Meacham, Machiavelli, and Mead

Jon Meacham, the great Newsweek editor, writes a compelling essay to introduce "The Global Elite," this week, in which he lays out a vision of what power is in today's world within a historical context. Framing his essay with an Obama anecdote about a meeting a prominent CEO and Democratic supporter had with Al Gore after the 2000 election, Meacham, noting the eternal difficulty of defining power (he turns to Plato, Machiavelli, Kant, and Nietsche in the piece), defines it thusly: "[those] who are either in the business of bending others to their will or seeking to rearrange reality in ways they find more congenial." ("Congenial" being an interesting word to choose, no?)

As someone interested, at least a tad, in the maximizing of efficiency in existing organizations to see what they're really capable of (i.e., bending others to their will) - I find that too often we want to throw at the baby with the bathwater - and, at the same time, interested in introducing new, paradigm-shifting ideas (i.e., rearranging reality), I am intrigued by Meacham's thoughts and his magazine's list.

What most struck me was the juxtaposition of two quotations, one reintroduced to me by Meacham (and a reminder that it's time to go back and reread Machiavelli) and the other the frame of my three speeches that both caused and resulted from my involvement with SCUE while at Penn.

Meacham quotes Machiavelli, most likely in The Prince:

It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, not more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things.

Margaret Mead:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

Such, perhaps, are man and woman on the same topic; philosopher of power and anthropologist of community. I'm thinking about that today.