An Annoying Peasant on Autonomy and Capacity

This week in World Politics, we talked about 4 factors of sovereignty: authority, power, autonomy, and capacity. In our Tuesday class, we had our first heated debate whilst discussing authority vs. capacity and which is the product of the other. Although it was clear to us that the two terms go hand-in-hand when describing most ruling parties (i.e., governments, laws, etc.), I think that both authority and capacity are products of the human mentality that we, as people, must be ruled.

There has to be someone there to put limits on us and we must adhere to those boundaries. One of my classmates gave a good example of stopping at a stop sign at 2 a.m., a time when literally no one is one the road, so there really is no logical reason to stop. Yet, most people do stop at that stop sign when they are driving at 2 in the morning just in case there is a cop waiting on the sidelines ready to catch you. It is the appearance that the authority has the capacity to sit at that stop sign at 2 a.m., though the reality is that the only cop who would be sitting there would be the one trying to scramble up a couple extra tickets for the month. Yes, that is a stereotype and I’m sure that’s not the only reason a cop would be there.

Wednesday’s trip to the legendary Newseum was one that miraculously happened to fit with Tuesday’s topic of authority vs. capacity. Walking through the Katrina, 9/11, and Freedom of Speech exhibits, I noticed that the media, the prime resource for communicating the world’s news to the rest of world, had limited capacity and authority.

First of all, world coverage is not really 100% reliable because a good majority of the world doesn’t even have free speech. Because parts of the world are being censored, we cannot believe everything we hear or read. Secondly, as seen in the Katrina and 9/11 exhibits, the press does not have the capacity to get all the facts right on the first go. Throughout post-Katrina news, reporters had to correct their previous headlines to account for the updating news that no longer supported the former news. With regards to 9/11, a rather testy subject to talk about, it seems that many news agencies had the wrong idea about what exactly happened that dreadful day. Reading the wall of newspaper headlines from the day after the attack, I noticed that many of them alluded to the demise of the United States, however, the U.S. is still alive and kicking @$$. Thirdly, the press lacks authority to make some judgement calls that they have seen fit to make, transforming facts to fiction, though the general public still views the information as fact. For example, in the Katrina exhibit they pointed out that one of the photo captions in a newspaper was labeled something along the lines of "scrounging" instead of "looting," which the person in the picture was apparently doing. But the press's point of disparity in New Orleans was better illustrated with an inaccurate caption.

The one that resonated within me the rest of the week was “APOCALYPSE.” “Terrorist,” “heart-breaking,” “sorrowful,” “barbaric” were all terms that I have heard and read that described the terrorist attacks in 2001, never had I come across “apocalypse.” However, it is the most concise and accurate description of what happened that day…but now I’m going off topic. Let’s regress.

Apparently the University College World Politics floor didn't experience enough examples of authority vs. capacity because Prof PTJ and the PA's decided to try to create conflict on the floor by dividing the floor into two territories: green and orange, because red and blue would have been confusing because the other UCWP class is the red group and my class is the better blue group. So of course in class Friday we discussed the divide that occurred on our floor a couple of days earlier. Though I had paid little attention to the divide, it seems that a new nation, the Blue Nation, rose in response to the forced territorial divide. We proceeded to compare our family on Letts 6 South to world issues. We wanted to be a sovereign entity, however, we have too low in the hierarchy. We have our RA and PA, who act like Mayors or maybe congressmen because they can relay our thoughts/concerns to the higher powers, the RHA, which is the Governor, and we have the powers that are in summary, AU, the president.

As a floor, we initially wanted to isolate ourselves from the others, those who live in the attached residence halls or even on the floors below us but in the same hall. However, we rely on each other's resources in order to survive, so the proposition of treaties were made: the others may use our resources if and only if, or iff (if you will), they abide by our rules, because we are sure that we would definitely abide by their rules while using their resources. (I mean most of us will, but there are always those rebels who constantly want to "bend the rules," so I'm factoring them into this equation.) There were a handful in the discussion that did not want to isolate ourselves from the others because, besides being a snobbish thing to do, we wouldn't be able to gain the advantage of being worldly and explore other floors and residence halls. So, basically, we proposed ideas from all the theories (realism, idealism and constructivism) we read about in the reading due for that class without really realizing it.

However, with all that said, we had the capacity to create rules to keep out the others and even the capacity to enforce it with our voluntary minute (wo)men troops, but we did not have the authority or power to set forth our mandate and create an autonomy that would have been Letts 6 South. Sad day, I know. But on the bright side, if something goes wrong on our floor we can still run to our RA or PA's for help :).

Flying home for Labor Day weekend, I went through all the movies and television shows I had on my computer and decided to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the clip about Dennis reminded me about our discussion not 3 hours earlier, we were indeed really annoying peasants, but we had fun theorizing.

...And just because it's entertaining:

Have a great Labor Day weekend!

Resources:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOOTKA0aGI0

http://www.freedomhouse.org/images/FoP/2009/release_event/Newseumgallery_full.jpg

Newseum.org

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teMlv3ripSM&feature=related