Junction, TX
Saturday June 18, 2005
8:02am I am leaving Chris and D's to go take a shit at the Exxon again. I've had a great welcome to Junction. I wonder if I'm leaving today. I don't know. I wonder how long they'll let me crash there. Last night was pretty cool. I was all making out with Ashley. I still think she's the prettiest girl in this town. Her and her beautiful freckles.
Page 14 of Powershift, damn good section:
"HIGH-QUALITY POWER
Most conventional assumptions about power, in Western culture at least, imply that power is a matter of quantity. But, while some of us clearly have less power than others, this approach ignores what may now be the most important factor of all: the quality of power.
Power comes in varying grades, and some power is decidedly low in octane. In the fierce struggles soon to sweep through our schools, hospitals, businesses, trade unions, and governments, those who understand "quality" will gain a strategic edge.
No one doubts that violence—embodied in a mugger's switchblade or a nuclear missile—can yield awesome results. The shadow of violence or force, embedded in the law, stands behind every act of government, and in the end every government relies on soldiers and police to enforce its will. This ever-present and necessary threat of official violence in society helps keep the system operating, making ordinary business contracts enforceable, reducing crime, providing machinery for the peaceful settlement of disputes. In this paradoxical sense, it is the veiled threat of violence that helps make daily life nonviolent.
But violence in general suffers from important drawbacks. To begin with, it encourages us to carry a can of Mace, or to crank up an arms race that increases risks to everyone. Even when it "works," violence produces resistance. Its victims or their survivors look for the first chance to strike back.
The main weakness of brute force or violence, however, is its sheer inflexibility. It can only be used to punish. It is, in short, low-quality power.
Wealth, by contrast, is a far better tool of power. A fat wallet is much more versatile. Instead of just threatening or delivering punishment, it can also offer finely graded rewards— payments and payoffs, in cash or kind. Wealth can be used in either a positive or a negative way. It is, therefore, much more flexible than force. Wealth yields medium-quality power.
The highest-quality power, however, comes from the application of knowledge. Actor Sean Connery, in a movie set in Cuba during the reign of the dictator Batista, plays a British mercenary. In one memorable scene the tyrant's military chief says: "Major, tell what your favorite weapon is, and I'll get it for you." To which Connery replies: "Brains."
High-quality power is not simply clout. Not merely the ability to get one's way, to make others do what you want, though they might prefer otherwise. High quality implies much more. It implies efficiency—using up the fewest power resources to achieve a goal. Knowledge can often be used to make the other party like your agenda for action. It can even persuade the person that she or he originated it.
Of the three root sources of social control, therefore, it is knowledge, the most versatile, that produces what Pentagon brass like to call "the biggest bang for the buck." It can be used to punish, reward, persuade, and even transform. It can transform enemy into ally. Best of all, with the right knowledge one can circumvent nasty situations in the first place, so as to avoid wasting force or wealth altogether.
Knowledge also serves as a wealth and force multiplier. It can be used to augment the available force or wealth or, alternatively, to reduce the amount needed to achieve any given purpose. In either case, it increases efficiency, permitting one to spend fewer power "chips" in any showdown.
Of course, maximum power is available to those in a position to use all three of these tools in clever conjunction with one another, alternating the threat of punishment, the promise of reward, along with persuasion and intelligence. The truly skilled power players know intuitively—or through training— how to use and interrelate their power resources.
To assess the different contenders in a power conflict— whether a negotiation or a war—therefore, it helps to figure out who commands access to which of the basic tools of power.
Knowledge, violence, and wealth, and the relationships among them, define power in society. Francis Bacon equated knowledge with power, but he did not focus on its quality or on its crucial links to the other main sources of social power. Nor could anyone until now foresee today's revolutionary changes in the relationships among these three."
8:26am I took a shit at Johnny's. I noticed that there was a Mexican restaurant right before I got here. I'm going to go score some breakfast, watch.
8:30am Christi en la Taqueria AM me esta dando desalluno. Te lo agradezco, Christi. Todo el mundo recibe crédito, gracias.
8:40am Called that shit. Got some tacos. I'm going to go back to the Exxon and sit down and eat breakfast.
8:57am Jackie hooked me up with a cigarette at Johnny's. I appreciate it, Jackie. Everybody gets credit, thanks.
Knowledge is the most democratic source of power. I love this book already.
Page 19, the last paragraph.
"Knowledge is the most democratic source of power.
Which makes it a continuing threat to the powerful, even as they use it to enhance their own power. It also explains why every power-holder—from the patriarch of a family to the president of a company or the Prime Minister of a nation—wants to control the quantity, quality, and distribution of knowledge within his or her domain.
The concept of the power triad leads to a remarkable irony.
For at least the past three hundred years, the most basic political struggle within all the industrialized nations has been over the distribution of wealth: Who gets what? Terms like left and right, or capitalist and socialist, have pivoted on this fundamental question.
