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"Nietzsche’s “high esteem for the Greeks is a commonplace,” Kaufmann says—yet many have decided to ignore his “great debt to Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics” by supposing that he “wanted to return to the pre-Socratics.” Nietzsche’s affinity for the Socrarics is revealed in an epigram which appears at the end of Part I of Zarathustra and also in the Preface to Ecce Homo: “‘The man who seeks knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.’ “This remark should remind us of Aristotle’s principle (in the Nicomachean Ethics 1096a) that for the sake of maintaining the truth, we have a duty ‘even to destroy what touches us closely’ since ‘piety requires us to honor truth above our friends’ (ibid.). Indeed,

Nietzsche goes beyond Aristotle by urging his own readers: ‘One repays a teacher badly if one always remains a pupil only’ (Z 122). Like Socrates, Nietzsche would rather arouse a zest for knowledge than commit anyone to his own views. And when he writes, in the chapter ‘On the Friend,’ ‘one who is unable to loosen his own chains may yet be a redeemer for his friend’, he seems to recall Socrates claim that he was but a barren midwife. (402—03)

These citations, Kaufmann thinks, render intelligible Nietzsche’s “emphatic scorn” for all who would discard their own beliefs so as to follow a master, and his “vision of a disciple who might follow his master’s conceptions beyond the master’s boldest dreams.” Hence, any references to being a follower of Nietzsche would be a contradiction of terms; for to be a Nietzschean, “whether ‘gentle’ or ‘tough,’ “one must not be a Nietzschcan” (403)."

Nietzsche Philosophy Power Knowledge

alongside the rise of the Internet and the empowerment of the Internet generation has emerged the greatest inequalities of wealth and privilege that any of the increasingly Internet enabled economies/societies have experienced at least since the great Depression and perhaps since the beginnings of systematic economic record keeping.  The association between the rise of inequality and the rise of the Internet has not yet been explained and if may simply be a coincidence but somehow I’m doubtful and we await a newer generation of rather more critical and less dewey economists to give us the models and explanations for this co-evolution.

Internet New Media Income Inequality Open Government Open Open Information Power

In many Asian-headquartered corporations, this expression of power stomps flat the multi-level relationships and open communication required for innovation. When businesses fail to address issues of power, they remain vulnerable to failure.

Professor Geert Hofstede calls the phenomenon "power distance." What makes it particularly relevant in Asia? Power distance is the degree to which less powerful members of institutions and organizations accept that power is distributed unequally. In very high power distance cultures, the lower level person will unfailingly defer to the higher level person, and feel relatively ok with that as it is the natural order. The higher level person accepts this truth as well — or metes out consequences for failure to comply. In low power distance cultures, everyone expects to be listened to regardless of rank or background, and they will reject leaders whom they perceive as autocratic or patronizing.

The notion applies in any sort of community, from countries to companies to communities to families — anywhere there are two people or more. Top-down leadership exists everywhere. What makes power distance in Asian businesses special is that this aspect of the corporate culture is rooted in deeply held values in the larger culture, which makes it much tougher to shift.

Power Culture Hofstede Organization

GENDER diversity has become the latest catchphrase in corporate circles with much lamenting about the lack of women numbers.

For some women in power, gender and the glass ceiling are not always big issues in their business life.

'Don't make every issue out to be about gender,' says Ms Teo Lay Lim, Accenture's country managing director for Singapore and managing director for Asean.

Being a female leader in a male-dominated world, for instance, is not a gender issue to her.

'Seniority in any job is tough as the scope and complexity of your role will change, your span of control is broader and there will be more moving parts in your day-to-day position.'

Women who moan about the glass ceiling might be better off taking charge and defining their own destinies.

Gender Equality Glass Ceiling Power

Public-policy issues always have dimensions beyond science, and require more than technical responses. When framing debates, policy-makers should prioritize discussion of social benefits as well as science: there are many good non-scientific reasons to reduce global environmental footprints and consumption frenzy, and to pursue greater justice, for instance.

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Rather than assuming that disputes are solely scientific, opening up these decision-making processes would render their primary nature more honestly political and economic, while giving proper weight to scientific reason and evidence.

Scientism Science Power Authority Policy Politics Trust

Those seeking greater political authority for science may actually be contributing to a loss of trust in institutions of science among parts of society. If science is to well serve democratic governance, then the scientific community needs to move beyond exhortation.

Science Power Knowledge Politics Trust Bias

In the twin realms of politics and government, secrets are a tradable commodity. 

In this market, knowledge really is power – or a function and a facet of power. To use an economic framework: secrecy, knowledge and power are all 'coin of the realm', the legal currency of a political system.

The word 'market' is used with intent, because applying an economic model shows the reality of what politicians, minders and senior bureaucrats actually do with secrecy and secrets. Secrecy can confer monopoly power on a pollie. And the market model also leads quickly to that key economic question – who profits? Various participants in this market will price secrets in different ways. Demand, supply and sales get complicated when you stir in government ministers, journalists and the military.

Secrets Economy Knowledge Power Wikileaks Politician Military

Religion solves our central problem: that we are human (to quote Jennifer Hecht), and the universe is not. It’s not really about explanation or even comfort, not exactly. It’s about seizing control, or at least imagining we have. To be fully conscious of our frailty and mortality in a hostile and indifferent universe and powerless to do anything about it would have been simply unacceptable to the human mind. So we created powerful beings whom we could ultimately control — through prayer, sacrifice, behavior changes, ritual, spinning around three times, what have you.

Religion Evolution Power Control

the enormous difference in the tasks of those seeking to transform American and global energy menus to cut climate risks and those pushing to maintain the status quo. For too long, I said, environmental activists have argued that it’s heaps of corporate or conservative money and professional disinformers who’ve blocked action on greenhouse gases.

