Politics & Power Quote by Peter Singer

Singer is doing something quietly strategic here: deflating the glamour of influence by redefining what counts as “power” in the first place. The opening move sounds almost like a shrug, but it’s a moral reframing. If you’re not the president of a major power, you’re “marginalised” too. That’s deliberately flattening status differences, turning marginality from an identity claim into a default condition of modern life. It’s also a subtle critique of the attention economy: we obsess over proximity to formal authority, then treat everyone else as a footnote.

The intent isn’t self-pity; it’s preemption. Singer anticipates the common dismissal of public philosophers: you don’t run a country, so what do you matter? He answers by widening the frame. Yes, he’s outside the central machinery of the state, but so is almost everyone. That makes “not unique” a pressure release valve, a way to avoid sounding aggrieved while still spotlighting how narrow our definition of relevance has become.

Then comes the pivot that reveals the deeper subtext: “different sorts of relevance in different contexts.” That’s Singer’s utilitarian pragmatism rendered sociologically. Relevance isn’t a throne; it’s situational leverage - in universities, in policy debates, in philanthropy, in public moral imagination. The line suggests an ethic of influence without sovereignty: you may not command armies, but you can shift norms, and norms can steer the people who do command armies. It’s a humblebrag with a point: ideas don’t need executive power to become consequential.