This week in our biweekly fellows meeting we spoke about power. Dr. Lomax defined power as the ability to control someone else’s or your own reality and to make people believe that they choose this reality for themselves. He also stated that while the wealthy have a lot of control in this society, that is not power. In other words, one cannot use their material wealth to control others’ perception of reality. I would like to challenge this statement a bit. 

Charles Taylor developed the theory of the social imaginary which states that the reality of society is shaped by the social elites. We as individuals come to accept the ideas and theories posed by those in power despite having never interacted with their work. It is not our conscious attempt at creating values but rather intuitions and practices that develop over time; it is our reality. While I do not completely agree with this theory, it helped me realize that there are many other ways the higher classes shape our reality. In our society, a lot of the world’s most wealthy control the media. For example, have you ever heard a mainstream news network say anything harsh about Bill Gates? It’s unlikely to find critical pieces on the billionaire and that is because he has donated over $166 million dollars to media outlets in the US and all over the world¹. Yet his ‘philanthropic’ projects in the developing world are quite troubling and harm many communities². Despite our lack of personal interaction with him, people generally hold Gates in high regard. Our societal values in the western world place wealthy philanthropists on a pedestal to the point where we give them a seat at a table they don’t belong. Power is a multifaceted concept that can be observed from multiple angles, and this is just one.

1. https://thegrayzone.com/2021/11/21/bill-gates-million-media-outlets-global-agenda/, https://www.mintpressnews.com/faux-generosity-how-bill-gates-bought-his-power-and-influence/263208/
2. https://www.mintpressnews.com/latin-american-scientists-say-bill-gates-gmo-golden-rice-total-failure/221007/, https://www.iatp.org/blog/202010/agricultural-revolution-gates-foundation-leading-africa-failure