you know i love it when you talk dirty to me
"The stranger has the knowledge, but not the power...The lines between knowledge and power are blurred and dynamic."
I want to make love to you.
I think you hit the nail on the head with this one. As they say, knowledge is power, unless you're a poor mexican selling oranges on the side of the freeway. So then at what point may the brilliance of Tito shine?
I think a big part is mixing what is unconventional with ambition, as smart people come dime a dozen.
But i'll ponder more.
I think of how we know things about the ones we love - their hot buttons, their strings, etc. that allows us to have power over them in some weird ways. (Some call it manipulation- whatever.)
I find that in my business I am more powerful in the mind of my clients the more I know about my business. It's fun to bs.
Why does this person even bother remembering this information if they're never going to use it?
It becomes neither powerful nor dynamic except to the individual involved.
I think they're incredibly egotistical and/or internally self-aggrandising. The mere knowledge that they know 'something' is satisfying a need for a sense of personal power. The knowledge becomes nothing more than a valuable object only taken out for polishing and then put away again.
Unless of course, the knowledge directly relates to the characters life but they've decided not to use it because they fear the consequences of the knowledge being unleashed - it's power to destroy. To use a hackneyed example, it's like a wife knowing about her cheating husband but decides not to say anything because she fears being alone.
Ah, I don't know. I have a different take on knowledge...
Amber - Often you seem so sweet, but you got that edge to you. I like it.
Satan - who knew you were a thinker? "I think they're incredibly egotistical and/or internally self-aggrandising" Fun character trait. I like it.
Greg - you always seem to reward my smarts with sex. I like it. I like it a lot.
Not sure. I don't know anything.
Everyone knows something worth selling.
Everyone.
Oh, I bet I could write a whole self-help book series and make millions. I have common sense, I am well read and I am great at getting what I want out of life, so I think maybe I should do that as a side job. Well, once I make my millions so it lends a credibility so getting what I want out of life isn't a van down by the river. (Chris Farley popped in my head- sorry.)
Ha ha, I just wrote that this morning in an email! IN A VAN, DOWN BY THE RIVER!!
I loved that skit.
IN A VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER!!
I will have that in my head all day. Great motivation for working. I don't want to have to live IN A VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER!
Way off topic. Sorry about that. (I can picture Adam Sandler sitting on the couch in the skit trying his damndest not to laugh...)
"down by the river by the sugar plant..."
yep. just lyrics in my head. no power to worry about unleashing on anyone. 
"Is it possible for that person to remain powerless?"
Possibly; but unused it is still power. That person now has an insight into someone that others don't have. For example, I may be the only person alive who knows that my father never really loved my mother. That information has the power to destroy. Not acted upon, that information still has the power to give me a truer insight into my father's character and the causes behind his life history. This, in turn, tells me more about myself, and that's the point where the information, even if held forever, has power that is useful.
Noan Chomsky said that the media in a democracy serves the same purpose as the military in a dictatorship. If he is right there are a lot of terrorists out there who never need a gun.
Noam Chomsky is a brilliant idiot in this as in everything else he says. The media in a democracy is market-driven: It provides the information and the spin that best meets whatever combination of profit and conscience the editors / owners of each media business deem best. Try to imagine a dictatorship whose military runs along those lines. Right, it would look more like a collection of warring city-states. Honestly, I don't know what he thought he was getting at.
It is true though that many terrorists don't need weapons. (How many of 'em use guns, btw? Practically none.) All you have to do as say an editor is focus your news coverage on, say, abuse of Korans, while ignoring the deaths of hundred of Muslims at the hands of Muslims, and you give an impression of the world that can in turn fuel more terrorism.
I don't know, Hip Liz, Chomsky can sometimes be a bit of a conspiracy theorist, but I think you're taking the quote a bit literally. Here he was just highlighting the fact that the mass media has enormous power in market-driven societies. Murdoch's Sun newspaper has backed the winners in every British election in the past 25 years, maybe that's just a coincidence, maybe not - the prime ministers have never seemed to think it was.
In dictatorships young men are conscripted into the army, in America the Pentagon makes sure that the army gets good press so as to attract youngsters. The Pentagon has a script-approval office, where all potential Hollywood films are sent before the US Army will agree to hand over its toys for the filming. The Pentagon makes significant changes and viola, perfect recruitment film #356. Generals and Politicians, and even the causes of war can be criticised, but the grunts are always good heroic stock. Three Kings is a perfect example, Bush and the generals get a kick in the teeth, but the grunts end up saving a small group of Iraqis and helping them across the border into Iran (now how can a film about the first Gulf War show American troops helping Iraqis escape Saddam?)
If you go to script-o-rama website you can read the first draft of the original script for Three Kings, then you should have a look at the film and see all the changes that were made, you won't believe it's the same story (it's not)
You don't have to be brutal to be coercive and I don't think Chomsky was syaing the media is brutal, or that the military operates in accordance to market principles, just that both have an important power in political systems.
I like the idea of withholding knowledge. Like Shakespeare said,
They that have the power to hurt and will do none, who do not do the thing they most do show, who moving others are themselves as stone...
So yes, it is powerful for that person to remain powerless in the world, but I think there's a kind of power in self-control.
I agree completely with Satan.
"Why does this person even bother remembering this information if they're never going to use it?"
I don't even have anything to say anymore. That sums it up for me.
dude.
is it me or all of your comments gone?
oh, fer shit's sake. there they are.
So, to know is to have power, and what is dynamic is the quatity and quality of power? Ok, I'll buy. But Satan and Jess, it's not like people can just forget things, you know.
I think the scariest thing about knowledge is the unused power.
Like this: a woman in my neighborhood was assaulted DFriday afternoon in her home by four guys riding in an unmarked utility van. She's ok, but of course it was terrifying for her and everyone else in the vicinity.
Guess what I saw late Friday morning just a few streets away from her house? Yup. It was odd; that van struck me as very odd. Supposing it was the same van, which works nicely for my purposes here, I knew about the van and had some measure of power, didn't I? I could've just rung the neighborhood cops, who are pretty friendly in our little town, and told them about the "weird" van.
They might've driven by, stopped to ask the guys if they needed help or something, and they might've been scared off; sparing the woman the assault.
And so in that moment I was very powerful -- I just didn't use my power.
To me that unused bit of power on my part is as frightening as the assault itself.
If I ever take a cheap tour of the country in a used utility van, I'm steering clear of your neighborhood.
the line between knowledge and power is greater knowledge. because the stranger has no power until he gains the knowledge of the fact that he has power.
a loaded gun is harmless if no one knows how to pull the trigger.
Unless the trigger gets pulled accidently.
I am having dreams about having to see my arch enemy. I think I will rent a car and come to your town either Friday or Saturday.
Perhaps you know something about your A.E. that can be of value for keeping them on their best manners.
I'll be around all weekend and next week, so YEA! Let's do drinks at the pub.
There is nothing hotter than a smart literate woman.
If her name is sex, she is even hotter.
Greg is right.
Thanks ~jess~, it is true, we forgot things that have no personal interest all the time. I certainly can't remember what I had for breakfast yesterday, it's just not that important. Although I do wish I knew my name, at least half the time.
@ sex, it's not like I didn't offer reasons why the info would be remembered. The fact that this perception of 'who cares' is out there at all just means you may have to explain the concept in terms of reasoning and personal motivation (during character development) rather than leaving it for a reveal through plot later in the piece. Tim Winton is fantastic at gradual reveals of character through plot, well worth checking out.
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