The Saturday Exhale Episode 17: Who Should Rule?

Vadim Gershteyn, PhD, MPH served as my editor for StressHacked and contributed writing to my upcoming book The Stone Wall. He joins me for this discussion.

VG: In a wide ranging discussion with Sean Kelly, where you discussed everything from today’s inverted gender roles, to psychopaths in positions of power, to the diminishing value of college degrees, to molecular hydrogen, you came upon a point I’d like to discuss in more detail. Namely, it’s how you distinguish authority from power: authority is earned, always. Power is, at least sometimes, granted. This reminds me of something written by David Hume:

Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few, and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we inquire by what means this wonder is effected we shall find, that as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is, therefore, on opinion only that government is founded, and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and popular. The sultan of Egypt, or the emperor of Rome, might drive his harmless subjects, like brute beasts, against their sentiment and inclination. But he must, at least, have led his mamalukes or praetorian bands, like men, by their opinions.

It was Bertrand de Jouvenel, a figure who looms large in your upcoming The Stone Wall, who stated something similar:

Power, however, is something very different from authority. The distinguishing mark of the latter is that it is exercised only over those who voluntarily accept it: if the rulers have authority over only a part of their subjects, they may receive from that part a strength sufficient to subject the others to their power…Authority ends where voluntary assent ends. There is in every state a margin of obedience which is won only by the use of force or the threat of force: it is this margin which breaches liberty and demonstrates the failure of authority. Among free peoples it is a very small margin, because their authority is very great.

One of the lessons shared by Georg W.F. Hegel, which was not borrowed by Karl Marx who appropriated him, is that there is a bidirectional relationship between slave and master (in the same way there is a bidirectional relationship between human beings and our livestock; certain animals would not exist in their current form, or exist at all, if we did not raise them for sustenance). Marxists who have considered this opinion of Hegel’s—speaking of opinions—claim that the master is ‘hurt’ by their employment of slaves, in a moral sense. (One may ask what evidence they have to assert this, other than dogmatic belief). Hegel, being a conservative in line with a more overt slavery-defender, Aristotle, is not saying this: he is saying we’re all interconnected in an organic society, including slave and master.

Hume and de Jouvenel understood the following nuance, perhaps that is an undercurrent to conservative thought, that some people desire to be told what to do. Moreover, the people who desire to be told what to do want this for themselves all the time, contrary to what you say about yourself in this interview: that you don’t want to be told what to do, like many other men with high testosterone. Insofar as there is a subset of people, whoever they are, who wish to be subservient to others, all the time, they will never be ‘liberated.’ If they are, liberation is ‘bad’ for them.

Still, all leaders, despots or not, are subject to popular opinion, even that of these folks—Hegel’s “slaves.” The despotic government from a faraway place may be the best representation of the will-to-power of that society, even if it looks abhorrent to us. Is the alternative (“democracy”; whatever that means) worse for that specific population? I am reminded of what Jacques Lacan stated about sinthomes: the treatment of a psychological “symptom” in a clinical setting may unravel the whole persona if the individual obsessively relies on that symptom for self-identity.

Knowing that you have a lengthy discussion about Power and Authority in The Stone Wall, what do you want the reader of your newsletter to know about the distinction between power and authority? Is all authority legitimate? Is all power illegitimate?

AT: I am going to cautiously try to say enough to satisfy your questions and the readers’ curiosity, but not too much, lest I brutalize my much more nuanced and detailed thoughts which I represent in The Stone Wall, coming out in a couple of weeks. Authority is always earned, but that is not to say it is legitimate—its legitimacy subjective and dependent on one’s views regarding normative acceptance as opposed to ultimate alignment with truth. I would say power, likewise, is subjective in whether it is viewed as legitimate or illegitimate. For those who are “Natural Slaves” according to Aristotle, they likely believe power to be legitimate. For those more aligned with me philosophically, power is almost always illegitimate, the brief periods of legitimacy being only temporarily granted based on authority to deal with a specific situation.

Let me explain: authority is earned, whether we subjectively view it as legitimate or not. Those who become authorities sometimes seek to do so, but on other occasions are simply recognized for their excellence, earning this perceived authority due to competence, efforts, and widespread acknowledgement. We, collectively speaking, have a logical urge to grant power to those who have earned authority, individuals or organizations. The challenge is that as soon as we do this—grant power to an individual or group—those in which power has been bestowed have, through no fault of their own, been externally manipulated to consider different motivations. The responsibility of this granted power alters perspective, changes intentions and actions, and works to rot away all of the goodness that had led to the earned authority, replacing it with a desire to protect and expand power.

