Avmakt
An excellent word that English badly needs. From dailymeh:
The word is avmakt, which is Norwegian for “the opposite of power”. I went through a thesaurus and none of the antonyms of “power” captured the precise meaning of this word. It’s being powerless, but not any old powerlessness. […]
Avmakt is more the peculiar feeling of being part of a system you are powerless to direct or change, and knowing it. It’s not about being on the fringes of society or lacking in basic liberties or facilities, it’s rather about being stuck squarely inside the system, with various symbols and signs of wealth and nominal power, forced to watch how money, position and “democratic rights” still leave you powerless to change or direct the system. The feeling of being a cog in the machinery, of powerlessness in the face of the Man, of being unsure what exactly you want or how to achieve it or even if it can be achieved, but knowing that whatever it is you want it’s not the status quo. The feeling that the system humiliates you: it swallows you whole, it gives you a host of privileges and then forces you to watch as each of them prove to be worthless when it comes to effecting actual change. On top of that, you get to feel guilt ‘cause you’re part of the system after all and so infinitely better off than billions of other people in the world…
