit under the auspices of the broad pillars of civilization – maintenance and accountability. The maintenance of force, and things constructed through force, and of fiscal instruments is the principal occupation of their owners when they are not in use while the reputation-culture pairing is never ‘at rest’ and, as such, accountability of those in the relationships is the principal concern of those who own them.
These cycles are engines, producing work through the difference of potential between the pairings while depending upon a increasingly greater and greater amounts of induced difference introduced from outside the cycle to continue running. This external introduction is the only opportunity for ‘outsiders’ to acquire power if they lack it, while the regulation of that introduction is the primary source of growing power once some is gained. It takes money to make money is only a cliche because it is true, and it indicates a principle that is true in all economies. The same can be said of the rich get richer. No one enters the game at an even start – the game is in play, as it has been in play for thousands of years, and there is no such thing as and even playing field. When we want power, we must compete for that power in a game that has established players who have a vested interest in keeping the number of successful players limited, and in keeping the growth of total available power slow. They rely upon the a vast disparity between themselves, banded together in a class, and all the rest of the players to buffer themselves from the burdens of both accountability and maintenance, thus relieving themselves of the requirement to actually play the game, except when it suits them to do so, and enable them to simply feel good without having worry about that feeling being endangered. (Now, in all honesty, the real result is that many of these individuals feel a void of respect, or of love, that they are unable to satisfy, but that is apart from their desire for power, per se.)
Power, and all of it’s factors, derive from connectedness and proximity. The density of possible connections and the distance those connections must traverse determines how much work will be produced for a given cycle of the power engine, and how much external difference must be introduced. Here the pairings derive potency. This potency is realized through a means to actualize the difference-network into a form of currency. This actualization is vague, the mechanics of it only recently being subjected to study, and the results varied. Suffice to say that they are enough to establish that it does, in fact, occur and that it’s occurrence is neither random nor capricious. Power exists, and it is produced by a system, and like any system, it has rules. The understanding of those rules is a power itself, a meta-power that can be utilized to step outside the system of power and manipulate it. This is the aim of understanding the system.
Money is the article of the power factor of finance, but it is also a force multiplier when it is used as a thing itself. In this way, money is necessary as both a factor of power and as an element of satisfying the want to feel good. Money is, as a thing itself, an eliminator of friction. Friction exists, in a social sense, as an impediment to the smooth running of interpersonal relations, and having money enables the procurement of things, saving the time and energy that previously would have been devoted to growing or crafting them and allowing that energy to be devoted to feeling good. Money-itself is not a system, it is a tool. The tool requires expertise, in this case, using money-itself well involves judgment in usage. Spending requires no art, spending well requires art. Spending well with small amounts constitutes a high art. This is the aim of practicing the art.
Respect is not repute, respect is good repute. Good repute is more than simply the actualization of connectedness and proximity, it is the synergy of irrational connectedness, proximity, and sentiment. It transcends the mere power of reputation – charisma or personality, for example – and enters into a higher relationship wherein we become willing to divest ourselves of the boundary of our I-ness and extend our desire to feel good to encompass things and people beyond ourselves. Strictly speaking, what feels good is that someone else has directed that sentiment towards us, but in practice that only happens when we too are directing the sentiment towards them. Respect is organic, it evolves, it grows, it wilts, it becomes. Understanding respect does not impart respect, respect must be experienced, one must dwell in respect, and in so dwelling, one will be respected. This is the aim of being respected.
From this formulation, feeling good then is the result of understanding the system of power, practicing the art of spending well, and dwelling in respect. Sounds simple, no? How does one travel from a given place (presumably of not feeling good, or not feeling good enough) to a place where feeling good is both possible but easy, where it is a matter of fact, not a matter of effort? One does not. This journey cannot be made alone. There is no such thing as a human being who feels good about themselves in isolation. One might argue effectively that there is no such thing as a single human being, that ‘human being’ occurs naturally as two bodies in relation to one another and those two bodies are not, individually, humans being. To be human is to be in connection to others, and if all such connections are severed, human ceases to be. Nothing about power, money, or respect happens apart from society with others. Feeling good, then, becomes a quest to arrive at precisely that intersection of others that satisfies the present need for power, money, and respect. Feeling good is not a done-once thing. Feeling good is the continual act of determining what is sufficient and then seeking, finding, and arriving at the intersection that meets that need.
(Is feeling good all that matters? Probably not. Feeling good is probably only one part of the whole deal. purpose, place, and reason. safety, security, hope. Those are two other formulations of what makes people work. Feeling good is only one part. Working well is another, as is living together. Feeling good: power, money, respect; Working well: purpose, place, reason; Living together: safety, security, hope.)
What then are the mechanics? Clearly connectedness and proximity are necessary for power, so a dense network of quality people to create potential interactions is desirable, and we can learn a lot from network science on how that network is best constituted. This difference-network is critical for the establishment of power. Respect must be. Learning to have respect for one’s self is, perhaps the greatest challenge of the entire process, and likewise, there is a wealth of study, in diverse fields, on how best to accomplish this. Presume that the destination is more important than the route taken. Dwelling in respect for one’s self naturally leads to respect for others.Money is fluid, and must be collected, like so much runoff in the rain. There will be times when this gathering is akin to foraging through the garbage or receiving scraps from the table like a dog. Other times it will be a simple as dipping a cup in a river. No matter, always remember to practice the art of spending well, for as long as one penny is in your purse, the artist has all they need to advance their art. This then is the course of study; network science leads to understanding the system of power, self respect leads to dwelling in respect, and collecting the effluence permits the practice of the art.