From the perspective of the individual or group who has had power bestowed, they have earned this; they now carry a heavy burden on their shoulders, and must rise to the occasion. The very same peer attacks and criticisms which, when simply pursuing excellence served to drive them to be better, will now be viewed as subversive, attacks against the entire collective. The friction they needed to continue to earn authority will now, in their eyes, serve to undermine their power, and as such cannot be tolerated. As such, authority is earned through competition and friction, but once earned authority is bestowed power, power will instinctively seek to silence or subdue all of this friction and competition using the newly granted powers, believing it necessary to utilize said powers towards acting in benefit of the collective. Rarely will this new power dynamic understand that it was the friction and competition which elevated them to authority, earning the gift of power, and that by using said power to solidify their own power they are undermining the entire philosophical ethos that earned them the authority and subsequent power in the first place.

So we have a paradox: those best suited for power, once granted power, will rapidly diminish in their competence, actions, and ability to wield the power. We have all heard the quote “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely,” but it is typically left at that, a concise quote which we are asked to accept without deep thought. Perhaps many believe “greed” to be the reason, to which I would suggest those stating “greed” do not actually understand human nature, not of those granted power without having asked for it, bestowed due to their earned authority. I am suggesting that the reasons I detailed are precisely the mechanisms in which this short quote elucidates a truth often repeated, almost never understood.

VG: When you are speaking about authorities choosing to pursue power vs. having it bestowed upon them for their competence and skills, I am reminded of what Murray Bookchin proposed in his ideal society, which is leaders being ‘selected’ by the community due to their ‘natural authority.’ For instance, a physician is consulted for medical advice—naturally. If you want to build a bridge, you’ll speak to an engineer. If you want someone to lead you, you’ll pick the guy with the most natural charisma, sensitivity towards people’s needs, and decisiveness in decision-making ability. Calling his system ‘libertarian municipalism,’ Bookchin writes,

Libertarian municipalism proposes a radically different form of economy—one that is neither nationalized nor collectivized according to syndicalist precepts. It proposes that land and enterprises be placed increasingly in the custody of the community—more precisely, the custody of citizens in free assemblies and their deputies in confederal councils. How work should be planned, what technologies should be used, how goods should be distributed are questions that can only be resolved in practice. The maxim “from each according to his or her ability, to each according to his or her needs” would seem a bedrock guide for an economically rational society, provided that goods are of the highest durability and quality, that needs are guided by rational and ecological standards, and that the ancient notions of limit and balance replace the bourgeois marketplace imperative of “grow or die.”

In such a municipal economy—confederal, interdependent, and rational by ecological, not simply technological, standards—we would expect that the special interests that divide people today into workers, professionals, managers, and the like would be melded into a general interest in which people see themselves as citizens guided strictly by the needs of their community and region rather than by personal proclivities and vocational concerns. Here, citizenship would come into its own, and rational as well as ecological interpretations of the public good would supplant class and hierarchical interests.

For what it’s worth, the Kurdish revolutionaries in Syria—under the banner of ‘Rojava’—have adopted Bookchin’s ideas explicitly, with their exiled leader Abdullah Ocalan being a disciple of Bookchin’s. You can critique the Kurdish people in Syria for various reasons, but the doctrinaire leftism of their social experiment seems leagues ahead of their neighbors which they engaged in war with, such as ISIS. The difference between a fiercely democratic, feminist, and egalitarian society (with all of the predictable human rights violations one would expect in this part of the world) and ISIS could not be more stark.

Yet, to this, I am reminded of what Slavoj Žižek quipped: who wants to live like this? Who wants to decide every democratic decision in a council? How would we get anything done? A little alienation is a good thing, argues Žižek, as anyone who has dealt with a bureaucracy knows: you don’t want to deal with it for long. You, Alex, attest that power corrupts absolutely, and authorities, though naturally bestowed, can degrade to the corruption of power. But guardrails to mitigate this, such as among the Rojavan Kurds, seem to make life intolerable. What do you say to this?

