The Problem With Power
For the purposes of this discussion, we will define power as the capacity to cause change.
The gentle reader will surely be familiar with the proverb perhaps best enunciated by Sir John Dalberg-Acton: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
For our purposes, it will suffice to say that we subconsciously recognize power as something to be desired; the ability to cause a change in one’s immediate surroundings is the source of all human creativity, and manifests from early infancy. Indeed it is the very sign of dawning self-awareness when a baby begins to interact with its environment, for until that moment the child perceives the world as an extension of itself.
Power is what enables us to realize our visions, to bring new and wonderful things into being. To grow in power is natural and desirable. But there is a reason for the warnings against power embedded in popular culture.
How to Become Powerful, the Wrong Way
It is an axiom in popular culture that the easiest path to power is destructive. This is sometimes expressed to mean that destructive power is evil. It certainly seems to be so for the thing being destroyed! Leaving discussions of good and evil for another occasion, we can certainly agree that it is generally harder to make things than to break things. The natural world tends toward disorder; this tendency is only reversed by conscious action. Since consciousness is the rare exception in the world, most change will quite naturally be destructive.
When conscious efforts find themselves in opposition, the outcome is mutually destructive. Even when both parties are truthfully seeking compromise, the outcome will result in some change, or limited destruction, to the original plan. At best, the new outcome will prove to be beneficial to both parties, becoming an evolution of their respective intentions, as opposed to a loss or setback.
Such collaborations are, we repeat, the exception. As a rule, conflict has throughout human history (as in nature) been a zero-sum game, ending in a binary state of defeat and victory. When intellect and intention are added to the natural gradient of entropy, as opposed to the same conscious effort applied to reversing entropy, it will be seen how choosing to wield destructive power is a more direct and easier path.
Examples abound in our society of individuals using their capacity to cause change in ways that bring harm to others. To do so intentionally is a rejection of one’s own membership in a community – a serious prospect for a sentient being. This path is not only destructive to others.
Acting with intention to harm other conscious beings generates conscious opposition. If harmful actors become increasingly destructive, they inevitably bring ruin upon themselves as well as their victims. The best societies regulate themselves so as to prevent generally destructive individuals from gaining power. This reflects the natural world, where wildfires burn themselves out, floods subside, earthquakes release the tension in the Earth’s crust, plagues of locusts consume all available food and die massively. Seeking power by channeling destructive force is the wrong way, aside from any discussion of morality. It is wrong because it is doomed to failure.
How to Become Powerful, the Right Way
Taking responsibility is to take charge. One’s circle of responsibility is one’s domain. At the most basic level, our domain is our own person: body and mind (whatever we determine the “mind” to be). We relate to the rest of the world in surprisingly few ways. As our awareness grows, we see with increasing clarity the causal bonds which link all things to each other.
Ecological science recognizes three basic categories of relationships between living beings: competition, predation, and symbiosis, with three subcategories falling under symbiosis. ( National Geographic – Ecological Relationships: https://www.nationalgeographic.org/activity/ecological-relationships/)
-Competition: defined as the relationship between two or more organisms relying on the same environmental resource; this can only exist between sentient beings to the extent that we deny our place as members of a greater community. Competing with other human beings for resources implies knowledge of scarcity, awareness of one’s own need, and therefore also consciousness of the other’s need. If we recognize that we are all in the same situation, we must also acknowledge our common involvement in the same system, which implies symbiosis.
-Predation: the behavior of one animal feeding on another. Again, the predator depends on the prey for sustenance; dependence implies symbiosis.
-Symbiosis: mutual dependence. All relationships between members of a community (and, by extension, all members of the human community) fall under the category of symbiosis. There are three subtypes of symbiosis:
1.Mutualism: both parties benefit.
2.Commensalism: only one party benefits but the other is unharmed (to what extent this relationship is possible between human beings depends on legal definitions of ethical behavior). Example: Human nomads collect animal droppings and burn them for fuel. This behavior is not considered to harm the animals who left the droppings only because the animals lack the ability or desire to use their own droppings for fuel. In human relationships, commensalism is nearly always a disguise for some form of abuse based on the ignorance of one party concerning the benefits of the resource in question.
3.Parasitism: one party depends on the other and receives all the benefit while the other party suffers harm. Parasites throughout human history have sought to legalize and to normalize their parasitism, the textbook example being slavery; examples of legalized parasitism are to be seen everywhere in our communities, and are rarely questioned by the majority.
In short, human relationships are either equitable, fully parasitic, or somewhere on a gradient of abuse. It follows that to expand one’s sphere of influence in relation to other human beings – to gain power in a community – is always an act of truthful collaboration, or of parasitic aggression. (Real-world acts of pure altruism, in which one party voluntarily sacrifices for the sake of another without deriving or expecting any benefit of any kind, represent a loss of power and do not enter into this discussion.) We either benefit mutually, equitably and transparently together with others – or we are parasites. As parasites depend on a host which they are actively harming, they cannot be said to have power beyond self-harm and limited harm to their environment, as we have seen.
To rightly grow in power, then, is a process that happens in two phases:
-We gain power in relation to ourselves by becoming more intentional, by learning to become more effective in some aspect of our own capacity, and by exercising our own body and mind.
-We gain power beyond our own persons by offering benefit to the community while recognizing that we exist as part of the community, and so derive benefit even from our own contributions.
In the greater context, self-interest and the common good are one and the same. As we leave behind childish notions of self-sufficiency and grow in understanding of our relationship to each concentric circle of community in the widening universe, we learn to direct our natural capacity for accumulating power towards the greater good.