A lot of different factors can help in explaining power and one of them is something very physical, resources. Human beings who have been lucky enough to have received these resources throughout history will not only have more power in shaping the rules we play by, for example the economic system, they also have more influence on how we perceive and cocreate reality, determining what we think is possible. For example that work is the only possible way to share resources via jobs rather than directly redistributing resources, that wealth will trickle down, just leave the companies alone, or that that it is more important to defend immaterial right than saving lives.
Through the systemic trap of success to the successful and with the goal of society set on growth (profit) the powerful in modern society becomes more powerful in shaping our world, there is an inequality in power. Fighting the power means continuing with CSOs diversity of thought, challenging the world views of those with power, questioning their goals and using imagination to show what a world where resources and power are better shared looks like. And then transfer the resources to create that new imagined shared reality.
The best would be to transcend the world views/paradigms of the powerful altogether but we also need to confont the current flawed models of our reality because they are destroying the planet and its inhabitants. Meadows summarizes Thomas Kuhns thoughts on how to do it:
“keep pointing at the anomalies and failures in the old paradigm. You keep speaking and acting, loudly and with assurance, from the new one. You insert people with the new paradigm in places of public visibility and power. You don’t waste time with reactionaries; rather, you work with active change agents and with the vast middle ground of people who are open-minded.”
