The Shape of Power
“If there is no transformation inside of us, all the structural change in the world will have no impact on our institutions.” - Peter Block We’ve believed for centuries that once power falls and the oppressed rise, all will be made right. We imagine a world where everyone sings campfire songs and roasts marshmallows. But that’s not the reality. Let’s look back at recent history - these examples are still fresh. Mussolini, Stalin, Pol Pot... they all rose on the backs of the oppressed, only to become the very tyrants they once fought. Mussolini rose as a revolutionary socialist, a man of the people, before morphing into the architect of Italian fascism. Stalin took the Soviet dream of worker emancipation and turned it into a machinery of purges, show trials, gulags, and fear. Pol Pot promised power to the peasants but ended up emptying the cities, banning books, and murdering nearly a quarter of Cambodia’s population in pursuit of a purified agrarian utopia. Anyone r...