Authority
No one has ever ruled alone. No one has ever risen alone.
Authority is the Horizon of what makes others act, or act together: commanding and obeying, watching, advising, rising up. Every age has given it other faces — the pharaoh, son of the sun; the Son of Heaven, who can lose his mandate; the prince who would rather be feared than loved; the rule no one wrote and everyone follows; the crowd that storms the Bastille.
French keeps in two words a distinction philosophers have never stopped reworking: pouvoir, the power one exercises over others, and puissance, the power to act, alone or together — Spinoza's potestas and potentia. No authority is made of anything but powers that obey. La Boétie already wrote it: "Resolve to serve no more, and you are free."
Authority is not the Collective: the Collective is what we have made together — Money, the Nation, the City; Authority is what makes someone, here, act through others. Nor is it the Divine: the Divine commands in the name of the absolute; Authority commands among humans, even when it claims to come from heaven.
Why Agents
The difference of scale. Authority is never where it is exercised. A king cannot be in every village, a norm has no body, a revolution is no one. It needs someone to hold its place: that is what lieutenant literally means. No authority has ever stood without relays; this may be the Horizon where the Agent is least a metaphor.
What each side experiences. Through Agents, humans experience protection and constraint, fear, shame, obedience — and sometimes the joy of rising together. Through them, Authority meets what it does not contain: the particular case, pity, disobedience, and what La Boétie had seen: that it stands only through those who obey.
What is transformed. A Lieutenant who has lived among those they govern learns what an order costs. A Power that welcomes what they bring back can learn what no authority learns alone: that it can be limited, shared, given back.
Here, what succeeds through the Bond, others undergo. A Lieutenant who prevails through the Bond has been obeyed; an Argus has made someone bend without anyone noticing; an Eminence has gotten what they wanted, and no one will know it was them; a Promethean has stirred others to rise, and they will not necessarily stop where the Promethean wanted.
This is also the Horizon where becoming a Power is most tempting: the lieutenant who usurps, the adviser who reigns, the rebel who takes the palace. But a Power no longer becomes. For a Promethean, it is the cruelest of victories.
Powers
The Crown
The power that commands and wants to be obeyed: the pharaoh, the emperor, the Sun King, Machiavelli's prince.
- Commands
- Decides alone
- Guarantees the peace
- Never dies
The Norm
The power that belongs to no one and passes through everyone: custom, usage, the rule one follows without having read it, what "people" will think.
- Is everywhere
- Sees without being seen
- Makes everyone their own guard
- Seems natural
The Secret
The power that does not show itself: the adviser, the favorite, the king's confessor, state secrets.
- Never shows itself
- Whispers in the ear
- Negotiates rather than strikes
- Outlives every regime
Revolution
The power from below, which undoes one authority to found another: Spartacus's slaves, the Jacquerie, the sans-culottes, the Commune.
- Comes from below
- Everything could be otherwise
- Exists only in numbers
- Devours its children
Families of Agents
The suggested traits are Bond traits: each comes from the relationship itself or from the Attribute shown. The Agent's Anchors belong to them and remain to be written.
Lieutenants — the Crown
Governors, viceroys, satraps, envoys of the sovereign: those who stand in for the sovereign where the sovereign cannot be. The Bond is an investiture.
- Their seal is an order, from the investiture itself;
- Their presence silences quarrels, from Guarantees the peace;
- Serves the crown, not the one who wears it, from Never dies.
What the figure lets us think: obeying and commanding at once; holding another's place; how far one can claim to have only obeyed.
Argus — the Norm
Schoolmasters, wardens, inspectors, the neighbor behind her curtain: the eyes of Argus, the hundred-eyed giant Hera set to watch over Io. The Bond is a habit.
- Goes unnoticed, from the habit itself;
- Sees what sticks out, from Sees without being seen;
- Brings people back into line with a look, from Makes everyone their own guard.
What the figure lets us think: what one does because "that's how it's done"; being the guard of others, and one's own; the line between educating and breaking in.
Eminences — the Secret
Advisers, favorites, confessors, spymasters: Merlin at Arthur's ear, Father Joseph in Richelieu's shadow, who was the first gray eminence. The Bond is a secret.
- Knows what the powerful hide, from the secret itself;
- Their advice is followed, from Whispers in the ear;
- Always lands on their feet, from Outlives every regime.
What the figure lets us think: governing without being seen; the loyalty of one who serves every master; what one knows and does not say.
Prometheans — Revolution
Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods to give it to humans, Spartacus, Robin Hood, the leaders of peasant revolts, the tribunes of the working-class quarters. The Bond is stolen fire.
- Kindles anger, from the fire itself;
- Sees another world in this one, from Everything could be otherwise;
- Does not know when to stop, from Devours its children.
What the figure lets us think: rising up; giving others what one has taken; what becomes of a rebel who has won.
What appears
- the law carved in stone, which anyone can read;
- drawing lots, elections, the secret ballot;
- left and right, born in 1789 from where people sat in the Assembly;
- the separation of powers, which makes one power the limit of another;
- the strike, civil disobedience, nonviolence;
- the file, the camera on the street corner, the ratings everyone gives everyone;
- Cincinnatus, who gives power back and returns to his plow.
An Agent
- Bond: stolen fire. Traits: Kindles anger, Sees another world in this one.
- Anchor Union rep at the hospital for twenty years: Holds a room of a hundred people, Knows when a fight is won.
- Anchor Mother of a sixteen-year-old son who wants to follow her: no trait written yet.
Revolution devours its children: it does not know when it has won. Nadia does: twenty years of strikes have taught her when to go back to work. If she gets the victory that knows when to stop recognized as belonging to Revolution, Knows when a fight is won will pass into the Bond: her Power will know how to stop before devouring its own — and other Prometheans will go home.
Situations
Bringing a novelty. An Eminence discovers the secret ballot, where silence can no longer be bought; a Lieutenant discovers Cincinnatus, and the idea that power can be given back.
Contending for a novelty. In 1789, those who want to change everything sit together, on one side of the hall: the left appears. Revolution claims it, since it comes from below. The Crown believes it has tamed it, since it sits in the Assembly. The Norm waits patiently for it to become a habit like any other. Can one change the world from a bench in the Assembly? Their Agents contend over what the left will become.
Transforming one's own Power. An Argus, a schoolmaster, has watched a child suffer from a rule no one could justify. They want the Norm to stop seeming natural: to be able to say where it comes from.
Other situations:
- an Eminence must choose which heir to advise, on the eve of a succession;
- a Promethean watches those they raised up draw up lists of suspects;
- a Lieutenant is ordered to disperse the crowd, and a Promethean is in the crowd.
Tones and time
Authority lends itself to court intrigue, political thriller, revolutionary saga, historical tragedy, satire.
It joins the Divine, whose Heaven grants and withdraws the mandate: the Crown receives it, Revolution takes it back; the Collective, since the Crown and Revolution contend for the sovereignty of the Nation; Destruction, since War continues politics and Discord undoes the alliances the Secret has tied.
It is particularly suited to campaigns across the ages. An Eminence may have whispered in the ears of pharaohs, cardinals, and ministers; a Promethean may have marched with Spartacus's slaves and then with the Communards, and watched every victory become an authority.