What is power but the direction of requests to oneself? Such is a hypothesis, with a twist. It is getting what it asks from me. So the question has power. The question, while formed by me, now exists and exerts its will upon me. When a President is asked, shall this bill pass? The veto and the signature are the Chief Will’s options (not to mention the pocket patience). Nietzsche’s hypothesis that we humans, all too humans, want power and to exercise our wills to enact new values – to what end? To what purpose would it be valuable to a human to enact new values, to enforce them? To be paid attention to. Such is to be paid in the most important currency. Google understands this, and they get paid in USD money for your attention. Their new values are findable information and manipulative transaction-induction (MTI: the use of well-placed words that lead to well-placed cash registers).
Parents have power. Pet owners have power. Beings that cannot feed themselves pay attention to those who provide sustenance, even if they do not respect them. The provision of sustenance may breed a lack of mutual respect that leads children and pets to wish they might withhold sustenance from others (by demanding to go outside or becoming the leader of a hierarchical organization). CEOs failed to garner sufficient attention as children and so demand it as the ultimate decision maker and bread-distributor. Managers : CEOs :: police : Presidents.
Attention is not harmful to need or even ask for. It’s the hoarders who have become disgusting. To see so much attention sucked into one place competes in awfulness and tragedy with piles of newspapers and orange juice cartons filled with urine. And yet celebrations and honor are directed to the one. Logistic attention curves are appropriate; all up and to the right is economistry. Consider meeting the need for attention in an attenuated way. Consider attention as a hunger that ought not eat too many cookies. As Manfred Kets de Vries recalled in an interview with Michael Skapinker at the FT, “My father always said, ‘you can only eat one steak a day’.” So perhaps being famous or powerful is something to will, but only up to a point.
Roman Ryan 