full transcript
From the Ted Talk by Eric Liu: Why ordinary people need to understand power
Unscramble the Blue Letters
And that brings me to my definition of power, which is simply this: the caicapty to make others do what you would have them do. It sounds menacing, doesn't it? We don't like to talk about power. We find it scary. We find it somehow evil. We feel uncomfortable naming it. In the culture and mythology of democracy, power resides with the people. Period. End of story. Any further inquiry not necessary and not really that welcome. Power has a negative moral vleacne. It sounds Machiavellian inherently. It seems iheelnrtny evil. But in fact power is no more inherently good or evil than fire or physics. It just is. And pewor governs how any form of government operates, whether a democracy or a dictatorship. And the plreobm we face today, here in America in particular, but all around the world, is that far too many people are profoundly ittilerlae in power — what it is, who has it, how it operates, how it flows, what part of it is visible, what part of it is not, why some polepe have it, why that's compounded. And as a rleust of this illiteracy, those few who do understand how power operates in civic life, those who understand how a bill becomes a law, yes, but also how a fehidisnrp becomes a subsidy, or how a bias becomes a policy, or how a salogn becomes a mnmvoeet, the people who understand those things wield disproportionate influence, and they're perfectly happy to fill the vacuum created by the incargnoe of the great majority.
Open Cloze
And that brings me to my definition of power, which is simply this: the ________ to make others do what you would have them do. It sounds menacing, doesn't it? We don't like to talk about power. We find it scary. We find it somehow evil. We feel uncomfortable naming it. In the culture and mythology of democracy, power resides with the people. Period. End of story. Any further inquiry not necessary and not really that welcome. Power has a negative moral _______. It sounds Machiavellian inherently. It seems __________ evil. But in fact power is no more inherently good or evil than fire or physics. It just is. And _____ governs how any form of government operates, whether a democracy or a dictatorship. And the _______ we face today, here in America in particular, but all around the world, is that far too many people are profoundly __________ in power — what it is, who has it, how it operates, how it flows, what part of it is visible, what part of it is not, why some ______ have it, why that's compounded. And as a ______ of this illiteracy, those few who do understand how power operates in civic life, those who understand how a bill becomes a law, yes, but also how a __________ becomes a subsidy, or how a bias becomes a policy, or how a ______ becomes a ________, the people who understand those things wield disproportionate influence, and they're perfectly happy to fill the vacuum created by the _________ of the great majority.
Solution
- illiterate
- inherently
- movement
- ignorance
- valence
- people
- result
- capacity
- slogan
- friendship
- power
- problem
Original Text
And that brings me to my definition of power, which is simply this: the capacity to make others do what you would have them do. It sounds menacing, doesn't it? We don't like to talk about power. We find it scary. We find it somehow evil. We feel uncomfortable naming it. In the culture and mythology of democracy, power resides with the people. Period. End of story. Any further inquiry not necessary and not really that welcome. Power has a negative moral valence. It sounds Machiavellian inherently. It seems inherently evil. But in fact power is no more inherently good or evil than fire or physics. It just is. And power governs how any form of government operates, whether a democracy or a dictatorship. And the problem we face today, here in America in particular, but all around the world, is that far too many people are profoundly illiterate in power — what it is, who has it, how it operates, how it flows, what part of it is visible, what part of it is not, why some people have it, why that's compounded. And as a result of this illiteracy, those few who do understand how power operates in civic life, those who understand how a bill becomes a law, yes, but also how a friendship becomes a subsidy, or how a bias becomes a policy, or how a slogan becomes a movement, the people who understand those things wield disproportionate influence, and they're perfectly happy to fill the vacuum created by the ignorance of the great majority.
Frequently Occurring Word Combinations
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civics sexy |
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elemental questions |
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national government |
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Important Words
- america
- bias
- bill
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- civic
- compounded
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- culture
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- democracy
- dictatorship
- disproportionate
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- ignorance
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- inherently
- inquiry
- law
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- machiavellian
- majority
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- moral
- movement
- mythology
- naming
- negative
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- part
- people
- perfectly
- period
- physics
- policy
- power
- problem
- profoundly
- resides
- result
- scary
- simply
- slogan
- sounds
- story
- subsidy
- talk
- today
- uncomfortable
- understand
- vacuum
- valence
- visible
- wield
- world