Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
There are probably downsides to humans’ specialized powers (extreme intelligence, a highly developed ability to communicate, and proficient tool use). We humans tend to emphasize the advantages of these traits, but it’s always important to look for hidden costs.
One might think that everything that could possibly be written on the subject of power already has been. There are thousands of tomes that discuss subjects related to power in one or another of its many manifestations, and hundreds with the word power in their titles. But no book that I’m aware of has systematically examined the sundry forms of power, and investigated how they are related, how they arose, and what they mean for us today.
Power, inclusion, and deliberation work together—slowly but surely—to yield stronger, more resilient communities.
Just as the humble American pika has developed strategies to avoid overshooting its environmental limits, we can and must rein in the extreme powers that currently threaten our success and even our survival.
At a time when the spaces we inhabit determine our chances to survive a deadly virus, it is crucial to challenge canonical urban planning and its deep failures in the Global South.
A brilliant and searching probe into power in all its forms, this book shows how our species’ pursuit, overuse and abuse of power is plunging us ever deeper into existential crisis.
The only real long-range solution to climate change centers on reining in human physical, social, and economic power dramatically, but in ways that preserve human dignity, autonomy, and solidarity.
The “maximum power principle” may sound like the doctrine of an evil supervillain, but it actually applies to all living creatures. The principle states that biological systems organize to increase power whenever constraints allow.
Richard Heinberg is an author, Senior Fellow-in-Residence of the Post Carbon Institute, and widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost educators on the need to transition society off fossil fuels. He addresses the question of “What Could Possibly Go Right?”
If we modern humans are, in effect, addicted to power, perhaps we need something like a collective twelve-step program.
Though the western-colonial orientation to power is unhealthy, power in itself is not inherently “bad.” In fact, we need to understand and utilize power in a healthy way in order to transform our communities and our world.
From laws to police and prisons, to armies and weaponry, to fame and high political office, to paychecks and taxes, to debt and credit, to advertising and public relations, to propaganda, to household and workplace gender dynamics, to organizational chains of command, to extremes of wealth and poverty, people have found endless ways of modifying one another’s behavior to suit their wants and needs.
