Power U 24: Power and Privilege

PowerU #24 - Happy lunar new year everyone! Wishing you happiness, good health and good luck in the Year of the Snake. 🐍 For those that come here for power posts: this is the long-promised episode on the relationship of power and privilege. I’ll be following up next week with one on the relationship between power and marginalization. For those that come for a little extra commentary: after my last Power U post in December, I decided to take some time off posting on social media. A *lot* has happened in the world since then and I’ve had feelings about that, but my gut also told me that social media was not the best place to metabolize all that. I’ve been connecting with my friends, loved ones and colleagues in person, redirecting my social media time to trusted news sources and books, and generally taking the time to reflect on what’s been happening and probably even more importantly why. It’s not an accident that my first post after all this thinking and reflecting is about privilege. There is no single cause for what we are witnessing but the desire to accumulate power beyond the level of responsibility you hold for it is a huge driver of those who seek to unravel democracy. There are things we can do about that but not things I can summarize in one post! This is all a long way of saying that I’ve decided to keep going with Power U, continuing to contribute what I can to helping people build their power literacy and provide tools for changing that equation continues to seem worthwhile so you can keep finding me here working my way towards 100 Power U posts. In the meantime, what’s happening is a lot to deal with. Yesterday one of my friends sent a post attributed to Swiss sociologist Jennifer Walter that suggests that overwhelming us is exactly the goal right now. Building a community to share the cognitive load right now is critical - maintaining those networks is job 1. She also prescribes setting boundaries by prioritizing a few key topics you will focus on among the onslaught, rely on trusted experts for synthesis, and acknowledge that feeling overwhelmed is just part of our lives right now. The overarching message is that maintaining focus is a form of resistance against intentional distractions.