Raymond Klassen – Ideals and Identities

Introduction

Having grown up in the Mennonite communities of Manitoba, being a practicing Christian in liberal arts departments in academia, and in living 15 years abroad in Buddhist and Muslim-dominated cultures, I am kind of used to living on the margins. I have grown up with, and been keenly aware of, the two sides of the coin laid out by Paul Ricoeur:

When we discover that there are several culture instead of just one and consequently at the time we acknowledge the end of a sort of cultural monopoly, be it illusory or real, we are threatened with the destruction of our own discovery. Suddenly it becomes possible that there are just others, that we ourselves are an ‘other’ among others. All meaning and every goal having disappeared, it becomes possible to wander through civilizations as if through vestiges and ruins. The whole of mankind becomes an imaginary museum: where shall we go this weekend – visit the Angkor ruins or take a stroll in Tivoli of Copenhagen? (P. Ricoeur, “Civilizations and National Cultures,” in his History and Truth)

One side of the coin is the realization that we have no privileged position in our current social imaginary; we are an ‘other’ among others. The other side of the coin is that one can also gain a critical position (although Riceour’s formulation might suggest ‘meaningless’ instead of “critical”) with which to wander through a civilization (even our own) as if it was a museum with fragmented artifacts rather than a coherent living reality.

Such a civilizational artifact is the conception of power that has been wielded with an obvious carelessness these days. The following series of articles tries to unpack a descriptive and prescriptive notion of power. By these series of posts, it is intended to be fully articulated through the contemporary movements of Trump’s America, and Alberta Separatism. At the same time, it should highlight some of the key arguments of a cornerstone theorist of the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries, Hannah Arendt, and her accessible insights on power in On Violence (free download).

Beyond Mastery: Grounded Human Power

We continue to rely on an old fiction: that power is best exercised through leverage, and that order is secured through coercion. This fiction survives because it appears efficient, decisive, and measurable. It promises control in a world experienced as unstable. Yet again and again, it produces brittle institutions, hollow leadership, and alienated selves. What looks like strength at the surface conceals a deeper weakness at the core.

Against this logic stands a quieter but far more durable truth: human power is generated through cooperation, not domination. Master–slave relationships do not merely harm the oppressed; they corrode the master as well. They misunderstand the nature of human agency and, in doing so, undermine the very stability they seek to impose. This is not only a moral failure. It is an anthropological and political one.

Hannah Arendt provides a crucial starting point for understanding this distinction. In On Violence, she insists that power and violence are not only different but opposed. “Power,” she writes, “corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert.” Power emerges when people recognize themselves as participants in a shared project. It depends on legitimacy, consent, and continuity. I have elsewhere called this acting in concert by the name of sovereignty. Violence, by contrast, is instrumental. It forces outcomes but cannot generate meaning or loyalty. Where violence becomes necessary, power has already begun to disintegrate.

This distinction exposes the fragility of systems built on leverage. Leverage assumes that human beings can be motivated primarily through pressure—economic, social, or psychological. It reduces agency to response and identity to function. But human beings are not passive matter. They interpret, resist, reinterpret, and re-author their roles. When institutions treat people as objects of management rather than co-authors of meaning, they may extract compliance, but they lose commitment.

The master–slave dynamic illustrates this failure with particular clarity. The master depends on obedience but is denied genuine partnership. The slave complies but withholds interior assent. Over time, both are diminished. Arendt observed that domination isolates the dominator, cutting them off from the very human plurality that makes power possible. Command without resonance becomes emptiness.

Paulo Freire names the ethical depth of this distortion. In Pedagogy of the Oppressed (free download), he argues that oppression dehumanizes everyone involved. “The oppressor consciousness,” Freire writes, “tends to transform everything surrounding it into an object of its domination.” In such a world, dialogue collapses. Speech becomes directive rather than generative. Silence replaces participation, and obedience substitutes for responsibility.

For Freire, liberation cannot be achieved by reversing roles—by replacing one master with another—but only by dissolving the master–slave framework altogether. This requires cooperation grounded in dialogue. Dialogue, for Freire, is not mere conversation. It is a mode of encounter in which people meet one another as subjects capable of naming and shaping their world together.

Martin Buber provides the relational grammar for this claim. In I and Thou (free download), Buber distinguishes between two fundamental ways of relating: I–It and I–Thou. In an I–It relationship, the other is experienced as an object to be used, managed, or controlled. This is the posture of leverage and coercion. In an I–Thou relationship, the other is encountered as a presence—irreducible, responsive, and worthy of address. “All real living is meeting,” Buber insists.

Master–slave systems are structurally incapable of I–Thou relationships. They depend on abstraction, hierarchy, and asymmetry. The other must remain distant enough to be managed. Cooperation, by contrast, requires proximity, vulnerability, and risk. It asks participants to be changed by one another. This is why cooperation feels slower and more uncertain than coercion. It is also why it generates deeper forms of stability.

The practical consequences of these differing orientations are visible across social life. Institutions built on coercion rely on constant enforcement. They suppress initiative, encourage minimal compliance, and cultivate distrust. Innovation becomes dangerous. Dissent becomes betrayal. Over time, such systems must escalate pressure simply to maintain equilibrium.

Cooperative systems operate differently. Because participants experience themselves as contributors rather than instruments, responsibility is internalized rather than imposed. Disagreement becomes a resource rather than a threat. Authority is exercised not through fear but through credibility and trust. These systems are more resilient precisely because they are less brittle. They can adapt without collapsing into crisis.

Importantly, cooperation is not the absence of leadership or structure. It is leadership that understands its own limits. It recognizes that authority is sustained only insofar as it remains responsive to those it coordinates. Arendt reminds us that legitimacy cannot be manufactured by force. It emerges only where people recognize themselves as co-authors of a shared world.

The choice between domination and cooperation is therefore not merely political or organizational. It is existential. How we exercise power shapes who we become. Leverage secures obedience but hollows identity. Cooperation demands patience and humility, but it produces belonging.

If we want institutions, communities, and forms of life capable of sustaining human dignity, we must abandon the fantasy of control and recover the deeper, more demanding power of acting together.