Pursuing Happiness

We touched on the subject of power during our previous week in class. It was then further explained this week and I think it’s something I would like to write about in this blog entry.

Power according to Thompson is the “ability to act in pursuit of one’s aims and interests”. According to Thompson there are four kinds of power: Economic, Political, Coercive, and Symbolic. In order for people to possess any one of these powers, he/she must have the ample amount of resources to produce the outcome which they want. To gain economic power one must have money, to gain political power one must have a community to regulate, to gain coercive power one must have the objects used to inflict force, and to gain symbolic power one must have access to the right information. Once a person has gained any of these powers, he/she can use them to attain the end which he/she desires. But just like sir Beaver pointed out, if one side has power it is only evident that the opposite side will have none. His point is completely true and for some odd reason it reminded me of the movie “Pursuit of Happyness” starring Will Smith.

Basically, the movie is about Will Smith and his struggle to make it big in the financial world. He plays a poor yet smart and hardworking individual who does his best to support his only child. The struggles and scenarios that Will Smith goes thru during the movie somehow manifests the types of power Thompson described in his book. In the movie, Thompson’s teachings are highlighted by the lack of power that the main character has. In the movie, the main character was broke, therefore giving him no economic power to purchase. He was also left by his wife, which also shows the lack of political power he possessed to hold his family together. He was kicked out of his apartment and had his car towed; which showed how he lacked coercive power and how such powers were used against him.

Despite the lack of economic, political, and coercive power, the character of Will Smith was able to make up for all of this by possessing symbolic power thru his knowledge. Because Will Smith’s character was smart, talented, and hard working he was chosen to work in the brokerage firm that he interned for. The knowledge (his resource) which he acquired throughout his internship gave him the symbolic power that allowed him to achieve his goal of being accepted into the firm.

I’m not completely sure if my comparison of the movie Pursuit of Happyness would hit smack on with Thompson’s theories. Compared to the examples and scenarios given on his book, I’d like to look at mine as perhaps a small scale version of it.

To cut straight to the point, these powers that Thompson presents to us are prevalent in society today. Some people are blessed with it while others are not. In fact, in present day Philippines, the distribution of power has already turned out to be lopped sided. There are a certain number of firms or people that hold too much power that they abuse the privilege of having it. A good example of this could actually be the media conglomerations. If news is delivered by a monopolized industry, one cannot be sure if the information being reported is biased or the most relevant topic of the day. Therefore, in both the media world and the real world I think it is important to find a balance of power. As Utopian as this may sound - I think that if power was equally distributed between all people and all industries, society would flourish and progress. Everyone would have an equal chance at pursuing their goals and achieving their dreams.