When we say knowledge is power, we usually refer to useful stuff like say scientific knowledge of making weapons, which would be more useful than saying, knowing sci fi trivia. Hence how he uses knowledge in this context, doesn't quite cut it.In the second season of the cult television show The Game of Thrones, the writers introduced a scene not found in the book upon which the series is based.
In it, ruthless Queen Cersei, accompanied by a retinue of armed guards, is speaking with one of her courtiers, the sly and untrustworthy Lord Baelish. Baelish is your classic peddler of intrigue, a one-man CIA for the middle ages, a knower of secrets and one whose position and advancement depends on his ability to marshal information that others would prefer was left hidden.
In chatting with Cersei, Baelish decides to let the Queen know that he knows her greatest secret, the one thing that might bring down her and her family.
Baelish doesn't tell her outright what he knows, he simply hints at. In a fit of ill-judged self-confidence, he tells the Queen that, "Prominent families often forget a simple truth, I've found."
To which Cersei responds, "What truth is that?"
"Knowledge is power," replies Baelish, with all the smug self-assurance of someone confident of his own genius.
After a suitably pregnant pause, the Queen simply says to her guards, "Seize him."
She then tells them to cut his throat. As one of the guards raises his knife, the Queen commands him to stop. She has changed her mind, she says. Then she tells the guards to let Baelish go. Then to take three step backwards. Then she tells them to turn around and close their eyes.
They obey all these arbitrary orders without question.
At which point Cersei steps forward and reminds a somewhat less self-assured Baelish of a truth she understands far better than he does.
"Power is power," she says. And smiles sweetly.
The idea that knowledge is power is a cliche in our modern, democratic age. We believe almost reflexively that if only we could tell people the truth - share our knowledge of proven facts - our argument will prevail.
So every time you hear someone point out that Tony Abbott has admitted he doesn't always tell the truth, or that he regularly tells one audience one thing and another the complete opposite, or that there is a scientific consensus on the facts about global warming, or that a price on carbon won't kill the economy, or that the Government's stimulus package helped keep us out of recession, you are listening to people who think that by merely telling the truth they are exercising power.
As should be obvious, the efficacy of this belief is misplaced. Day after day, as those examples reveal, power trumps knowledge.
No-one knows this better than the powerful themselves.
Gina Rinehart doesn't want to control various media outlets in order to access knowledge. For Rinehart, the media isn't a way to spread knowledge, but a source of power that is able to shape knowledge into a form that serves her interests.
She knows as well as Cersei that power is power.
Indeed, the entire conservative movement has managed to cocoon itself in a world of its own creation, a place where facts have little domain and where their own prejudices are treated as reality.
The situation is worse in the United States than it is here, but we are catching up. Everything from Obama's citizenship, to the science of climate change, to evolution itself are flatly denied by many conservatives.
Such thinking could not prevail without the support of some very powerful people and institutions, and it is a measure of the triumph of power over knowledge that conservatives are able to muster such support for their fact-free beliefs.
It is no surprise, then, that in Australian politics, it is Julia Gillard who thinks knowledge is power, while Tony Abbott is the one who is actually exercising it.
Mr Abbott, with the help of various commentators, media outlets, business groups, think tanks and corporations, has managed to create an alternative reality where the government has been discredited and where he is able to be taken seriously enough to offer himself as a viable prime minister.
He has created a reality where Julia Gillard's failings are seen as defining while his are dismissed as irrelevant.
Like the cigarette companies and the fossil fuel industry before him, Mr Abbott's weapon is doubt, and he deploys it skilfully, with many in the media happy to christen him the best opposition leader in our history because of it.
On the other hand, the Prime Minister's entire political strategy is to rely on the idea that knowledge is power, that the truth will out, and that it will set her free. Or get her re-elected.
She is convinced that once the carbon price is active and people see that Mr Abbott's prognostications of doom have been proved wrong, people will stop listening to him.
Of course that won't happen.
The power that underpins Mr Abbott's ability to shape our political reality into one where the strongest economy in the world is understood to be one on the verge of collapse will simply pivot its attention elsewhere and concoct a new set of "facts" that will "prove" the PM's unworthiness for office.
Until Labor addresses the power that underpins such deceptions, rather than just the deceptions themselves, they will continue to take a beating.
Also there are multiple factors why someone is powerful, knowledge being only one of them. So saying power trumps knowledge kind of misses the point.
He does make some good points about propaganda, and I love his Game of Thrones reference, but the word play in how he uses the word knowledge irritates me.
