10

POWER

What is Power

Before any meaningful understanding of power can be developed, a clear distinction needs to be made between power and strength. The confusion of these concepts arises partly from their similar positive connotations as desirable qualities, and from the fact that the notion of 'weakness' is seen as the opposite of both. In other words, the terms 'powerful' and 'strong' tend to be used interchangeably, particularly in the business, political and military context where 'weakness' is regarded as a derogatory label.

We can define strength as the ability of a person or system to maintain its integrity in the face of onslaught by an enemy or the environment. In this respect, the concept may be associated with robustness, resilience, durability, stability, security, invulnerability and damage control. Strength is not defined by what the individual or system can do to others, but by what adversity it can take.

Power is very different. It is the ability of the individual or system to carry out its external intentions in its environment. It is measured by the effect it can have on others. In contrast to strength, it tends to be connected with force, pressure, dominance, manipulation, threat, influence and aggression, as well as benefit, assistance and service.

Some qualities are applicable in both areas depending on whether they are focused internally or externally. Stamina, assertiveness, competence and control are clearly valuable for both purposes.

The Dynamics of Power

Your need is another person's power. It puts the person who is able to satisfy it into the position of giving or withholding and being able to exact a price whereby they may require you to do something or refrain from doing it. The most obvious example is when you need money - it empowers your employer to control your work. This principle applies regardless of whether the context is commercial, personal, political, military or otherwise.

In any bargaining situation there is an exchange of wants or needs. The balance of power in such situations is fundamentally determined by the relative intensities of each party's needs, but is modified by each other's relatively competitive or monopoly positions and a large number of environmental factors such as custom, law and familiarity with the exchange game. The other person's power will be diminished if you can also satisfy your needs elsewhere or if your need appears less urgent than his.

Power is relative to objectives. No source of power is universally effective, but more or less limited to a range of objectives. This follows from the principle that anything can be made to happen if and only if the necessary conditions on which it depends can be created. To the extent that each objective requires different conditions, your power may or may not be able to create them. Your gun may persuade a beautiful woman to kiss you but it cannot make her love you, and there are things money can't buy or all wealthy people would be happy.

Power is complex. It may appear simple at the top of a chain of command, but the real power lies not only in the person who sets the objective or supplies the money but in his entire support system. It is usually necessary to bring together several different elements that mostly cannot substitute for one another. Among these are support, knowledge, information, leadership (which includes character, intelligence and wisdom) and a considerable variety of professional skills and material resources.

The Use of Power

All power can be used to do good or to do harm. It is impossible to have one without the other. The only way the likelihood of one application can be increased and the other reduced is through incentive, motivation and education. Power, of course, must be removed when the likelihood of doing harm becomes unacceptable, but then the potential good must also be forgone.

Power and Responsibility

An inseparable relationship exists between power and moral responsibility. No person can be held morally accountable for anything that he is powerless to do or prevent. Attempts are continually made to circumvent or pervert this principle with convenient abstractions and skilful manipulations of language. Among these are concepts such as 'collective guilt' and 'responsibility by association' which are often employed in attempts to justify highly questionable strategies in the pursuit of hidden agendas. Such 'concepts of expediency' are regularly used to defend terrorism and pre-meditated exploitation, the latter being well illustrated by Aesop's fable of 'The Wolf and the Lamb'.

The justice system becomes perverted when legal responsibility is separated from power. Obvious examples are cases where parents are held responsible for the misdeeds of their children in a society where parental authority is systematically undermined and deprived of effective community support. Conversely, government agencies and publicly owned services are often deemed 'not legally responsible' for any unwelcome event suffered by an individual regardless of the real cause.

Politics and Power

In theory, political power should be based on lawful authority, however, in practice this is not always necessary and is never sufficient. The real basis of political power is support , and without this, even legitimate decisions cannot be implemented. Politicians depend on support to get into positions of authority in the first instance, and then rely on the support of 'the system' to enforce their rule. Support cannot be demanded, but must be bought by a variety of means. Typically it will be acquired by delegating some of their authority, making vote-catching promises, exchanges of support, giving favours with 'sticky strands of obligation', making money payments and offering other forms of reward depending on the established customs. Constitutions and other established rules may set criteria, processes and boundaries to control the possession and use of power where society operates according to the 'rule of law', but even these institutions continue to operate only as long as there is sufficient support from those who possess more fundamental power in the form of real resources. That is forthcoming only as long as the establishment upholds their interests in turn. Certainly, idealism and high principles have a profound influence on how individuals use their power, but in the political arena they are still forced to trade for support.

Some Observations on Power

The items below attempt to capture and define some phenomena connected with power, or highlight a few important relationships. They are presented concisely without explanation or discussion. Other valid descriptions are also possible.

• Respect implies that a person will place voluntary restrictions on the direction and use of his power. Mercy is voluntary moderation in the use of power in the pursuit of justice. Love may be seen as the intentional use of power to do good.
  
  
• Freedom is governed by the interaction of power, strength, independence, interdependence, need and value. The more we think we need, the more power is given to those who can fulfil them and the less freedom we have. Interdependence tends to increase collective power and individual benefit at the cost of reduced individual freedom. Independence does the opposite.
  
  
• Our inward sensitivity when combined with fear reduces our strength. Our outward sensitivity increases our power in that we become aware of needs in others that we can help satisfy.
  
  
• Threat is the communicated willingness to use power against another under stipulated conditions. However, it betrays an internal conflict and reluctance in the one making the threat. Threat originates from the desire to use power without diminishing it, paying the price of using it, or revealing that one does not have it!
  
  
• Deterrence is the believable readiness to use one's power to control the willingness of an opponent to use of his own power in certain ways. It differs from 'threat' in the sense that it is a passive rather than an active use of power.
  
  
• People who are frustrated with their evidently 'weaker' position in relationships often confuse strength with power. As a consequence they may act in a forceful and aggressive way that does little to hide their vulnerability while severely detracting from their otherwise attractive qualities. In contrast, those who know their inner strength generally have less need to put on an outward show of power.
  
  
• Morality and ethics exist entirely within the framework of power, for we can never be reasonably judged except in relation to the way we use the power we possess.
  
  
• The power to destroy is always greater than the power to build.
  
  
• People who are attracted to positions of power nearly always find that they have much less power than they anticipated. Their power and position is highly dependent on support which must be bought at a price.
  
  
• Power is the ability to cause or prevent change. All decision making and power are oriented to the future.
  
  
• Power of one kind is traded for power of another kind depending on the values we place in priority. It is often sold for convenience and comfort.
  
  
• Bullying occurs when the party with the greater power uses it to make its will prevail over one who has less power simply because it can.
  
  
• Every person will inevitably be under some form of control because society cannot function effectively otherwise. If we learn to control ourselves, we keep more of our power and freedom. If we fail to control ourselves, our power and freedom will be taken away and others will control us.
  

The Realities of Personal Power

"Perspectives"
©Carl Jacob

Web design by Ieva Bergman