2008 Woodie Awards
Power & Knowledge
Donovan Martin
Issue date: 9/27/06 Section: No Gods, No Masters
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It is convenient that we have first looked at a historical period so far removed from our own because with it we can more easily assume some form of neutrality. Now, as we turn to our own culture and times, the analytical knife cuts closer as it were and we become more squeamish under it.
The contrast also serves to reveal both the dynamism and universality of cultures. Things change and stay the same just as a river appears constant and yet every moment brings new waters downstream.
Last week, following the advice of Michel Foucault, I had begun to analyze power "as something which circulates, or rather as something which only functions in the form of a chain." In a very brief sketch of the growth of American society out of colonial mercantilism it was discovered that two dominant forces did and do flow throw society to form Foucault's requisite chain. These are resource and information.
Over two thousand years ago Plato gave us the sound insight often translated, "let us create in idea a State; and yet the true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention."
People are always searching for the means by which they can take care of the necessities and thus ease the circumstances of their existence. Resources are the means that they use for these ends. This much is obvious but worth stating in that it really clarifies the fundamental nature of this inquiry.
Water, forestry products, animal products including food to raise them on, agriculture, mining, the conversion of these raw materials into commodities via industry, all these are the result of humans creating the means to satisfy their basic needs. Granted this capacity can, and has at different times throughout history, be stretched to the point of absurdity. Once the true necessities are met the tendency is to push for the maximization of comfort or luxury.
It was also Plato who said, "we must go beyond the necessities of which I was at first speaking, such as houses, and clothes, and shoes: the art of the painter and the embroiderer will have to be set in motion and gold and ivory and all sorts of materials must be procured." We must consider these things because they are the symptoms of our times. We live in a world in which some enjoy vast luxuries unmatched in history while others fail to meet even those basic necessities to survive.
The contrast also serves to reveal both the dynamism and universality of cultures. Things change and stay the same just as a river appears constant and yet every moment brings new waters downstream.
Last week, following the advice of Michel Foucault, I had begun to analyze power "as something which circulates, or rather as something which only functions in the form of a chain." In a very brief sketch of the growth of American society out of colonial mercantilism it was discovered that two dominant forces did and do flow throw society to form Foucault's requisite chain. These are resource and information.
Over two thousand years ago Plato gave us the sound insight often translated, "let us create in idea a State; and yet the true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention."
People are always searching for the means by which they can take care of the necessities and thus ease the circumstances of their existence. Resources are the means that they use for these ends. This much is obvious but worth stating in that it really clarifies the fundamental nature of this inquiry.
Water, forestry products, animal products including food to raise them on, agriculture, mining, the conversion of these raw materials into commodities via industry, all these are the result of humans creating the means to satisfy their basic needs. Granted this capacity can, and has at different times throughout history, be stretched to the point of absurdity. Once the true necessities are met the tendency is to push for the maximization of comfort or luxury.
It was also Plato who said, "we must go beyond the necessities of which I was at first speaking, such as houses, and clothes, and shoes: the art of the painter and the embroiderer will have to be set in motion and gold and ivory and all sorts of materials must be procured." We must consider these things because they are the symptoms of our times. We live in a world in which some enjoy vast luxuries unmatched in history while others fail to meet even those basic necessities to survive.
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