More on identification with (the) power...

[Updated June 30]. Yes, why do we? And why do we tend not to question it? Why do we tend to look up on people in power and have small and sometimes non-existing demands on them? And at the same time have big demands on those under, those with no or little power? Why don't we question (high) demands on those latter (but on the former)? Where are the roots?

How can we make fair and justified demands on ALL people?

Do we even sometimes have the right to make higher demands on those in power? The more demands the more power they get? At least if they have power over our lives!? But as fellow human beings we should have the same demands on all people, no matter their position in the society, rich or poor!?

Why aren't we capable of making those distinctions? On justified demands that has nothing with people's position to do.

Why don't we see clearer than we do? because I think many of us are more or less blindly admiring.

Is it because we weren't allowed to really see how our early caretakers were, what they did, question what they did etc.?

Are we doomed being forever incapable in seeing things through (seeing the power through for instance every time it's needed, as the child in The Emperor's New Clothes)?

I don't think so. We can recover.

The American neurologist Jonathan Pincus has written about the roots for racist ideas in his book “Base Instinct – What Makes Killers Kill” in the chapter “Hitler and Hatred.”

And Alice Miller has also written about Hitler.

Read "Adolf Hitler: How Could a Monster Succeed in Blinding a Nation?" by Alice Miller and "The Emotional Life of Nations" by Lloyd deMause Chapter 4--Restaging Early Traumas in War and Social Violence and "The Political Consequences of Child Abuse" by Alice Miller and “See No Evil -- A political psychologist explains the roles denial, emotion and childhood punishment play in politics” Michael Milburn interviewed by Brian Braiker.

And at last a quotation:

"What good fortune for those in power that people do not think"

- Adolf Hitler, as quoted by Joachim Fest.

Addition June 30: Sigrun wrote about class in a blogposting yesterday, the class you belong to and what this class-belonging means.

She had read a couple of comments on an article in a Norwegian newspaper about a right wing politician retired because of sickness. She complained that the social insurance becomes reduced with five percent because she receives compensation as representative in the board for the community where she lives.

Sigrun doesn't think that the few crowns it's about in this case is any problem. She thinks it's even worse when people with such tasks don't become paid at all, but maybe even have to pay from their own purse.

But after this comes what I thought was even more interesting:

Sigrun thinks it's probably much easier for unable to work coming from a middle-class background to become recruited in resource-strong organizations as political parties, than for unable to work with a less resource-strong background.

Journalists (as those on this Norwegian paper) probably don't understand this, because they are identifying themselves easier with middle-class people.

I think she is right. But there are exceptions??

See the British researchers Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett in "Equality of What?" I have blogged about this in Swedish in "Jämlikhet till vad? Eller att ge alla en jämlik chans att bli ojämlika - att bara ha sig själv att skylla..."