.XX-34 BADGER. atmospheric nuclear test - April 1953
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Before examining America's corpocracy, or the collusion between corporate America and subservient government America, I will briefly examine the concept of power because the corpocracy cannot exist without its power.1 While I have written about the concept before, what follows is a considerably expanded conceptualization in the form of 16 tenets. They are intended to make sense of the meaning and use of human and artifactual (human made as in, for example, institutions and weapons) power, one of the most dominating and consequential phenomena in the course of human affairs. I hope readers find this introductory segment interesting and useful.
The Nature of Power
Power is the capacity to control resources of whatever kind and for whatever purpose. The greater that capacity up to and including super power the greater is the potential to control more resources for broader purposes. Maximum capacity, or super power, could lead to the control of all finite resources and thus eventually to their complete depletion. There are two corollaries to this first tenet. More power allows more choices. And more power allows more prosperity.
This capacity must be acquired. It is not innate. It can be shared. It can be handed down as in dynasties and elections of the twin party's politicians.
All human and artifactual power is finite even if some of it is replaceable (e.g., US presidents). Nothing but death and taxes lasts forever. What will outlast malevolent, destructive and deadly super power and how and when is the pivotal question facing humanity.
What turns the capacity for power into its actual exercise is the behavior, in the form of decisions and subsequent actions and inactions, of the power holders. The origin of human power, therefore, is human, not supernatural, but this power can be amplified by artifacts such as laws and weapons and by institutions such as government agencies, all created as I said by humans.
To understand human power, therefore, requires understanding what causes human behavior. In my non-mathematical equation for human behavior, there are always two causes of behavior interacting with each other, the person and the situations and circumstances the person faces and may help create.2 The classic axiom of Lord Acton (1834-1902), "power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely," is mostly bunkum. Power per se does not corrupt. Power is only the situational part of the behavioral equation. The person is the other. A morally upright person, moreover, no matter how much power he or she holds whether absolute or something less, is not necessarily corruptible and thus corrupting.
The axioms that "knowledge is truth" and "truth will set you free" are of limited usefulness to the general public in America's corpocracy. It tells the general public what the "truth" is.
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