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

  1. illiterate
  2. inherently
  3. movement
  4. ignorance
  5. valence
  6. people
  7. result
  8. capacity
  9. slogan
  10. friendship
  11. power
  12. 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

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
civics sexy 3
power resides 3
elemental questions 2
civic power 2
national government 2

Important Words

  1. america
  2. bias
  3. bill
  4. brings
  5. capacity
  6. civic
  7. compounded
  8. created
  9. culture
  10. definition
  11. democracy
  12. dictatorship
  13. disproportionate
  14. evil
  15. face
  16. fact
  17. feel
  18. fill
  19. find
  20. fire
  21. flows
  22. form
  23. friendship
  24. good
  25. government
  26. governs
  27. great
  28. happy
  29. ignorance
  30. illiteracy
  31. illiterate
  32. influence
  33. inherently
  34. inquiry
  35. law
  36. life
  37. machiavellian
  38. majority
  39. menacing
  40. moral
  41. movement
  42. mythology
  43. naming
  44. negative
  45. operates
  46. part
  47. people
  48. perfectly
  49. period
  50. physics
  51. policy
  52. power
  53. problem
  54. profoundly
  55. resides
  56. result
  57. scary
  58. simply
  59. slogan
  60. sounds
  61. story
  62. subsidy
  63. talk
  64. today
  65. uncomfortable
  66. understand
  67. vacuum
  68. valence
  69. visible
  70. wield
  71. world