Yet, despite the vast maldistribution of wealth in a world painfully divided between rich and poor, it turns out that, compared with the other two sources of worldly power, wealth has been, and is, the least maldistributed. Whatever gulf separates the rich from the poor, an even greater chasm separates the armed from the unarmed and the ignorant from the educated.
Today, in the fast-changing, affluent nations, despite all inequities of income and wealth, the coming struggle for power will increasingly turn into a struggle over the distribution of and access to knowledge.
This is why, unless we understand how and to whom knowledge flows, we can neither protect ourselves against the abuse of power nor create the better, more democratic society that tomorrow's technologies promise.
The control of knowledge is the crux of tomorrow's worldwide struggle for power in every human institution.
In the chapters immediately ahead we shall see how these changes in the nature of power itself are revolutionizing relationships in the world of business. From the transformation of capital to the growing conflict between "highbrow" and "lowbrow" businesses, from the electronic supermarket to the rise of family business and the emergence of startling new organizational forms, we will trace the new trajectory of power. These deep changes in business and the economy are paralleled by significant changes in politics, the media, and the global espionage industry. Finally, we will see how today's tremendous, wrenching powershift will impact on the impoverished nations, the remaining socialist nations, and the future of the United States, Europe, and Japan. For today's powershift will transform them all."
9:13am I had a badass breakfast taco at Johnny's and I smoked a cigarette I bummed off that girl Jackie. I'm walking back towards, maybe I'll go take another nap. I'm walking back to Chris and D's. I found out her name was Diana. I don't know. Random entry by Chris.
Chris: "Alright, this is what happened last night. We all got pretty shitfaced and even Victor did this. We had to help a whole bunch of drunks get up a hill that felt like a mountain. And Victor almost got lucky. He may get lucky while he's here. So uhh, good luck Victor."
I'm having a good day today. I woke up at D and Chris' and we went up to Super S. Then we met up with Ashley and Thomas her dad. Oh yeah, I had seen Jonathan and his wife, the lady with the tracheatomy(if that's how you spell that). I walked by and they yelled out, "Victor, Victor!" This was right after I scored the taco. Right now I'm going to go see if Cody's got any weed. I want some marijuana.
3:25pm I'm talking to Russell Rivera from Chino, California.
Russell: "It's been a pleasure. I love your knowledge and don't forget my email."
6:04pm Raymond, over at this house gave me a cigarette. I appreciate it, brother. Everybody gets credit, thanks.
6:41pm I just took a group picture of the whole gang.
6:49pm I'm leaving the party. I told them I was bored. I'm going to walk into town and find someone to tell my story to. When I was walking off they all called my back. "Come here, come here!" They started telling me, "You're welcome to stay here, blah, blah, blah." I told them, "That's Okay, I want to go for a walk." They told me I had to eat first. I told them, "I already ate two porkchops. I'm just going to go for a walk and find somebody to tell my story to. I'll go to the Exxon and hit people up for my story."
7:06pm I came to Johnny's. I'm going to sit down and read my book. And wait for people to come to hear my story.
Page 40, "But the last, and most important, reason why corporations—and even governments—resort to open violence less often than in the pre-industrial past is that they have found a better instrument with which to control people. That instrument is money."
8:18pm I didn't tell anyone my story. I just sat down and read my book. Right now I'm going to go back by the party house, over by the Flatrock place. Where Veron(I think that's her name) and Ashley live. I'm going to go look for a place to crash. I'm going to walk by D and Chris' and see if I can get my backpack.
8:32pm I'm coming back to the house where we were partying at. Everybody is still there. The party is still going on.
8:48pm Oh yeah, I walked back to the house we were partying at. D and Chris were there. They were on their way to the cemetery so D could pay respects to her mother. Go say hi to her. This is an old cemetery. From like the 1800's.
8:58pm We came to this historical marker at the cemetery. It says, "Isaac Kountz. Killed on this spot by Indians on Christmas Eve, 1876. He was thirteen years old, and herding sheep for his father, Dr. E. K. Kountz.
A brother, Sebastian, age eleven, escaped. A posse and Texas Rangers chased the Indians to the Guadalupe River.
Young Kountz was buried in the Junction Cemetery."
D is going to recap the story of Isaac.
D: "Umm, Isaac Kountz was killed by Indians while he was herding sheep for his father. They killed him because he was redheaded. They didn't understand why his hair was red. They scalped his head and the Indians came over the hill and took a bunch of people. But they just killed him because they didn't understand the color of his hair. And he didn't have time to get away because he was herding sheep."
10:08pm I'm crashing out by the Flatrock river. I'm not going to stay and Chris and D's tonight because her grandma finally noticed someone was there. I've stayed there a couple days already. I shouldn't stay there again. I'm going to crash out by this river. It's all nice and serene. In the morning if the water isn't too cold, I'll take a bath in the river. I am so tired. I'm going to sleep good. They told me there was a truckstop over by a McDonalds, so I might go get a ride there if they let me.
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