a. Jeffrey Pfeffer’s book, Power. Nothing really stuck with me, other than a brief passage pointing out that autonomy and power are not the same thing. If you want autonomy, you may not want to pursue power.
b. Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga, The Courage to be Disliked. I found this to be one of the most interesting self-help books that I have read, but I am still not sure whether I find it useful. Some notes:
1. Rather than suggest seeking power, the book offers advice to stay out of power struggles.
2. The book credits all of its ideas to the psychology of Alfred Adler, but you won’t find much in common with other summaries of Adler’s work. Very different points of emphasis, if nothing else.
3. There is a brief but very pointed passage stating that “You don’t know what it’s like to be ____” is a power play, and an ugly one at that.
4. I didn’t find the book immediately relevant to any problems in my life. Possibly I do not have the sorts of problems that animate the book. Possibly I fail to recognize that I have the sorts of problems that animate the book. Possibly the hard part of applying the book’s advice is acknowledging that your problems fit its thesis.
5. I think it would be a very interesting book to discuss, if my readers would like to do so.
The “you don’t know what it’s like to be _” power play sounds like the basis of identity politics.
A nice retort from Denis Prager is that the person he loves the most and is closest to is his wife, and he doesn’t know what it’s like to be her.
= – = – = – =
It would be nice to see a table of “rhetorical gambits” and “proper countermeasures” for statements of the “you don’t know what it’s like” variety. Some can be innocent, or at least fumbling and earnest and well-meaning. But often it’s a aggressive statement veiled underneath protestations of weakness, oppression, and “I’m just trying to help.”
Mark Bäuerlein at the Minding the Campus website had a little article entitled “How to answer the white privilegers,” which is partly appropriate to the “you don’t know what it’s like,” but only partly.
I still recall a girlfriend from my youth trying to explain what it felt like to have a menstrual cycle. “First, imagine that you don’t have testicles but rather ovaries, and they are located deep in your lower belly. Next, imagine that they have a 28 day cycle, and once a month you can feel them twisting a bit up there…”
Steven Pinker had a thought exercise for being a hunter / gatherer. “Imagine you are on a camping trip that lasts a lifetime…”
Thought exercises are all well and good. The problem with “you don’t know what it’s like” is they can be the opening gambit of an agressive…we can’t call it an argument–it’s more of a dispute.
I’m listening to this lecture course on Machiavelli. The lecturer is wonderful and he has a lot to say about power. Unexpectedly, some of his observations may even explain some of Trump’s success! There is a long (110 pages) companion PDF document summarizing the content. I was surprised by the relevance to our times: https://www.audible.com/pd/Bios-Memoirs/Machiavelli-in-Context-Audiobook/B00DDSGUJ6
The same lecturer does an almost “stand up” series of lectures on Dante with a colleague. These lectures are great too: https://www.audible.com/pd/Classics/Dantes-Divine-Comedy-Audiobook/B00D8K4E4M?qid=1533416193&sr=sr_1_2&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_2&pf_rd_p=e81b7c27-6880-467a-b5a7-13cef5d729fe&pf_rd_r=6R2A5NJTTN9YQ211ZVYF&
I did not read the book but have browsed some reviews.
Evidently there was a TV show in Japan based on the book. It starred a woman. Is it possible that the book was written for Japanese women primarily?
How does the “book club” work?
From the Intellectual Turing Test (couldn’t leave a comment there?), here’s an important gem:
If I believe unshakably in the rightness of my own convictions, it follows that those who hold opposing views are denying the truth and luring others into falsehood. From there, it is a short step to thinking that I am morally entitled — or even morally obliged — to silence such people any way I can, including through conversion, coercion, and, if necessary, murder.
Most wars are by good people fighting for what they think are good ideas.
The University Dem echo chamber of “hate conservatives” is already leading to violence.
For me, I just finished vacation reading JB Peterson, and he has a fine rule for this:
Rule 9: Assume that the Person You are Listening to Might Know Something You Don’t
The medium article ends very nicely, and importantly (with agreement to Arnold’s charity to those who disagree):
“Of all the things we are wrong about, this idea of error might well top the list. It is our meta-mistake: we are wrong about what it means to be wrong. Far from being a sign of intellectual inferiority, the capacity to err is crucial to human cognition…”