Truth to Power

But I suppose the most revolutionary act one can engage in is… to tell the truth – Howard Zinn

I will add that among those, I believe the most courageous is to speak truth to power. I know many good people, but I have met only a few people in my lifetime who have been willing to do so.

Why is it that the possession of power causes one to stray so far from what is true? I think it is because we confuse ‘having power’ with exercising ‘power over.’ We are empowered just as we are ‘endowed by our Creator’ with unalienable rights, but I do not believe we are meant to exercise power over others. That is, we do not need another person to submit to us in order for something mutually beneficial to happen. We only need such force when our desires come at the expense of another person’s life, liberty or their pursuit of happiness.

And that seems to be the catch, isn’t it. Mutual benefit can be difficult to conceive in a culture that insists on having ‘winners’ and ‘losers;’ when winning is predicated on the demonstration of, or the ability to demonstrate, power over others. When that is the case and power is not earned by consent, all means to maintain power somehow become legitimate in the eyes of the beholder – the truth of its illegitimacy be damned. Those who wish to achieve ‘success’ in such a paradigm are expected to oblige this as the only acceptable truth.

Hierarchies do not have to be plagued with corruption and abuse in order to survive. If people accept the wisdom of their leaders as beneficial to them, they can freely chose their leaders without being forced to submit to them. Wise leaders are reluctant to exercise power over others. They do not need to do so in order to remain in power. What they need to do is accept that a true ascent to leadership is often an exceedingly slow and arduous process by which the greatest sacrifices to be made will be their own.

Until we are more successful at choosing leaders (and we ourselves stop measuring success by the extent to which someone abuses their power), truth-tellers will remain an endangered species. When no one feels safe to speak the truth to power anymore, then we know power is being abused. The truth of such abuse will always be most visible in the pain and suffering of marginalized and oppressed people.

Enough suffering can coalesce into movements that illuminate the illegitimacy of power. As that is happening today, will we lift those voices and let that truth emerge? Will those who have not yet been made to suffer be willing to listen before it’s too late?