Critical thinking is not enough. It's time you learned about power.
Numbers and words are cool, but we have calculators and ChatGPT now. What you need is POWER LITERACY.
Critical thinking is more important than ever. But it’s not enough to combat the impending wave of gullibility.
Stories and systems shape our world. This is the invisible architecture that embeds power, and most of us don’t see it.
When you become power literate, you can see the invisible barriers in your way - and topple them. Bam.
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My kids were all born five years apart, which is just long enough for the official baby advice to change every time. It’s also long enough for new learning approaches to roll through schools. My eldest daughter, now at university, was the last one to memorise times tables and spelling words. Five years later, when my middle child came through, it was a different system. Rote learning was out of fashion and it was all about feelings, emotions, and learning through play.
My youngest, H, got yet another version: structured literacy and numeracy, and a few feelings. (Still no memorisation, though this is starting to look like a dubious move.) Now, the system is going through another round of changes, just as generative AI floods classrooms and kids freewheel on ChatGPT.
The kids need to be critical thinkers
In my hunt for H’s school, I’m looking at their approaches to critical and adaptive skills. H will finish high school at the end of 2033, so who knows what careers will be about by then. But if she’s creative, ambitious and knows her own mind, she’ll be OK. Regardless of what the world is doing, kids need to be confident to challenge, integrate new knowledge, adapt their thinking and turn ideas into action.
If we believe the critical thinking panic1, these are precisely the skills in danger of modern extinction. There’s a risk we produce a generation who are even more gullible than us - (which is already quite gullible. We can’t spot deepfakes or manipulated media. We can’t even spot bogus reviews and product placements. )
AI presents a challenge for the future of critical thought. So too does the erosion of mainstream media and the decline of the humanities. Together, we risk a society of even fewer people who can unpack ideas or challenge a neat story2.
Critical thinking is not enough
Critical thinking is, well, critical! Kids and adults, citizens and leaders, we should all be able to ask good questions, challenge assumptions, examine logic, and expose flaws.
For years, I’ve taught people how to be strategists and systems thinkers. To think with longer time horizons, clearer values, and more diverse connections between people, places, and things. To convert big goals into clear decision criteria, put noisy narratives into perspective and make bold, tangible steps toward the things we care about3. These skills remain utterly necessary.
But critical thinking is not enough for the next wave of change. We need to be more than strategic. We need to be power literate.
Stories and systems make power invisible
Every part of our lives - the shows we binge, the legislation we pass, the design of institutions like schools, hospitals, courts, and workplaces, the goals we aspire to, the things we spend our money on, the choices we make about our families - rests on an invisible architecture of stories and systems.
Stories sneak ideas in, and systems prop them up. Together, they embed power, scaffold and shape what’s normal, and constrain what’s possible, and who benefits. The more invisible this power is, the more effective it becomes. When ideas burrow into the status quo, they become inevitable and unquestioned. If you can’t see it, you can’t change it.
The mechanisms that keep power in check are under threat
Some experts warn that new technology will embed existing social, cultural and power structures in a way that is difficult to undo. In What We Owe The Future, Will Macaskill warns of ‘values lock-in’ - where we use today’s ideas as the AI base for long-term human knowledge, halting moral progress.4
We have vital social mechanisms already literate in power dynamics: literature, journalism, art, academia, and activism. They play a crucial role in challenging and refreshing systems and stories. But these mechanisms all depend on a baseline of critical capability and political awareness, and many of them are under threat.
That’s why we need widespread power literacy.
Power literacy makes the invisible, visible
Power literacy is the ability to see, read, and navigate the invisible architecture that decides who gets what, and why. When we become power literate, we recognise power in all its forms: hard, soft, visible, invisible. We learn how it works, where it hides, and how to smoke it out of its hole.
Power literacy asks different questions to interrogate ideas and their beneficiaries. It is the difference between asking “Is this true?” and “Whose truth is this serving?”
It’s not for navel-gazing, though. Power literacy is fuel for action. Once we see the unseen, we make better decisions and shift outcomes. We follow the money and cut it off at the source. We get to the bottom of people’s fears and invite them to safely consider new stories. We move upstream, topple powerful interests off their perch, and make things better for the people who aren’t served by the status quo.
Power literacy is a constructive skillset
Becoming literate in the dynamics of power isn’t about putting on a tinfoil hat and finding the Illuminati. It’s not about conspiracy theories (ThEy d0nT want u 2 Know, sheEple) or being unnecessarily adversarial. It’s about making a difference, by tackling all the barriers and factors, not just the visible ones. If you’re only fighting for change on the surface, you’re not fighting the right war.
