Impact of Perception of Power on Our Ability to Address Social Issues

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Impact of Perception of Power on Our Ability to Address Social Issues
Human intentions and perception predominantly depend on how a person approaches the concept of power. From hegemonies to democratic patterns, power has been among the key determinants of the interaction between personal motives and social problems (Ho 160). While talking about the perception of power, referring to contrasting views is essential because every single ideology has a solid bundle of arguments lying at its base. Three texts to be analyzed in this paper including “We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy” by Ta-Nehisi Coates; “Liquidated: An ethnography of Wall Street” by Ho. K; and “This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. The Climate” by Naomi Klein have highlighted how people, intoxicated with power, sideline social problems and let their motives and personal interests guide their moral stance.
There is a wide-held consensus that there is a tradeoff between personal and social gains. Whereas socialists continue to advocate the value of the triple-bottom-line intertwined into their model of sustainability, neoliberals are never tired of opposing such reforms for their interventionary or forced nature. He states “Neoliberal orthodoxies have thwarted various attempts to lower carbon emissions worldwide” (Klean 205). Based on a close assessment, it is evident that how much an institution, region, group, or individual shows willingness to solve the social problem is dependent on their underpinning philosophy that they derive from their preferred ideology.
Before diving into the interdependence between power perception and social tendencies, it is imperative to dissect the typology of human take on this concept. For some people, power is the ability to control the subordinate without regard to the master’s actions or any other criteria of eligibility. It is the accumulation of sources that enable a person or a group of people to exercise control and authority over another group of people. This concept of power is rooted in hegemony, as explained by Karen Ho. It is the dominance of one group by another and is justified under the overarching principle of “might is right”. To say differently, an individual or group of people is powerful for the sole reason that they are powerful.
Karen Ho, in his discussion focusing on the interaction between power and actions, sets forth the analogy of Wall Street. Ho terms people successful at Wall Street as “smart” or accumulators of “hegemony”. To him, Wall Street has created “probably the most elite work-society ever to be assembled on the globe” (161). The interdependence of the smartest people and their interest makes them smart and raise them above their counterparts (devoid of smartness).
With tongue in cheeks, Ho scoffs at the emerging social norms where finance is the pivotal force. People’s odds of survival are hinged upon the extent of their ability to integrate into this strata. According to him, an ideal worker is “A worker who is constantly retraining, a worker who is constantly networked, a worker whose skill set is very interchangeable, a w...