On Power and Truth

I’ve turned forty this year, and there are a whole lot of things I wish I knew when I was half that age. So many, in fact, that I took the entire summer off to put them all together and make a book out of it. The book is called “Spiritual Anarchist Handbook,” and you can order it from Amazon.

Perhaps the most important of them (in terms of the effect it’d have on my life if I knew it when I was twenty kilos younger) is in Lesson #15. It’s the idea that some people reason in terms of truth, and some in terms of power.

Let me construct a relatively non-inflammatory example. Let’s say we’re starting a new project and we have to decide if we want to have monolithic architecture or a variety of microservices from the get-go.

A “truth-based” assessment would be something like “The project is pretty simple and small-scale, and the DevOps discipline of the team assigned to deliver it is notably poor. Therefore, I’m strongly in favour of building this project as a single monolith.”

A “power-based” one would be something like “The engineering manager is super hyped up about microservices, Kubernetes, and some other buzzwords I don’t even recognise. And I really want to suck up to the engineering manager. Therefore, I’m strongly in favour of building the project using microservices, Kubernetes, and so on.”

Looking back, I realise I had my fair share of moments when I kept elaborating my view of the objective truth long after the other side made it abundantly clear that they don’t care about the objective truth.

Sometimes they don’t care about the best idea, because they want their own idea, because they want to get credit for it. Or because there’s too much ego load for them ever to admit they’re wrong. Or because there’s some kind of virtue signalling and demonstration of allegiance going on. Or because it’s not about ideas at all, but rather about power play to make others bend to their whims.

Tactical advice I’d like to give my younger self is this: when you see that your opponent clearly doesn’t care about the objective truth, never try to convince them, for it’s a waste of time and resources. Say that you agree with them and move on. Or, say that you agree with them, then work the situation behind their backs. Or, say that you agree with them, then send an invoice for being such a friendly bloke. Or, say that you agree with them, then ride into the sunset. Or else destroy them, when you have an option and when the cause is worth it.

But don’t try to prove yourself right on content, unless, of course, the other party is interested in hearing your arguments. You’ll just waste everyone’s time and make a fool of yourself.

For more insights like that, you might want to read my book (not that I want to aggressively promote it, but the whole point of the book is reaching more depth and complexity than what’s possible in a blog post, and that’s what I did)