Power and Responsibility

I was listening this morning to an interesting chapter on an NPR's program - the title was Power and responsibility. They were featuring three different stories that illustrated the connection between power and responsibility - but not of conventional powerful people: the power of regular individuals - like you and me. This triggered some thoughts for me. What is power, anyway? who has the power? Ok - the power ...for what? A nice topic for one of my "meaningful conversations"... ;-) I replied to myself that we all have power - for many different things. We may not have the power we wish - to change things outside of our area of decision, but the limits of the area of influence are blurry - and I've never been able to quite know where they are . I even came to ask myself if there are any limits in the area of influence we have - ? Then we have to talk about responsibility. What is the responsibility that comes with power? I think I've seen the most dramatic scenes in movies when the worn out hero finally gets into a position of power over the evil one, and has all the power to kill him, and he takes a moment, looks into his eyes, and doesn't. Interesting, the hero can kill him and many others if they are both playing hiding, but it's more difficult to kill bluntly looking into the bad man's eyes. When doing so, the toll is expensive, and the hero can only keep his title of hero if he sinks into post-murder depression, guilt feelings and changes career. Doesn't it sound familiar? So what is the responsibility that comes with power, then? I think that we may not consider the huge potential of our influence - because of the responsibility that comes with it, and may be the fear of not wanting to carry that one. In those terms, it's simpler to stay selfdeclared as powerless. Hm.

Crossing a threshold

David Korten, in his wonderful book The Great Turning indicates that around the 1980 we crossed an evolutionary threshold, by placing a burden on the life support systems of the Earth beyond the sustainable limits. In the last 50 years the population grew more than double, from 2.6 billion to 6.4 billion in 2005. The number of motor vehicles is ten times what it was in 1950. Fossil fuel use is five time what it was, and global use of water has tripled. It is only 27% of the world population who enjoyes material affluence to consume goods and services. We are consuming at a faster rate than the resources of the Earth regenerate, that means that at this rate of consumption we would actually need 1.2 Earth equivalent planets. But we only have one. So we are depleting the natural capital of the planet: minerals, fossil fuels, forests, fisheries, soil, water. We are extracting these resources at the expense of our children and the next generations.

The WWF (World Wildlife Fund) publishes a Living Planet Index, that tracks the health of the planet through its freshwater, ocean, forests and coastal ecosystems. The index declined 37% between 1970 and 2000. They say it's unlikely to reach zero - a dead planet - "because the planet will surely rid itself of the offending species long before this occurs".