We have just begun this project and are still conducting conversations. talkPOPc has three pillars of artwork, published philosophy, and intent conversations, and it is the intent conversations that feed back into the art and philosophy. In other words, as we listen to the conversations and Shottenkirk develops her thoughts, artwork and writing begin to emerge.

Check in with our ongoing Monthly Conversation Meetings about “Power” at Liz’s Book Bar!

Dena Shottenkirk’s essay associated with her artwork Fear & Trembling (Homage to Kierkegaard) (2024):

Lots of people speak of fear. It is found in a little tiny almond shaped organ in our brain called the amygdala. And it leads us around like a bull with a ring in its nose.

Trembling is a nice adjective to add on to that. That was Kierkegaard’s addition, and it is perfect. To stand with fear and trembling. We do so in many situations. Kierkegaard is talking about the fear and trembling that we experience when we hold fast to objective belief and eschew subjectivity. He wanted to re-establish the legitimacy of the subjective; the legitimacy of faith and belief, the legitimacy of the personal and the subjective, and not merely the utility of things. Because he was convinced that the objective facts made no one happy; it was only subjective belief that did.

This is an odd time to revive those objections to objective knowledge as our world has fallen into the doubt and apathy that comes with relativism. But relativism is not the same thing as subjectivity. To argue for relativism is to say there IS no truth. To argue for subjectivity is to argue for the primacy – the importance – of the subjective experience.

First person experience. Another phrase for essentially the same thing. This is what the world seems to me.

It is even weirder that as we have fallen into the abyss of relativism, deprived of truth, we have also grown to not value our own subjective experience, what Thomas Nagel called the “what it’s like” of experience. My what it is like is not yours. But I will never understand your “what it’s like” unless you tell me; and you can’t tell me if you don’t know.

For Kierkegaard, the father of existentialism, one stands within existence as both a subject experiencing subjectively while yet aware of the external objective world. But the two worlds of subjective/objective (or first person/third person) are not, for Kierkegaard, of equal weight. In his Concluding Unscientific Postscript, written in 1846, he states: His prodigious learning which lies like a dragon at faith’s door, threatening to devour it, will become a handicap, forcing him to put forth an even greater prodigious effort in fear and trembling in order not to fall into temptation and confuse knowledge with faith.

We want to say “I know”, and not merely “I believe”.

And yet the subjective experience is still central.

Fear and trembling.

An inmate at Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) told me that she used to be an assistant to a plastic surgeon and this inmate was the office help/con artist, however you want to refer to these sorts of jobs, who would suggest other procedures for the potential patient saying things like, “you know, you have some sagging here that would look so much better if we just pulled it up a bit”. She said she had that job for 11 years and all during that time she wore lots and lots of make-up and never left home without it, yet always felt inadequate and not quite pretty. I was surprised to hear her say this, because in fact, this inmate, a woman in her thirties, was quite pretty. She then said something that really startled me. “But while I’ve been in prison, I haven’t worn make-up and now I have so much more self-confidence. All those insecurities have gone away about how I look and I realize that I can project who I am inside.”

Women and men. To agree to go over into the man’s world – the traditional move a woman would make in a marriage vow – is, too, a jump into the unknown. Where here, too, the entrance is manned by a dragon at the door, though in this instance it is a dragon that harnesses the unequal weight of power distribution. Mary Wollstonecraft, writes: Women are told from their infancy, and taught by the example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of human weakness, justly termed cunning, softness of temper, outward obedience, and a scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of propriety, will obtain for them the protection of man; and should they be beautiful, every thing else is needless, for, at least, twenty years of their lives. She states, a page later: if then women do not resign the arbitrary power of beauty.—they will prove that they have less mind than man. Excerpt: Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)

Do not dismiss it for being old. For it is hardly out of date. It is still true that women stand with fear and trembling at the door of male approval. The global revenue for cosmetics is approximately $650 billion for the year 2024. That is unbelievable.

…This is what women have faith in e.g., the so-called power of their own beauty. But is it really power when that passivity of presentation – the inherent passivity that is found in the displaying of and the offering up – eviscerates the ability to exert power and demands on their own right? One has to wonder about the double standard here; men don’t display themselves. It is their character that they believe will be conveyed. Am I cool looking, or smart looking, or tough looking, or successful looking? All those character traits are valued. But my friend the inmate is right: the worry about displaying one’s beauty eviscerates any self-confidence in one’s character. There is no subjectivity, only objectivity and only for others. Six hundred and fifty billion.

