Empowerment. Grr! Every time I hear
it, it makes the hackles on the back of my neck rise. Its a matter of
redundancy, you see. You don't need the "Em" or the "Ment".
Power is fine. Its like Pro-Active. Grr! That means exactly the same
as Active. However, I do understand that you need to distinguish
between being pro-active and being re-active. And I can see how you
need all those extra letters to make it clear that it is not just
about power but taking back power over our lives. And if a few extra
and technically unnecessary letters are the price for effectively
communicating this understanding, I shall live with it.
Empowerment. What an amazing
concept! Having the power to choose how we live our lives. You may be
wondering what I am whittering on about. I live on an island rescued
from Nazi oppression and returned to a democracy over 65 years ago
and has had a free democracy all of that time. Well, yes, that's true
but that doesn't make me completely free. There are still loads of
decisions made for me without my permission. Lets take a silly thing
like my electricity. The one supplier, Jersey Electricity, buys the
bulk of its supply from the French company EDF and 80% of their
electricity comes from nuclear power. Now regardless of whether I
think nuclear power is a good or bad thing, I have little choice but
to use it. The only other choice was to manufacture my own power and
take my entire house off-grid - a task that would have been very
expensive as well as a challenge to find the room for all of the
batteries we would have needed. Recently, the States of Jersey has
passed a law requiring Jersey Electricity to buy electricity from
anyone who produces it locally. This means that I can now choose to
turn my home over to green power of my own at a more leisurely pace
as funds allow. In fact, I can choose to start producing more
electricity than I need and sell it to Jersey Electricity so that
other households could use less nuclear-generated power. The 21st
Century has seen lots of opportunities open up to give us more
choices. I can choose to buy Fair Trade goods if I don't like the way
Third World producers are treated by other coffee manufacturers. I
can choose to travel anywhere in Europe for fun and/or profit without
needing permission. I can choose to travel the world because methods
of transport are easy, fast and cheap.
Empowerment. The concept is
wonderful but it is also scary. As we gain more power and control
over our lives, we lose any excuse for not having the choices we
want. We can't blame anyone else for our choices when we have to
power to make the ones we want. If we don't like where our choices
have taken us. We can choose to change those choices and go down a
new path.
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