My Word's Worth: a weekly column by Marylaine Block

vol.3 #19, November 7, 1997

POWER FAILURE

I went to a John Mellencamp concert a while back. It was fun to watch a man nearly as old as I am, who's had a heart attack and bypass surgery, still dancing barefoot, still rocking, still belting out working-class rebellion. This is a man who's managed to grow old without entirely growing up, living by his own motto, "Hold on to sixteen as long as you can."

But it was equally interesting to watch his audience. It was a lot more mixed than you usually see at rock concerts, with at least as many of us old fogeys as kids. And when Mellencamp began his anthem, "I fight authority. Authority always wins," we were belting it out right along with him. Including me. I love that song.

Which is odd, because, in much of my life, I AM authority. I write job ads and interview job applicants and write personnel evaluations. I help decide how we're going to spend big chunks of money. I got to help plan our new library building, and I supervise every aspect of public service.

So, why I am rocking along with this anthem, saying, "Oh, YEAH"? For that matter, why are all the other middle-aged people in the audience? Many of them must also be people with some degree of power and authority. So why are we all cheering and stomping and reveling in the fact that when we come up against authority we lose? Does it appeal to some sort of image we have of ourselves as gallant but doomed Don Quixotes, or to some part of us that is eternally sixteen and sticking out our tongues when teacher's back is turned? Or could it mean we actually cherish our sense of our own powerlessness?

That made me think about things that have bothered me a lot in our rubble-strewn civic landscape--all those angry callers on C-SPAN, and the e-mail people have sent Scott Adams about their own real-life Dilbert experiences; movies and TV shows full of people too hip and too self-protective to believe in anything; Dennis Rodman becoming a cultural icon with his mindless constant nose-thumbing; our automatic support of the underdog, even if the underdog is crazy and heavily armed.

The overriding element of this landscape seems to be sullen resentment, people shouting "You can't trust THEM." Maybe the corollary is: don't collaborate with them-- sabotage them. And I wonder if this isn't all about immense disappointment, even despair. Because didn't most of us expect our lives to be BETTER than this when we got to be middle-aged? Didn't we expect to be secure? Respected? To have some control over our own lives? Weren't some of us also the sixties kids, the innocents who thought, like Janis Ian, that we "were gonna make the whole world honest."

If we did, it's no wonder a lot of us are wandering around filled with unfocused anger, because we didn't change the world; the world changed on us. There's no such thing as security in this global economy--our kids are growing up knowing for a fact that they are dispensable. As for respect, well, many of us seem to feel trapped in meaningless or undervalued work, supervised by tunnel-visioned bottom-liners. Many of us see our accomplishments going unacknowledged while fools advance steadily toward CEOdom.

Do we have some power and authority over other people ourselves? Perhaps. But we may not take much pleasure in this if jerks have authority over us. Whatever power and authority we have, well, it isn't enough, now, is it? Not if, when we meet the new boss, he's the same as the old boss.

I wonder if we became uncomfortable with the very IDEA of power.

But power doesn't need to be a dirty word. The truth is that we all do have some power, even if we don't hire or fire anybody, even if we shape no company's future. We have the kind of power that counts if we will only use it wisely. We can encourage goodness when we praise people for kindness and a job well done, just as we have the negative power to hurt people with casual, unthinking insults or deliberate rudeness. As O.J. Simpson learned, we have a power that law does not, to express contempt for those who violate our codes. We have the power to think and reason, the power to refuse to buy what corporations and politicians and media are selling us. Better yet, we have the power, if we will only use it, to work together to make our own small corner of the world a little better.

I have some degree of power in my work, and in my personal relationships. I try not to be careless with it, because I really believe in obtaining the consent of the governed. From time to time I do fight authority, picking my battles carefully, since not everything is worth a war. I build a case, gather my evidence, and argue it thoughtfully. And you know something? Every now and again, I'm the one who wins. "I fight authority. Authority always wins." It's a great song, and I understand why it resonates in us. But we don't have to let it be true.

Then again, it could be it's just a great riff. I have been told I overanalyze things sometimes. As Freud supposedly said, while lighting up, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

NOTE: My thinking is always a work in progress. You could mentally insert all my columns in between these two sentences: "This is something I've been thinking about," and "Does this make any sense to you?" I welcome your thoughts. Please send your comments about these columns to: marylaine at netexpress.net. Since I've written a lot of these, some of them many years ago, help me out by telling me which column you're referring to.

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