Fear is really a governing power in the human body, in the human mind. It is the mechanism that recognizes power. It is subjective in that it is a registering of one’s own internal measure of vulnerability but it is also objective because it measuring also the strength and violence of the external other. It is trembling.

Dena Shottenkirk’s essay associated with her artwork We, the Strong Ones (2024):

Nietzsche, in Beyond Good and Evil states: life itself is ESSENTIALLY appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation. Later in the paragraph he names the winners and losers by calling them MASTER-MORALITY and SLAVE-MOR AL ITY” and continues to define Master morality in conjunction with his notion of life as appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation. Or, to paraphrase: We, the Strong Ones. 

But is this true? We mustn’t forget David Hume’s dictum regarding confusing an is with an ought. In other words, just because something is a certain way doesn’t mean it ought to be. Let me rephrase this: Society grants power to those who have grabbed it. The power is legitimized. It is a fact; it is. That doesn’t mean though that it ought to be that way.

John Stuart Mill, in his essay “The Subjection of Women”, states it like this:

“Laws and systems of polity always begin by recognising the relations they find already existing between individuals. They convert what was a mere physical fact into a legal right, give it the sanction of society, and principally aim at the substitution of public and organized means of asserting and protecting these rights, instead of the irregular and lawless conflict of physical strength. Those who had already been compelled to obedience became in this manner legally bound to it. Slavery, from being a mere affair of force between the master and the slave, became regularized and a matter of compact among the masters, who, binding themselves to one another for common protection, guaranteed by their collective strength the private possessions of each, including his slaves. 

Is it natural then for the strong to dominate? Or, to phrase it differently, is domination natural?

Let us leave aside the popular press’ insistence on testosterone, which of course is ill-informed. Many scientific studies have shown that testosterone increases after a win instead of being the cause of the win. People have their cart before the horse. Yet one more sign of a failing logic test by society.

Instead, I will stop here and wonder about the role of habit in all of this. What causes one to be dominate? Like many things, it is over-determined, but surely both one’s membership to a group that has already climbed up the dungheap of domination is part of it. You know what I mean here – if you’re rich, of the right national group in the world or the right religious group in your country, and probably if you’re male, you have a much better chance of asserting domination than your opposite does. It has nothing to do with personality or with character or even with hormones. J.S. Mill is right: the collective strength wields much weight. If you, by the the luck of the draw, find yourself in that group, then you are golden. It catapults its members up over the objections of others.

Habit then rules. The habits of society and the habits and assumptions one grows up with, as well as the training one exerts over oneself. William James, in his essay on habit stated it thus:

“Can  we  now  form  a  notion  of  what  the inward  physical  changes  may  be  like,  in organs  whose  habits  have  thus  struck  into new  paths? In  other  words,  can  we  say  just what  mechanical  facts  the  expression  'change of  habit '  covers  when  it  is  applied  to  a  nervous system?

…the whole plasticity of the brain…be a path in the system.”

…the  whole  plasticity  of  the  brain  sums itself  up  in  two  words  when  we  call  it  an organ  in  which  currents  pouring  in  from  the sense-organs  make  with  extreme  facility paths  which  do  not  easily  disappear.  For, of  course,  a  simple  habit,  like  every  other nervous  event — the  habit  of  snuffling,  for example,  or  of  putting  one's  hands  into  one's pockets,  or  of  biting  one's  nails — is,  mechanically, nothing  but  a  reflex  discharge;  and its  anatomical  substratum  must  be  a  path in  the  system.”

As he also points out in this essay, it is much easier to change one’s habits when one is young. It is never impossible to change one’s habits, but it is extraordinarily hard. I think this is true whether or not the habits are rewarding one with domination or with submission. It is hard to step outside one’s habitual step-by-step maneuvers in life and assess the justice of them.

The former ISIS recruiter finished our conversation by telling me this: she had talked to many therapists over the last few years in prison and had come to face the truth that violence was truly not the answer. She had tears in her eyes when she told me this – her decision to turn away from violence. My heart went out to her; I hoped that new habit would stick.