AT: My comment is that even for individuals with very high cognitive capacity, this strategy loses the ability to be effective around ~300 individuals. In order to work, there has to be a level of trust, and also a level of respect that is anchored by friction and competition. We must intimately know each of those we are working with, their temperament, abilities, defects, and so on. This is something, as you are aware, that I am instituting in my group of companies: “town councils” where we form leadership webs, for those at director and above level, where we collaborate on projects based on each individuals skillset and passion, the best suited director or executive taking project lead regardless of any “seniority” another may have in title or salary over them. This is not possible on a large scale.

Herein lies the challenge: we didn’t evolve for complex modern societies with the amount of people, the disconnect, which exists today. The best structures which have existed historically, and can be implemented in small groups, fall apart on scale due to the inability to form individual connections. So, it has been tempting to form strict and rigid hierarchies, simply because it is easy. Easy doesn’t mean effective, and our governance styles at the macro scale are horrifically ineffective. This is why we need to deconstruct all, then reconstruct based on a deep understanding of who we are as individuals, how we behave in small groups, and how we act at the macro scale. This has not been previously attempted, our efforts focused on tweaking systems which have proven to be failures, or proposing radical changes built on dogmatic ideology and without any grounding in rationality.

As you know, I have proposals for all of this, but now is not the time nor place to reveal them.

VG: You begin The Stone Wall, perhaps controversially, with a discussion of Carl Schmitt, namely his Theory of the Political. One of the concepts Schmitt develops is that of the state of exception, stating in Political Theology that “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.” This means that when your community is threatened, someone (i.e., the leader) has to decide on an appropriate course of action. There is simply not enough time to deliberate among councils and groups, and so on, about what to do if your community is threatened. So, a community needs a CEO—basically. Of course, one can argue that, in a game-theoretic (i.e., zero-sum) system where there is scarcity of resources, wherein life is “solitary, brutish, and short” (Hobbes) and “war is father and king of all” (Heraclitus), all states are states of exception. Schmitt made precisely this argument in his defense of the Nazi regime, where he was employed.

I don’t think we have to follow Schmitt in his defense of Nazis to recognize the insight in his concept of the state of exception. This is one other reason Bookchin’s and similar systems fail. Not only for the scalability issues, as you recognize, or for the annoyance of it, as Žižek quips, but because there is simply is not enough time to do any of this when you’re fighting a war (though perhaps the Rojavan Kurds are the counterpoint to this). And some of us are fighting a war all the time.

AT: I agree that all states are states of exception. I agree that we need a “CEO,” but that we also need “department heads” of each type of scenario, and that in competent governance, the “CEO” should understand that each “department head” is more competent than they are in the particular area they are governing. So, the “CEO” should only interject if a department’s goals are working against the goals of another “department,” or the entire state for that matter.

We need wise leaders that are held accountable. Wisdom is knowing when you are the right person for the task, and when it is time to intervene. Authority must always be granted due to trust and competence, never enshrined into permanence. When it is calcified into permanence, Machiavellian traits shine, as the scramble to solidify one’s position generates fear and unease, leading to the prioritization of devious and unethical actions. When it must be continuously earned, these same Machiavellian traits become exposed eventually, and trust is lost. Leaders must truly prioritize and work towards harmony and the greater good, because no one wearing a mask to achieve the end of power will be able to permanently deliver on their promises—and if they do, then their performative actions matter not, as the outcome for society is the same as it would be if they were genuine.

Existence is war, but only if we remain ignorant. When we move towards understanding, the factors we once needed to war with become recognized as natural flow, recruited as allies to our cause—the continuous improvement of our societal harmony and prosperity. War with others, war with the natural world, war with ourselves, war with time, war with the past, and war against a future we are trying desperately to control in some quixotic delusion. All require deep understanding, and with understanding our actions and intentions change. We learn to align with each other in creative ways—this doesn’t necessarily mean total acceptance, or some delusional multicultural utopia. We learn to understand how the very challenges nature gives us lead to the improvements and solutions that don’t just protect against the challenges, but help us build something greater. Understanding and accepting time, and its tragically short and linear experience, allows us to accept the past, for it brought us to the moment, and act in the moment, for we have so few of them. This understanding lets us relax, wading into an uncertain future with the confidence that, provided we have built the competence to endure what is to be expected, we will find a way to direct ourselves through the chaos to a destination that brings us contentment and pride.

We are constantly at war, but perhaps the greatest battle front, and only war in which we truly need to win, is the war with ourselves in letting go of the rigidity of thought, and accepting that sometimes an enemy and friend are synonymous, changing designation simply by altering our perception.