2011年10月3日星期一
The importance of Canetti book
Unconsciously echoing the image of the pestilential archer, Canetti claims that the Rosetta Stone Software exercise of power by a stronger person on another is like firing a dart into their psyche, where it sticks and festers, causing a rancour that cannot be exorcised unless it is discharged by a matching discharge of power onto someone else, someone weaker in the power hierarchy. This is often not immediate, the injuries of power can be stored up for a considerable time. So the exercise of power is never a single act: it unleashes a slow cascade of injuries, where the direction of flight depends on the direction of the power relation at any given time.This certainly mirrors the picture of our organization and its flying arrows of blame. It also sees power and blame as inter-linked. But this is not the whole picture.The importance of Canetti book is that it recognizes power as an emergent social property, arising not merely out of our individual natures or our individual stations. It is socially constructed. This is important, because we are very fond of saying in knowledge management and in other change initiatives that the leadership support and involvement is a critical factor for success. Power is localized, we imply, it can Rosetta Stone Language be exercised by discrete acts of leadership.I have rarely seen discrete acts of power. Most acts of leadership, in my experience, are simulated acts of power they are usually movements of least resistance, impacted by multiple pressures that feel to the actor like the greater power of external parties. The powerful feel as powerless as we do. They are as fickle and as faithless in their decisions as a randy bachelor is with his steady stream of dates. It is far easier to exercise our sense of power in petty, simple acts (like the discharge of an injury), than in subtle, complex, sustained interventions. Power lies largely in the imagination, in habits, and in acquiescence to embedded social structures and rituals. Underneath the hood, power and powerlessness look very similar indeed.Indeed, if we take freedom to act without undue constraint as one expression of power, then the most powerful beings in our troubled organization are actually the pirate archetypes, who do not acquiesce.So I reject Pestilence, the very idea of him. I reject the idea that there are specific points of blame, that there is a right or a wrong in this mess, that the exercise of authoritarian power can resolve it. The injuriousness of the flying arrows of power-blame cannot be denied, however. This gets us somewhere, but it does not get us far, and I fear we Rosetta Stone Spanish (Spain) will need to move on and examine what else the Apocalypse has in store for us in my next post.
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