Holotopia: Power structure

H O L O T O P I A:    F I V E    I N S I G H T S

Power structure

We adopted—and reified—traditional institutions. Here we consider them as gigantic mechanisms, whose function is to turn our daily efforts into socially useful effects. But they don't!

Those systems in which we live and work create for us an ecology, which creates our values, and culture. They need to be seen as power structure—a dictatorial entity of a completely new kind; subverting our efforts at democracy; remaining unseen.

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When making small technical gadgets, we are ingenious. But those largest and incomparably more important ones—the systems in which we live and work—we don't even look at!

By calling them power structure, we point to this most costly error's most interesting cause: We do ot adapt our institutions to their purpose, because they serve us a different one: They provide a structure within which our various power strifes, both personal and collective, are being played.

A result is that the power structure becomes our enemy. We become our enemy!