Truth! Preach it Jodie and AA’s!

I highlighted this portion because it’s often under-stated the effects of unequal relationships. My mind immediately goes to Foucault’s critique of power and others in that tradition.

A current (well, recently passed) anthropologist, writer, and thinker that I follow, David Graeber, had an interesting thought in one of his books. Those at “the bottom” of a power structure, ie the ones “lacking” power in a relationship, expend far more cognitive energy simulating/guessing and anticipating the needs and expectations of those “on top” of the structure/relationship. Thus, when we find ourselves overextended doing things we don’t want to do, when we don’t assert our power and boundaries, we ultimately find ourselves “on the bottom” of the power dynamic and therefore literally expending more physical, cognitive/mental, emotional, and spiritual energy than the other party.

Yet one of the many ways in which modern thought and spirituality have struck upon the same conclusions.