Power structure: Difference between revisions

===“Power” as a pejorative term===

Power structures are a feature of Critical Theory critiques of — well — the western world, basically, but only when rendered in the “glass-half-empty” terms of the permanently malcontent. Sure, social hierarchies can be pernicious, but anyone who favours any form of communal organisation beyond flapping around in primordial sludge will concende they don’t ''have'' to be: they can be constructive, enabling, levers to prosperity and betterment.

We wonder whether James Carse’s distinction between “power” and “strength” wouldn’t cast a less Hobbesian light here:

===Frontiers, utopian anarchy and why [[this time is different|this time isn’t different]]===

Nascent power structures don’t have a steady state, and take a while to settle down, usually only settling into a format quite removed from the utopian aspiration that might have brought the common interest together in the first place.