Welcome to the PowerMyth Index!
How do we start to address social issues of our time? Inequity? Alienation? Division? Maybe the answers are already out there.
This digital garden attempts to craft a universal contact language. I believe deep division in society can be overcome, because there's something we are all shaped by and that we can all generate: Power. Unfortunately, it's not as intuitive as we might expect. Power's relation to each individual, community, and identity manifests differently. The unique experiences everyone carries with them are all necessary for a greater understanding of Power, and therefore, each other.
A collective effort is needed because we're all partially blinded by Myth of our own making. The stories we tell to understand the world around us are a veiled potential for Power, as they eventually become the unstated, the taken-for-granted, and the assumptions that inform our decision-making. What if those stories were written from a limited perspective? Individually, we might not know what to question, but together, we can QUESTION EVERYTHING.
Contents
Thinkers from across space and time have deepened our understanding of the world and each other, but as knowledge becomes more specialized, these contributions risk getting siloed. That's not super helpful for our complex, interconnected systems... but it's not reasonable to write some singularly unifying theory to bring it all together, either. Maybe we meet somewhere in the middle?
Power as a shared language allows us to roughly categorize relevant works from different perspectives, including those that disagree with one another. It's less important that everything included in this library is consistent; instead, there just needs to be a way to find what you need to get the job done. In other words, the PowerMyth Index is your grandpa's old toolbox.
People experience and rationalize the world differently, and that's helpful for us! However, I understand that not everyone, especially these days, sees diversity as a solution for inequity. In fact, sometimes even the smallest shows of diversity (a woke Disney movie casting or whatever) are branded with the scariest possible term man could imagine: Cultural Marxism. Well hey, marginalized identities carry incredible insight about how Power (and therefore society) works. But perhaps not one, five, or even ten pieces can complete a puzzle. What about the wealthy?! WHAT ABOUT GAMERS?!??!
Let's give that toolbox a fresh coat of paint. The PowerMyth Index is organized following an epic framework we like to call... NEW CULTURAL MARXISM+
To get situated with the academic debates (and personal decisions) that informed this Index, head to the Bibliography and Resources section.
Understanding Power solely as a means for people to dominate each other is insufficient. Instead...
- Power is a ubiquitous force that determines the boundaries for what every person can or can't do (11. Realms of Freedom).
- When we come together to govern a society, the views and perceptions of some people are more represented than others (12. Dominant Realm).
- That influence is baked into institutions and culture, which maintains the status quo and reinforces exclusion (13. Realm Enforcers).
- Those advantaged with certain accumulative properties, such as wealth and status, have greater potential to shape boundaries (14. Power Capacitors).
- An eternal process of 15. Boundary Negotiation underpins society to determine what is good, possible, normal, legal, or rational.
From here, the rest of the Index is in sections based around its relation to Power, either as actors or actions. Please visit the Sitemap to get started!
Fun Disclaimers
I am not a researcher living in a bubble of pure science and reason, nor is this all intended to be some objectively correct lighthouse for the world's problems. Just because I'm compiling a bunch of perspectives doesn't mean I'm absent one of my own, which also comes with limitations and blind spots. Expect contradictions! I will criticize Categorization despite doing just that, I will question Academia while being part of it, and so on. Maybe two things can be true at once, maybe there's no such thing as truth, idk. But just keep that in mind I guess?
Also, this Index will be WEIRD AND MESSY FOREVER!!! :O Ideas will keep evolving over time. Expect some pages to be delicately crafted essays while others will just be reference lists for now. Either way, my hope is that each page offers something you can chew on to help reexamine your own experiences.
ALSO! Sometime in the future when I get my life together, the end goal is to turn this project into a collaborative wiki. We need your contributions. We need your disagreements. I just... don't know how to logistically open that up yet?? In the meantime, if you have thoughts, recommendations, or hate mail, please send it my way at belmontindex@gmail.com!
~ Dillon Belmont, 4/16/2026