“The first duty of government is to protect
the powerless from the powerful.”
-Code of Hammurabi, 1772 B.C.
Last weekend, I visited the Holocaust Museum in D.C. for the first time. I was in town for the International Association of Collaborative Professionals, at which I had been invited to speak. Shortly before I left, a friend suggested that I visit the Museum (which I had never been to); spurred by her recommendation, I spent Friday morning absorbing the message of the Holocaust.
I was especially struck by one exhibit, which dealt with the indifference of people who were living in Nazi Germany but were not themselves persecuted by the regime. It began with a photograph of a laughing woman and child; in the next segment, the full photograph revealed that they were laughing at the spectacle of two Orthodox Jews being forced to shave each other’s beards by two Nazi officers.The exhibit sharpened my awareness as to how easy it is to become a contributor to oppression (through inaction), and to consider whether such inaction makes us complicit in a Hate Crime.
If we observe oppression, do we not have a duty to act against it? This viewpoint was still resonating when I got to the conference, and when I heard Dacher Keltner’s keynote speech—which began by addressing Machiavelli’s influential theory of power as, essentially, the art of manipulating others to service your own ends—and I still had Hitler on the brain.
As one of the most influential people of the twentieth century, Hitler chose to use his immense powers of persuasion to incite hatred and violence against minorities, aliens, and those who did not conform to his view of the Future. We must hope that we have learned from the tragedy of the Holocaust, and that the sacrifice of so many innocent lives was not in vain.
But you need only turn on the news to see that our world is still awash in hatred. Powerful people abuse their authority and those around them. For instance, we are confronted daily with reports of how in Syria, the government is clearly not safeguarding the interests or serving the people whom it should be protecting. And during this crisis for many people and governments, inaction and the path of least resistance will be the path that is trod.
Back to Dacher Keltner’s keynote speech, and his fascinating research at UCal Berkley’s Greater Good Science Center. Keltner took us on a journey from Machiavelli’s abuses to Keltner’s current research, which has found that peers give power to individuals who have adept social skills.The paradox here is that once given power, the very social skills that helped those same people gain power are diminished- a confirmation of the observation that “power corrupts” (or at least that it changes one’s perspective enough that it’s apt to).
Although I don’t pretend to know how the world’s problems should be tackled, I do know that power plays itself out every day in the world of divorce. And I also know that in my one small corner I can help give voice to the powerless, and try to create balance when families restructure. I can try to help change the paradigm for children of divorce from one where parents fight to possess their children (by demanding “50% custody), to one that is child-centered (one where parents consider more what is likely to create happy lives for their children than how “many days each of us gets”.)
Continuing to consider the happiness of the people under your control—whether that means your children, your subordinates at work, or the citizens of the country you run—will undoubtedly win you the love of those you hold power over.
We must seek to understand and learn to find compassion for others—rather than, as Machiavelli suggests, finding ways to bend them to our will at the expense of their own happiness.
Please Note: It is with quite a bit of pride that I give credit to my son, Adam Singer, for having helped me to compose this blog. Although the piece was borne out of my thoughts and my experience during the past weekend, he wove together some of my disparate ideas (as well as determining that some of them deserved their own blog, which will be forthcoming).
