"I could see that almost all of the leaders I was working with around the world had stepped forward to engage in these collective challenge-addressing processes because they saw themselves as part of unhealthy and unwhole systems that they felt responsibility to contribute to repairing." (35)
Although you have just begun your work in the community and have only recently met some of the community leaders engaged in this work, can you apply the paradigm to what you have learned so far from this experience and these people? As always, use the text to back-up your points.
Kahane claims that we need both love and power to fix our toughest challenges in the world, such as aggressive war and submissive peace. One cannot work without the other; they need each other. Kahan uses a philosphers example of love and power, in this book Paul Tillich defines love as “the drive towards the unity of the separate and power is the drive of everything living to realize itself, with increasing intensity and extensity” (Kahane p.2). In my own experience, I think of love as something that connects two things together and creates something more powerful then anything. Moreover, love is what makes power, powerful. The fact that it brings many people into one group brings a bigger, better community. It also allows for more big changes because not only one person is trying to make a difference. “We cannot address our though challenges only through driving towards self-realization or only through driving towards unity. We need both” (Kahane p. 4). Kahane notes that everything comes in pairs, you need both to make things work, not one or the other. In my experience, there would be a better outcome talking out an argument or a problem with a big group of people because they can come up with a solution and be supportive at the same time. Also, it allows you understand the others opinions, so you can see things from the other side. This brings up the problem where we all fail to see the difference between us. We all believe that we are independent and everyone sees the same things the same way. However, that is not the case. Since we make it seem like we can make everything simple, its really more complex. We all want everything to be simple that way its easier for us to fix, but in reality we know its not. I think we try to avoid reality and so we make a choice either to rule with power or to rule with love, never both. I did notice a lot of both working with leaders in my community service, every time we were doing community service we always worked in pairs. I learned that it is more exciting to work with other people rather then just working on something just by yourself.
ReplyDeleteThe two complements of Power and Love:
ReplyDeleteThis text gave me a new understanding of power and love. The definitions given about power and love really hit home for me. On page 8, Kahane explains that “power without love is reckless and abusive…and love without power is sentimental and anemic”. I feel like I have really experienced this definition of these two words within the last few months. Working with our food justice program has showed me that without each of these complimentary positions, nothing can get done. Love is what starts the effort. Love is what is needed to feel that need for something to change. If it were not for the love and understanding of what food justice meant, and how it could be applied, no one would ever contribute to the cause. Yet, even with the understanding of the cause and the love that it brings for the rest of the world, the world could not change without someone in the cause holding some power. If I were to go and try and “change the world” or make a difference it would be hard without some sort of power. For example, I could not just walk into County Community High School and tell them that I wanted to help educate their students on food justice. But, working with Dominican University has given me the power to help go in and plan efforts to go and share further about food justice in the school. I am excited to see what this book can further explain about power and its complementary, love.
When I think of power I think of someone who has a lot of influence on someone or the ability to act to produce an affect. When I hear the word love I think of romance and those fairytales that end with “And they lived happily ever after.” Before reading this book, I had thought it was going to look at power and love in its most common form. To my surprise this book opened my mind to a different perspective. In “Power and Love” the author Adam Kahane defines power as “the drive of everything living to realize itself, with increasing intensity and extensity.” (2) He also defines love as “the other-acknowledging, other-respecting, other-helping drive that reunites the separated.” (32) I have never looked at power and love with those two definitions and I never realized that power and love go hand in hand until reading this book. From just reading these first two chapters I can see how it relates to everyday life as well as my own experiences.
ReplyDeleteI realized without the power and love our project of Food Justice would not be possible. Without the drive and love of those involved in this program I would have never been able to go gleaning or have gotten the chance to reach out to the kids at County Community High School. Even though we had just started our project to improve the kid’s school lunches at County Community High School, I can see a lot of potential. I think that we can really make a difference in these kid’s lives even if it is just by changing how and what they eat.
From Mariel:
ReplyDeleteLove is more than a feeling, it is an emotion that is instilled in us. When we are younger we are surrounded by unconditional love from our parents. Love takes on new meanings in the adult world. We are opened up to the new exciting feeling of falling head over heels for someone but what comes with love comes the possibility of heartbreak. As we get older our eyes are opened up to a new kind of love-a love that we must find. Sure the love that we grew up with is still there but now there is a 'drive to reconnect'(2), the unconditional love we grew up with is no longer enough. Paul Tillich defines love as "the drive towards the unity of the separated" (2). Some people spend their whole lives looking for love, thinking that in the end, the only way they will have happiness is finding love from someone else. I think that if you are looking for love to fill an empty void-which from my experience, that is many peoples reason deep down. . Instead I believe you need to truly love yourself and be ok with the fact that you might end up alone, and then I think that is when people can open their hearts up to receive love from someone else. Until you love yourself, there is no way to give nor receive true love.
Power and Love is The Tip of The Iceberg
ReplyDeleteThe importance and dependence of love and power to each other is a profound philosophy, but I do not find this concrete. I felt like the reading was a bit long for expounding on the concept. This might work for some readers, but I found it long.
What I found interesting was the fact that Adam Kahane was in a discussion with the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo regime, the Catholic Church, the government, interest groups and different unions and groups about the turmoil in the Philippines. Kahane did not discuss this issue thoroughly, so readers were not able to know exactly which issues Kahane was a part of discussing, but I already know that those discussions were tough and full of hostility. Currently, the Philippines faces poverty with a rich class, a poverty class and barely a middle class, with big corporations and industries having a monopoly on the resources, environment and child labor, with US military bases leaving billions of dollars worth of needed toxic waste clean-up, with the military in war against the Islamist Extremists who are looking to segregate the Muslim region of the Philippines to become its own country, with disappearances of over 900 Filipino activists and journalists who have spoken against big corporations and the government, with continuous money-laundering and vote-buying by politicians among other issues in the Philippines. The fact that Adam Kahane was in this discussion with all these parties shows that he has some kind of a networking power, which I still have not figured out how he gained such power. Then again, it seems that his intervention was not very effective: “The day after the workshop ended, I left Manila feeling proud of what we had accomplished. So I was stunned to learn, by the time my plane landed back to Boston, that the participants had already been denounced and denounced one another in the newspapers, and the whole exercise had collapsed. One week later, the church abandoned the effort as too controversial to be productive” (Kahane 40). I guess solving these problems are much more difficult than simply preaching power and love. I just do not see how these concepts are bringing any real solutions to the issues we as a society are facing today.
Adam Kahane has discussed the approaches of love and power, but how does this help us? I do not know anything about the Reos Institute and I did not hear anything concrete from them when I attended one of their symposiums this past summer. Kahane to me seems like an academic who is selling these concepts to other intellectuals who are interested in social issues, yet are not able to connect with the people involved in these issues on a grassroots level. This book thus far has not bore much significance to me.
My future with power and love
ReplyDelete“Power and love are therefore exactly complementary. In order for each to achieve its full potentual, it needs the other”(7)
When I began reading this section and talking about finding a balance of power and love it made me think about my future. I want to become a teacher and I began to think about how I will need to find a balance of those two in my classroom in order to use them for good. In the classroom and being a teacher, I will have power, but it will also be balanced out, because I will be teaching about something I love, science. This shows that even though they seem to be opposite, it seems teachers have found a balance in both, they are using the power they have in order to show people what they love. This is a great example of how when they are paired, it can actually be a great thing. Where would any of us be if it wasn't for the teachers in our lives. They are taking something they love and passing they're knowledge onto you. This section just made me realize that even though these things are opposite, they can and do coexist in this world and can be used to do great things, and how I will be using a balance of generative sides of both power and love.