“It is a good thing to be An Authority. People are fragile. Because of that, life is difficult and suffering common. Ameliorating that suffering — ensuring that everyone has food, clean water, sanitary facilities, and a place to take shelter, for starters—takes initiative, effort, and ability. If there is a problem to be solved, and many people involve themselves in the solution, then a hierarchy must and will arise, as those who can do, and those who cannot follow as best they can, often learning to be competent in the process. If the problem is real, then the people who are best at solving the problem at hand should rise to the top. That is not Power. It is The Authority that properly accompanies ability.
Now, it is self-evidently appropriate to grant power to competent authorities, if they are solving necessary problems; and it is equally appropriate to be one of those competent authorities, if possible, when there is a perplexing problem at hand. This might be regarded as a philosophy of responsibility. A responsible person decides to make a problem his or her problem, and then works diligently — even ambitiously — for its solution, with other people, in the most efficient manner possible (efficient, because there are other problems to solve, and efficiency allows for the conservation of resources that might then be devoted importantly elsewhere).
Ambition is often — and often purposefully — misidentified with The Desire for Power, and damned with faint praise, and denigrated, and punished. And ambition is sometimes exactly that wish for undue influence on others. But there is a crucial difference between sometimes and always. Authority is not mere power, and it is extremely unhelpful, even dangerous, to confuse the two. When people exert Power over others, they compel them, forcefully. They apply the threat of privation or punishment so their subordinates have little choice but to act in a manner contrary to their personal needs, desires, and values.
When people wield Authority, by contrast, they do so because of their competence — a competence that is spontaneously recognised and appreciated by others, and generally followed willingly, with a certain relief, and with the sense that Justice is being served.
Those who are power hungry — tyrannical and cruel, even psychopathic — desire control over others so that every selfish whim of hedonism can be immediately gratified; so that envy can destroy its target; so that resentment can find its expression. But good people are ambitious (and diligent, honest, and focused along with it) instead because they are possessed by the desire to solve genuine, serious problems. That variant of ambition needs to be encouraged in every possible manner. It is for this reason, among many others, that the increasingly reflexive identification of the striving of boys and men for victory with the “patriarchal tyranny” that hypothetically characterizes our modern, productive, and comparatively free societies is so stunningly counterproductive (and, it must be said, cruel: there is almost nothing worse than treating someone striving for competence as a tyrant in training). “Victory,” in one of its primary and most socially important aspects, is the overcoming of obstacles for the broader public good. Someone who is sophisticated as a winner wins in a manner that improves the game itself, for all the players. To adopt an attitude of naive or willfully blind cynicism about this, or to deny outright that it is true, is to position yourself—perhaps purposefully, as people have many dark motives—as an enemy of the practical amelioration of suffering itself. I can think of few more sadistic attitudes.
Now, power may accompany authority, and perhaps it must. However, and more important, genuine authority constrains the arbitrary exercise of power. This constraint manifests itself when the authoritative agent cares, and takes responsibility, for those over whom the exertion of power is possible. The oldest child can take accountability for his younger siblings, instead of domineering over and teasing and torturing them, and can learn in that manner how to exercise authority and limit the misuse of power. Even the youngest can exercise appropriate authority over the family dog. To adopt authority is to learn that power requires concern and competence—and that it comes at a genuine cost. Someone newly promoted to a management position soon learns that managers are frequently more stressed by their multiple subordinates than subordinates are stressed by their single manager. Such experience moderates what might otherwise become romantic but dangerous fantasies about the attractiveness of power, and helps quell the desire for its infinite extension. And, in the real world, those who occupy positions of Authority in functional hierarchies are generally struck to the core by the responsibility they bear for the people they supervise, employ, and mentor.
Not everyone feels this burden, of course. A person who has become established as an authority can forget his origins and come to develop a counterproductive contempt for the person who is just starting out. This is a mistake, not least because it means that the established person cannot risk doing something new (as it would mean adopting the role of despised fool). It is also because arrogance bars the path to learning. Shortsighted, willfully blind, and narrowly selfish tyrants certainly exist, but they are by no means in the majority, at least in functional societies. Otherwise nothing would work.
The Authority who remembers his or her sojourn as voluntary beginner, by contrast, can retain their identification with the newcomer and the promise of potential, and use that memory as the source of personal information necessary to constrain the hunger for power. One of the things that has constantly amazed me is the delight that decent people take in the ability to provide opportunities to those over whom they currently exercise authority. I have experienced this repeatedly: personally, as a university professor and researcher (and observed many other people in my situation doing the same); and in the business and other professional settings I have become familiar with. There is great intrinsic pleasure in helping already competent and admirable young people become highly skilled, socially valuable, autonomous, responsible professionals. It is not unlike the pleasure taken in raising children, and it is one of the primary motivators of valid ambition. Thus, the position of top dog, when occupied properly, has as one of its fundamental attractions the opportunity to identify deserving individuals at or near the beginning of their professional life, and provide them with the means of productive advancement.
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