Power is toxic to culture

Power and culture are in perennial conflict with each other. Countries experience this and so do homes. States and Union Territories in India know this. Politicians too understand the phenomenon and yet go on stoking power conflagrations. Corporates get into the heart of power contests more readily than adopting a culturally friendly attitude. Families are aware of this menace and yet get lured by power struggles. Power anywhere is all about re-writing tussles, building new boundaries and walls, and alienation from everything that encourages ‘knowledge, belief, arts, morals, customs, laws and other capabilities which are learned, shared by men as members of society, and transmitted from one generation to another’ as E Tylor wrote decades ago. History tells us time and again that power is toxic to culture. Power is all about human engagement with territorial conflicts. Wars are one example and political turmoil is another. Power induces a race and a taste for victories that are quite different from those that promote humanness.

Flip through history of the past few decades and you will find soon enough that conflicts in Afghanistan, Middle East, the far East, African nations, South America, and even near the Russian borders have eroded forms of culture. German Nazis were busy picking up bits of culture as prized icons to be looted and sent home. The conquerors have always thought of borders and annexations as their right to give culture undeserving shocks. Go back in time and you will know that culture flourished majorly during the reign of Bahadur Shah Zafar who had neither the means nor the will to move out and rage battles. Enter homes and you will agree that wherever and whenever tussles between generations happen or extended families are in conflict, there is hardly any time or inclination to even pause and think of the arts.

George Orwell wrote: ‘Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.’ Culture doesn’t come anywhere near.

We know how culture suffered during the Emergency days in India. We know how culture suffers when governments are supported by coalitions. The power tussle is ON and nothing else gets considered. Even in the present political scenario where one party was in control, we have seen unchallenged power quite literally attempting to re-shape and re-define the basics of culture. We have seen attempts to have vital bits of our history being shredded. We have seen culture adopting a stance that kowtowed to the ideas and ideals of the powerful. This is not what people wanted and an article in Hindawi says: ‘On the part of the government, political power should be utilized to encourage cultural peoples, regardless of their tribal divergence, to develop interest in promoting and market their cultural uniqueness and potency, which could be of socio-economic advantage. This is to bring to bear the maxim that “there is unity in diversity.” Nothing makes the diversity other than culture.’ Minds obsessed with power sometimes forget that it is culture and not power that ‘shapes attitudes and behaviors in wide-ranging and durable ways. Cultural norms define what is encouraged, discouraged, accepted, or rejected within a group’ as an article in HBR pointed out. The same article goes on to specify that ‘culture is a group phenomenon. It cannot exist solely within a single person, nor is it simply the average of individual characteristics.’

I see power dethroning culture almost everywhere. For instance, a higher number of followers and more likes on the social media are power drugs that push even the ordinary folk towards the insanity of being judgmental all the time. Finding some space to sit in a crowded train or the need go faster on a busy highway are enough for people to look for power recipes. What suffers in every instance is the culture of decency.

What we really need to do is to redefine power. Power must not be about clashes for tangible and intangible benefits but must allow knowledge and patience to be the foundation on which it rests. Power needs to be about an acceptance and unification of diversity that will encourage enduring smiles. Power must be in the act of letting go the aggressiveness of pursuit when one gets to know that the beneficiaries are those who need the output more than you. Power needs to be an elixir that heals, a word that helps, and a glance that gives joy. Only when this happens shall power cease to be toxic to culture.

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Power is toxic to culture. #PromotingCreativity #Indispire

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Indispire prompt_January 2019

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Arvind Passey
18 January 2019