Empowermenttalism

Empower Mental Studies & Leadership
                   Programs
 
Power: from Latin posse (& may have one--
got the power!): “possibility” is the literal sense
of power: aka  potential  (potent, potency,.
potentate: the power of possibilities.

Impotent::  no possibilities, or,say all the possibilities
dissipate in one willy-nilly choice which is why one
might hestitate to commit: the loss of possibility (power).
 
Each class, we sit In Power—a chaos of infinite
possibilities exposed by the anarchy of No Imposed
Agenda.  How does it feel— environmental powerfulness?
Not good, true?  Over whelming.
 
Empowering:  experience and people and influence and
background and upbringing  and books and practices may
all empower me, especially as I look back: I can declare—
those were empowering for me.  .
 
To empower is a horse (or course) of another color. I can
encourage and coach and counsel  and support and school
and pay-for & provide  best I can, best we can –but no one
can empower  another directly. Unilaterally. Need we argue?
(We must. How else get good--power full?)

Here’s the basis of our quibble: can confidence  (empowerment)
be given?  Or must it arise (an emergent phenomenon) out of
some kind of Gold’s Gym practice?  In school terms (at least):
argumental-ism, arguing out one’s ideas in play.   
 
It’s got to be mutual and reciprocal and even then, it carries with
it a blind-leading-the-blind  quality, a cloud of unknowing (who
knows where this is going) --a shared ignorance that is worth
turning-up and factoring in as “practical.”
 
Would you feel more or less empowered by fully
realizing the limits and shortcomings, the hidden
liabilities eclipsed by the lucid assets of  language &
representation & disciplines & traditions & common
sense—the occluded  impracticalities of  our apparent
practicalities,the larger possibilities (power) eclipsed
by the limited practicalities of any  intentional aim and
goal?   The unsustainable -ness of our sustain abilities?  

How would you describe the “power” you want
and need—and towhat extent can it be given,
discovered,  conferred, arranged, decreed,
degreed.. ?
 
That’s the liberal art question, isn’t it?  Meta-practical.
 
If you can do only limited  justice to Emerson or Walden:
focus some willy/nilly efficient attention on Civil Disobedience
as fodder for the Empowerment Issues.  (And then this summer,
those long summer evenings when you aren’t going out: you
might could consider giving some leisure time (schola) to
Walden, quite empowering. xxxooo, Sam