I want you to be literate in the invisible stuff:
The stories that shape the world around you.
The systems that prop up those stories.
The rules, resources and relationships that decide who gets what.
The winners and losers who hide behind polite ideas.
This literacy helps you to be subversive, so you can show your kids that the Netflix show sucks because it’s giving us the wrong idea about teenage sex, or boost your best mate and tell her she doesn’t have imposter syndrome, she’s got a mediocre husband, an overwhelming domestic load, and a patriarchal work environment. Power literacy will help you to push back on bullshit narratives and empower others to do the same.
But it will also help you to be constructive. Professionally: policies, design choices, funding decisions, and hiring choices. Personally: where you spend your money, who profits from your loyalty, what you do with your time, how you raise your family, what you want from your career. Politically: who you vote for, what you organise for, and how to use your voice where it matters most.
Power literacy turns polite frustration into strategic resistance - and helps you drive real change.
Three questions for power literacy
Here are three questions you can ask to dig underneath trends and hype, to be more power literate:
What is left unsaid? Power requires editorial choices. Take a closer look at what isn’t said but needs to be believed for the story to make sense. What is hinted at? What assumptions are being made? What’s being naturalised or skipped over?
Who shapes the conversation? Power often sits behind the person with the title, whispering in their ear. Ask: Who makes the decision? Who are they catering to? Who is the authority on this issue? What is their expertise? Who is pulling strings, funding, and influencing? Why?
What values, and value, are upheld? Power persists when ideas feel inevitable. So unpick both the values - what matters and is being protected - and the value capture - who benefits from that. What is the story behind this – economically, culturally, symbolically? Who benefits from us thinking this way - historically, now, and into the future?
… Should I write this book?
I am considering writing a book with the express intention of building this power literacy. The working title is Invisible Architecture, and it would be part exploration, part how-to guide. Readers would learn to spot and unpick the stories and systems that shape policy and possibility. I’m thinking big ideas and wide application, with lots of practical examples - covering everything from ‘How to spot ideology in your favourite movies’ to ‘How to read between the lines on proposed legislation’.
Your thoughts on this are very welcome,
Til next week,
AM
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There is some concern that the use of generative AI will erode individual and collective capacity for critical thinking and should be managed carefully, similar to how autopilot is used in aviation.
I’m quietly optimistic this will turn around. Once all the bullshit jobs die off, I’m hoping we experience a new renaissance of human goodness, bursting with humanities, art, literature and science.
If you’re in local government, and you’re in New South Wales: come to this two day Strategic Public Leaders workshop in September. You’ll learn strategic skills.
Others shrug, as AI cannibalises itself and gets poisoned by its own. AI model collapse occurs when AI-generated content infects training data. This is very difficult to have sympathy for.
This is a very solid idea for a book. Talking about and acting on power is missing in much corporate and government discourse except in threatened spaces like DEI, and at uni it’s everywhere except the bit about what to do next. So power literacy that directs towards agency and change sounds perfectly dangerous and important.
Kia ora Alicia,
I know you must get a flood of messages, but your recent Substack on “Power Literacy” absolutely hit home for me—especially your call to see the invisible architecture of power behind change, adaptation, and what stories get told (or silenced). I’m currently completing my Master’s thesis on unlearning in the face of AI-driven disruption, and your framing of power, narrative, and hidden systems is the missing piece so many “critical thinking” conversations ignore.
If you’re open to it, I’d be deeply grateful to include your perspective in my research findings. Just a brief answer to any of these would add immense value (and I’m happy to share back my findings or cite you directly if useful):
1. In your view, what’s the most persistent invisible power dynamic that blocks meaningful unlearning or change in organisations or society?
2. What’s the “left unsaid” or “unacknowledged value” around AI-driven change, in your experience?
3. Have you ever seen a moment where “critical thinking” alone failed to shift a system—because power (not logic) decided the outcome?
My research is focusing not just on what people say about change, but what they can’t say—what power hides, who gets to adapt, and who gets left behind. Your thinking on power literacy and systemic truth-telling would lift my work to a whole new level.
Thank you for putting this kind of conversation into the world, and if you have time to reply, even in a sentence or two, it would mean a great deal. Either way, I’m cheering for your work.
Ngā mihi nui,
Nicola