James Lull's Hegemony Argument Essay
Hegemony, a seemingly simple word to describe unequal, human power dynamics. It is simple in indicating that a dominant class holds power over a subordinate class. However, some questions remain. What is the source which empowers the dominant class? Who or what has imposed such privilege upon them? Why and how do the few control the many? These are just some of the ideas that crossed my mind whilst reading “Hegemony” by James Lull. One could easily argue the current dominant class is the result of a trickle-down effect over time of the inheritance of wealth, therefor inheritance of influence. Which makes a lot of sense, except for when we realize that in reality all they have is a bunch of “valuable” green paper, they do not have some mystic or divine control of others. So why do we treat the dominant class as if they do? This could also be simply answered by saying we live in a society that worships the dollar, thus the wealthy are equated to the divine, but there is more to it. When attempting to answer this question, I recalled an entity known as “the superpower” found in the book Politics and Vision by Sheldon S. Wolin. Essentially “the superpower” is the driving …show more content…
As long as we are consenting to this ideology, the worship of the dollar, we cannot complain about the distribution of power or the actions of the powerful without being hypocritical. The dominant class may or may not have a malicious intent behind their actions, but it does not matter because that the source of their power is through us consenting to an ideology which benefits them and screws everyone else. We must first change the ideals of society before attacking the distribution of
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