Power - Obama's bio

As a youth, Obama was taken to Indonesia when his mother married an Indonesia student who was then recalled back home after the coup in the 1960s. This extract comes from the realisation of political realities, making passive acceptance the only way to live safely.

"Power. The word fixed in my mother's mind like a curse. In America, it had generally remained hidden from view until you dug beneath the surface of things; until you visited an Indian reservation or spoke to a black person whose trust you had earned. But here power was undisguised, indiscriminate, naked, always fresh in the memory. Power had taken Lolo and yanked him back into line just when he though he'd escaped, making him feel its weight, letting him know his life wasn't his own. That's how things were; you couldn't change it, you could just live by the rules, so simple once you learned them."
Barack Omama, Dreams From My Father, p.45.

The socio-political status quo acts as a powerful block to free enterprise. It blocks opportunity for all, and replaces it with opportunity for those favoured. We need to did out who benefits from the status quo. There are cases where that benefit can be removed (as in the recent case of banker's bonuses) and others when benefits need to be spread more fairly. Power and its benefits is therefore a powerful problematic in the analysis of society and social institutions.

Also some thoughts from The Audacity of Hope (2006):

"I find the President and those who surround him...possessed of the same mix of virtues and vices, insecurities and long-buried injuries, as the rest of us. (p.48)

He goes on to talk about values and empathy, the importance of trying to see things from someone else's point of view even when (or especially when) you disagree with them. It strikes me also that this is an agenda for personal reflexivity, that is, evaluating one's own position and life journey. We might think of our contribution to life, the world, and to knowledge; our attitudes and prejudices and were they come from; our feelings of threat, the borderlands where our comfort zone ends; and life traumas that may have an impact on out thoughts and feelings. For work in education, how we ourselves were 'injured' by the system may affect our current views, just as the winners, the minority, those who succeeded and went on to hold political or economic power, are concerned to maintain whatever helped them succeed, even when it failed the other 80%. And working out our values is one thing, distinguishing between reality and rhetoric is another. Obama adds: what is it you actually spend your energies, time and money on? This is what we really values and may be consequential or inconsequential.

On his induction to the Senate, he cites the octogenarian Senator Byrd with general approval despite his once belonging to the Ku Klux Klan. He says,

"I wondered if it should matter. Senator Byrd's life - like most of ours - has been the struggle of warring impulses, a twining of darkness and light" (p.75)

He sees this as an analogy for the senate, over time supporting both civil rights and slaveowner rights. "Struggle of warring impulses" points in all of us to those tensions which pull us in different directions - the pull of greed over the nag of altruism; the joy of power over the benefits of cooperation. For teachers, the imperative for order over the freedom of creativity. Identifying our own tensions and ambiguities is part of reflexity in action. Which we call darkness, and which light, is also not unproblematical.

Finally here, talking about the Constitution as a defence againse absolutism and tyranny, he says,

"we must test out our ideals, vision, and values against the reality of a common life, so that over time they may be refined, discarded, or replaced by new ideals, sharper visions, deeper values" (pp.94-5)

This also is reflexity in action, the process of probing, checking and testing. It puts one's life on the line, exposing some things we hold dear as empty, some gods as idols, some certainties as delusions. If research does not do this, I for one would find it not deserving of my time, and not worth the candle.