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It's time to talk about Politics, and those who believed that draconica was a neutral apolitical blog with no Politics, clearly have missed my post titled Guten Tag > Besten Tag where I proposed the Sky Fish as the ultimate form of government.
Politics is ambient. Power structures, both visible and invisible, permeate societies. Given any subset of people, there exists a distribution of Power among them, where Power is synonymical to influence, authority, and dominance. In game theory, Power is measured by the Banzhaf index. Game theory considers situations in which a community of individual agents benefits or loses from the choices made by each individual. Basically any life situation is such: almost nothing is value-neutral; we don't act mindlessly, we assume that some actions benefit us and some are hurtful for our well-being. Assuming otherwise is irrational.
Actions of other individuals may or may not affect us. We're not the only contributors to our benefit/loss balance. And our own actions may affect benefits/losses of other individuals. As such, we have Preferences for our own actions and for actions of others. We may communicate these Preferences to other individuals. This observation allows us to further limit the scope of what Power is: it's the degree to which others conform to our preferences. In this sense, a king has Power over his subjects; a spoiled child has Power over her parents.
The Power is perpetually in flux. A king dies (for all kings are mortal [except for the Sky Fish who is the Eternal King of Everything Forever]), a successor inherits the crown, a new king is in place, new king has new Preferences, a balance of Powers shifts. A spoiled child is sent to a correctional boot camp to correct her Preferences so she has less Power over her parents, a balance of Powers shifts. This is Power Dynamics. People change, Preferences change, balance of Powers shifts. You cannot stop this.
But Power Dynamics can be guided. This is Politics. You have a vision of how Powers should be balanced, you guide people into fulfilling that vision. I use "guide" here very loosely, it encompasses many methods of guiding, including violent coercion or genocide among other more peaceful options. Nothing is off-limits (practically, not ethically).
At this point you may ask, "but Maria, wouldn't that mean that if a person Prefers to be a low-life oppressed individual, then by being awful they get a lot of Power?" That's a good nit-picky question. A question that guided Politics into what it becomes in its most dreadful forms. From now on, I conclude this post.
Politics is ambient. Power structures, both visible and invisible, permeate societies. Given any subset of people, there exists a distribution of Power among them, where Power is synonymical to influence, authority, and dominance. In game theory, Power is measured by the Banzhaf index. Game theory considers situations in which a community of individual agents benefits or loses from the choices made by each individual. Basically any life situation is such: almost nothing is value-neutral; we don't act mindlessly, we assume that some actions benefit us and some are hurtful for our well-being. Assuming otherwise is irrational.
Actions of other individuals may or may not affect us. We're not the only contributors to our benefit/loss balance. And our own actions may affect benefits/losses of other individuals. As such, we have Preferences for our own actions and for actions of others. We may communicate these Preferences to other individuals. This observation allows us to further limit the scope of what Power is: it's the degree to which others conform to our preferences. In this sense, a king has Power over his subjects; a spoiled child has Power over her parents.
The Power is perpetually in flux. A king dies (for all kings are mortal [except for the Sky Fish who is the Eternal King of Everything Forever]), a successor inherits the crown, a new king is in place, new king has new Preferences, a balance of Powers shifts. A spoiled child is sent to a correctional boot camp to correct her Preferences so she has less Power over her parents, a balance of Powers shifts. This is Power Dynamics. People change, Preferences change, balance of Powers shifts. You cannot stop this.
But Power Dynamics can be guided. This is Politics. You have a vision of how Powers should be balanced, you guide people into fulfilling that vision. I use "guide" here very loosely, it encompasses many methods of guiding, including violent coercion or genocide among other more peaceful options. Nothing is off-limits (practically, not ethically).
At this point you may ask, "but Maria, wouldn't that mean that if a person Prefers to be a low-life oppressed individual, then by being awful they get a lot of Power?" That's a good nit-picky question. A question that guided Politics into what it becomes in its most dreadful forms. From now on, I conclude this post.