Climate Change Power Inequality Corporatism Politics Political Economy Sustainability

Does “soft power” matter in international relations? Specifically, when the U.S. seeks cooperation from countries around the world, do the views of their publics about U.S. foreign policy affect the actual foreign policy behavior of these countries? We examine this question using multinational surveys covering 58 countries, combined with information about their foreign policy decisions in 2003, a critical year for the U.S. We draw our basic conceptual framework from Joseph Nye, who uses various indicators of opinion about the U.S. to assess U.S. soft power. But we argue that his theory lacks the specificity needed for falsifiable testing. We refine it by focusing on foreign public opinion about U.S. foreign policy, an under-emphasized element of Nye’s approach. Our regression analysis shows that it has a significant and large effect on troop commitments to the war in Iraq, even after controlling for various hard power factors. It also has significant, albeit small, effects on policies towards the International Criminal Court, and on voting decisions in the U.N. General Assembly. These results support our refined theoretical argument about soft-power: Public opinion about U.S. foreign policy in foreign countries does affect their policies towards the U.S., but this effect is conditional on the salience of an issue for mass publics.

Soft Power Power Foreign Policy Research

choices about power are especially hard to plot or predict because power is, to use a word he taught me to apply in this context, transactional: your choices about the exercise of power towards me profoundly influence my choices about the exercise of power towards you, and vice-versa. Absolutely right.

Power Choice Transaction

Foucault’s point on power: power is not a conspiracy against freedom, but is rather a condition of its existence.  Strictly speaking, in Foucault’s nominalist understanding of power it would be the case that if there were no power, then there would be nothing.  Power as such, for Foucault, is thus not opposed to freedom. 

Governmentality Foucault Power

The Vasa was to be a technological marvel of its day, during a period when “international competitiveness” had a familiar meaning. Based on the perception that Sweden was losing ground in the race for naval technology, particularly to neighboring Denmark, Swedish King Gustav II Adolph (better known in English as Gustavus Adolphus) had commissioned the bigger and better-armed Vasa. As I explored the museum that day, I couldn’t help but think that the tragedy of the Vasa and its fate since that day more than 380 years ago hold lessons for how we think about contemporary innovation policies.

Innovation Politics Power Technology

science has always been, and very likely always will be, entangled with ideology. This is because science, as Helen Longino put it in her Science as Social Knowledge, science is an irreducibly social activity, and as such it reflects the many, not always positive, ways in which people interact. Science of course is also a pursuit of knowledge, and knowledge is power, according to Francis Bacon, and therefore not too far removed from politics and ideology. Actually, that famous Baconian phrase happens to fit very well with this discussion, as the original sentence, in Latin, was “scientia potestas est” (found in the Meditations, 1597). Problem is, Bacon wrote that within the context of a discussion of heresies denying the power of God, so that some commentators actually think that it should be translated as “knowledge is His power.” Science and religion, deeply entangled right in the writings of the man who is credited for having laid out the basis of the modern scientific method by rejecting the Aristotelian approach.

Science Religion Knowledge Power Politics

science has always been, and very likely always will be, entangled with ideology. This is because science, as Helen Longino put it in her Science as Social Knowledge, science is an irreducibly social activity, and as such it reflects the many, not always positive, ways in which people interact. Science of course is also a pursuit of knowledge, and knowledge is power, according to Francis Bacon, and therefore not too far removed from politics and ideology. Actually, that famous Baconian phrase happens to fit very well with this discussion, as the original sentence, in Latin, was “scientia potestas est” (found in the Meditations, 1597). Problem is, Bacon wrote that within the context of a discussion of heresies denying the power of God, so that some commentators actually think that it should be translated as “knowledge is His power.” Science and religion, deeply entangled right in the writings of the man who is credited for having laid out the basis of the modern scientific method by rejecting the Aristotelian approach.

Science Religion Knowledge Power Politics

It is official: Racial attacks against white people are excusable. Much of the judicature can be relied upon to deliver justice according to liberal-left, Frankfurt School ideology.  What other explanation is there for Judge Robert Brown’s decision to excuse a quartet of “Muslim” girls that attacked Rhea Page, kicked her in the head and tore out her hair. In case there was any doubt that the attack was racially aggravated, the four-piece gang (actually clan, as they comprised of three sisters and a cousin) yelled “kill the white slag”.

Now, if the racial profile was reversed and four white girls attacked a person of another race, while cajoling and exhorting one another to “kill”, then I’m pretty confident a custodial sentence would have been passed.

Racism Privilege Equality Power

academics are human beings characterized by all the foibles of ordinary human beings.

Academic Research Publication Selection Academia Power

In today’s Web 3.0 personal data rich economy, reputation is replacing cash, Fertik believes. And he is confident that his company, Reputation.com, is well placed to become the new rating index of this digital ecosystem.

But Fertik isn’t ecstatic about the way in which new online products, such as facial recognition technology, are exploiting the privacy of online consumers. Arguing that “data is the new oil,” Fertik believes that the only people not benefitting from today’s social economy are consumers themselves. Rather than government legislation, however, the solution, Fertik told me, are more start-up entrepreneurs like himself providing paid products that empower consumers in our Web 3.0 world of pervasive personalized data.

This is the second and final part of my interview with Fertik. Yesterday, he explained to me why people will pay for privacy.

Data Power Open Privacy

control of information still represents the exercise of power, and how shifts in that control as a result of the transparency/open data/linked data agenda are open to abuse, gaming, or spin.

Data Power Open

Media Politics News of the World Phone-Hacking Power Plutocracy