How To Fight Power
If you believe in social justice or reform, you can work for change all you want, but the moment you become big or powerful enough to threaten a real vested interest, they will immediately make every effort to destroy you. Here’s how powerful people fight: as soon as they recognize something is a threat, they smash it. This happens all the time in economics, when big businesses first attempt to buy, then attempt to drive into the ground, any small business that threatens them.
The odds for those who want to make changes seem overwhelming. How can you fight an enemy who is so powerful that they can squash you? I think the answer is, stay small.
What do you do with people that amass power through greed? Fight greed, teach and encourage generosity and economy. The enemy will never see you doing it, because they don’t understand the smallness of it.
What do you do with people that amass power through pride and flattery? Fight pride. Support the self-love and integrity of the people around you, and everywhere you succeed, you’ll neutralize that kind of corruption.
What do you do with people that amass power through fear? Don’t try to out-fear the powerful fear-mongerers. Teach people how not to be afraid, how to play silly music at Nazi rallies and make terrifying people look ridiculous.
It’s easy to dismiss this strategy as being idealistic and ineffective. I disagree, because in my opinion, if you’re not powerful, that’s the only fight you can win, as long as there are tons of tiny people fighting for it to work. If I had to fight a giant standing on a wall, I’d be an ant, and I’d get with as many other ants as I could to erode the ground under its feet.
This, I think, is the great hope for creatives. So many of us would like to be giants, swinging our art around, bashing bad people on the head, and clearing the world for goodness. Guess why that doesn’t work?
Bad people buy up good-people-giants as quick as they can, get them addicted to money, pleasure, drugs. If that doesn’t work, they expose their family to danger, leave the artists isolated, afraid to move. Better for the artist to stay small.
Better for the artist to do their art way down here where the big, bad people can’t even see it. Better for the artist to encourage as many other artists as possible to do their art too, and to spread joy, ridicule corruption, instill hope. That’s the only fight we can win, and we’re better at it than anyone else.
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News From a Jazz Musician Who Writes Books
For my upcoming book, Management Jazz: Lead Like A Bandleader, where I discuss corporate leadership from a musician’s perspective, I was interviewed by Justin Honaman for ContenderCast. Listen to it here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/management-jazz-lead-like-a-bandleader/id1253179825?i=1000442547472
Motherless Child, my novel about an America split into black and white has finally been released for sale. You can find it here at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/1644380153/ref=tmm_pap_new_olp_sr?ie=UTF8&condition=new&qid=1560990201&sr=8-1
Reviews make all the difference in whether Amazon keeps it available, so please review it!
Over the least two weeks, I’ve been featured in one other video and three articles:
Kars 4 Kids - "Reggio Emilia: 100 Languages to Learn and Grow" - Varda Epstein
June 27, 2019
I Am & Co. "How To Get Over Disappointment and Live a Full Life" - Christine Schoenwald
June 25, 2019
Smarter This Summer - "Learning Over the Summer" - Learning Success
June 25, 2019
Rasmussen College - "Firsthand Advice for Working Full-Time in Grad School" - Ashley Brooks
June 16, 2019
Adam Cole is a Jazz Musician Who Writes Books. Fantasy author, music educator and performer, Adam chats weekly on the subject of listening, creativity and living your best life. To get a free book on marketing tips for passing out fliers, getting on your own radio show, and writing a blog people will read, please go to www.mymusicfriend.net and subscribe.