Understanding the Power Dynamic
by styx Wednesday, Dec 18 2013, 12:01pm
international / prose / post

A French academic rightfully described power as process not object or possession. Power is a dynamic that is manifest as a result of the interplay of those affected by it.

The exercise of power results from the interaction between those that yield and those that wield. However, this process/relationship is entirely dependent on the yielding group which consciously or unconsciously surrenders power or personal volition to another and becomes 'subject' to that other. Power is never taken rather it is invested/donated by the yielding entity. However, the constant flux of power relations ensures that yielding and wielding groups/entities are interchangeable -- in other words power relations are entirely REVERSIBLE! This 'reversal' is effected in two ways -- ‘yielders’ decide (or are convinced) to yield to another group, person or idea or they consciously decide not to yield period.

A great deal of hysterical misinformation has recently been disseminated relating to the antics of the NSA -- a group which is EASILY led on wild goose chases (manipulated) due to the nature of their activities; the NSA is indeed trapped in its own processes/mindset; it is therefore subject to those able to 'play' its internal power dynamics -- too fuckin' easy!

The NSA is not an autonomous entity able to determine the degree of influence it has in the world -- readers would note that most of its current ‘power’ arises from propaganda or fictional media discourse. The reality is this: the NSA is subject to government which is in turn subject to the plutocracy which is in turn subject to the people/masses. Now ask yourselves why you continue to believe in fictions and propaganda designed to induce you to yield to a particular entity or idea/myth?

The one primary characteristic of the power dynamic is its volatility. Learn to use it wisely and never surrender it to another under any circumstances. The NSA and similar groups/agencies are appreciated as easily manipulated groups populated by pathological personalities and casualties of the post-modern era.

There you go morons, freedom is there for the taking but slaves are indeed fit for the slaughter! Do you believe the defeatist rhetoric of operative, Edward Snowden?

Excerpt from 'The Subject and Power' by Michel Foucault (attached):

The analysis of power relations demands that a certain number of points be established concretely:

1. The system of differentiations which permits one to act upon the actions of others: differentiations determined by the law or by traditions of status and privilege; economic differences in the appropriation of riches and goods, shifts in the processes of production, linguistic or cultural differences, differences in know-how and competence, and so forth. Every relationship of power puts into operation differentiations which are at the same time its conditions and its results.

2. The types of objectives pursued by those who act upon the actions of others: the maintenance of privileges, the accumulation of profits, the bringing into operation of statutary authority, the exercise of a function or of a trade.

3. The means of bringing power relations into being: according to whether power is exercised by the threat of arms, by the effects of the word, by means of economic disparities, by more or less complex means of control, by systems of surveillance, with or without archives, according to rules which are or are not explicit, fixed or modifiable, with or without the technological means to put all these things into action. [Emphasis added]

4. Forms of institutionalization: these may mix traditional pre-dispositions, legal structures, phenomena relating to custom or to fash-ion (such as one sees in the institution of the family); they can also take the form of an apparatus closed in upon itself, with its specific loci, its own regulations, its hierarchical structures which are carefully defined, a relative autonomy in its functioning (such as scholastic or military in-stitutions); they can also form very complex systems endowed with mul-tiple apparatuses, as in the case of the state, whose function is the taking of everything under its wing, the bringing into being of general surveil-lance, the principle of regulation, and, to a certain extent also, the dis-tribution of all power relations in a given social ensemble.

5. The degrees of rationalization: the bringing into play of power re-lations as action in a field of possibilities may be more or less elaborate in relation to the effectiveness of the instruments and the certainty of the results (greater or lesser technological refinements employed in the exercise of power) or again in proportion to the possible cost (be it the economic cost of the means brought into operation or the cost in terms of reaction constituted by the resistance which is encountered). The exercise of power is not a naked fact, an institutional right, nor is it a structure which holds out or is smashed: it is elaborated, transformed, organized; it endows itself with processes which are more or less ad-justed to the situation.

Michel Foucault -- The Subject and Power

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/12/17-1