POWER IS CHANGE AND DIRECTED ACTION

by Jeremy M. Wallace

Looking at where power is centred within liberal society, we find the government less and less relevant.

To define the word, power is the ability to influence change and direct action.

More broadly speaking, power is the ability for a person or group to influence the behaviours and thoughts of others, and it is also the ability to direct action toward a purpose through policy and human action.

The question we must then ask is, who are the people and organisations which have power in liberal society?

When considering this question, a quote by Andrew Breitbart comes to mind; “politics is downstream from culture”.

This is precisely the level of analysis one must use when discussing the issue of power within a liberal society. To expand on Andrews quote, if politics is downstream from culture, then it is culture which holds the true power over politics.

Looking at our current political structures, the fundamental axis in which all decisions are made is democracy. This is the case firstly by citizens electing people into parliament who represent their cultural beliefs most accurately, and secondly by parliament weighing up their decisions with how it will likely affect the amount of votes they receive in the next election by attempting to appease their voter demographic. 

Furthermore, politicians go about their work to push agendas based on the culture they’re surrounded by.

Culture is the most important influence within society. Hence, it is vital for us to observe who has power to influence the culture. 

To answer the question of who the people and organisations which hold power within liberal societies are would be too extensive for this article. Being a fractionated state with no unifying foundational body, which liberalism is, it’s not possible to solely point to a singular, or even handful, of organisations or people who are powerful as defined previously.

However, what this article will attempt to do is shine a light on the capacity of organisations to influence the behaviour and thought patterns of our people. To shine a light on the capacity of our people to be led astray from our natural path, to one filled with materialistic pleasure, expediency and degeneration. 

Looking into materialistic pleasure; the reality that we’ve been successfully suffocated into mindless economic units, one example shines bright to highlight the capability for the masses to be conditioned into behaviour and thought for the singular purpose of company profit. The example, diamonds.

In today’s modern world proposing to your future wife with a ring without diamonds is sacrilege. Well known to all people, diamonds are the scarce stone of love, the stone of passion and the stone one uses to express such feelings.

Unknown to most people, is that diamonds are not only plentiful and not scarce at all, they’ve also only recently become the stone of love. The question then beggs, why do we think diamonds are valuable, and why are they the stone of love? 

The answer is, a corporation decided for them to be so.

In 1938 the British diamond mining company in South Africa, De Beers, wanted to sell more diamonds. Thus, they launched a marketing campaign through the advertising company N. W. Ayer. 

Using Hollywood stars and the slogan “a diamond is forever”, the campaign worked so well that since then the diamond ring has been the deeply embedded ideal for the engagement ring.

The history of the heightened price of diamonds is a fascinating tale, due to the supply of diamonds becoming vastly greater than the demand, the price of them greatly decreased in the late 1800s. Afterwhich, the remaining mining companies came together to form a monopoly, De Beers. Once the monopoly was formed, they were able to control and limit the supply of diamonds coming into the market, causing artificial scarcity and thus increasing the prices. 

We’re led to believe the diamond is a valuable stone. In reality, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Yet, through artificial limits of supply, and successful marketing campaigns, we have been manipulated into believing a fairytale.

Moving onto expediency and degeneration, the state we’ve been conditioned since youth, to conduct ourselves in a manner of fundamentally meaningless pleasure. This way in which we live our lives is a consequence, in large part, of our minds being purposefully warped by the relentless strength of corporations and psychologists. 

The reality of the situation in which we find ourselves in is, large corporations spend more money than you or I hope make in a lifetime working out how to manipulate our minds, specifically our dopamine, to create an intense addiction inside of us for the purpose of capturing our engagement, and thus, securing their profits. 

We put our attention toward the activity which will grant us the highest levels of dopamine. Choosing between a book or movie, most will choose the movie. Choosing between friends, or playing video games, most will choose video games. When given options, we pick the path that will grant the highest dopamine levels.

Unfortunately in the modern era, the activities which grant the most amount of dopamine are also the activities which cause our time to be fundamentally meaningless. Rather than building relationships with friends or a potential spouse, we sit and play video games. Instead of going to the gym and improving ourselves physically, we scroll through social media timelines looking at content which gives us no value.

We live in an expedient world not because we wish it. But because it’s been designed to be. Thus, as our attention, in other words our time and efforts, move toward less meaningful things, and more towards that which is not meaningful, we begin to degenerate.

Power is the ability to influence change and direct action. In modern society, those who have power use it in a way that is destructive to our people. The active willingness of the corporations, media, education system, activist groups and many more to influence changes in our thoughts and behaviour in such negative ways is causing an ever growing dark stain on our culture. 

It is culture that will dictate our future. Looking around us, it is self-evident that those who have control of it do not have our best interests at heart. Thus, it is vital that we take back power for the purpose of benefiting our people.