The Positives of Power

In some ways this is teaching my granny to suck eggs...(although she has dentures so it's kind of useless saying eh?)

Some time ago I wrote about why we should fear power. I'm not going to recap but it's probably worth referring to that for context on what I'm about to write.

There are lots of theories of power out there but one thing that interests me is our current feelings about power in this society. We have gone through the decline of an empire, we live in a society where pluralism is enforced and secularism is a religion which preaches tolerance of all except the intolerant...

We have social structures that govern millions via the operation of a few hundred, or a few dozen. We have a monetary system so effective in capturing desire and driving technological innovation that probably half the globe lives under its thrall with no recourse and no escape from its boundaries and pathways.

In that British society is fundamentally suspicious of power, of those who wield it and of its exercise. Coupled with that we are also a society where social connections are fragile and not supported by communal life, thus we find neogiation (for the main part) a difficult skill to learn and to deploy. I suppose I'd also highlight that our conception of power is frequently that it should be used to obtain what it is we think should happen without compromise.

So with that as a context, let's talk about some of the positives.

Power gets things done. I know it's daft to say something so simple but...I tend to experience life as something where power doesn't really explicitly effect my actions of influence my life. Power tends to be hidden most of the time and it's explicit exercise tends to be something we 're uncomfortable with for good reason - it reminds us of just how arbitrarily others can impact our lives if they are so minded.

But it's worth concentrating on a bit more. Power is the activity that gets things done. To unpack a bit. Power can be defined as the operator that acts to move reality from one state to another where human society is the reality being considered. Power within physics is clearly a different (and indifferent to humanity) concept.

Where humans are considered we act, and it is action that makes power manifest, and in our acting we change the world around us. Power is what permits us to act and to watch people fail in to achieve the intention behind their acting is to observe power not being sufficient to actualise its hopes.

Power is the vital force. Now I'm not claiming some fundamental motive impulse here but am trying to capture the fact that without power we are effectively helpless to achieve our intentions.

If will is the ability to choose to remake the world in the image we desire then power is the action of the will remaking the world. Nietzsche claimed we had a will to power, but this gets the relationship between will and power wrong. Power is not the end of will. Indeed if someone wishes to aggregate power (for whatever reason) their will must be able to envision this state of affairs in the first place. In a sense to claim 'the will to power' is to say nothing more than I wish to aggregate the ability to exercise my will. It is a statement of intent not of being. Misunderstanding this relationship is perhaps a root of nihilism because it subverts the idea of the self into serving the idea that the will can only actualise itself in one direction. Rather the self is the ground in which the will finds itself formed and which shapes the ideas open to the will in the first place. That is the self is fundamental to the will not parallel or subsequent to it.

Power is postive because it allows us to change the world. It is one of the three legs that are the core components of our ability to be. The others are creativity and hope. Without the belief that the world can be different (and hope here is a set that can contain despair) then no difference can be seen.

Power is positive because we can all exercise it, we all do. If we allow ourselves to stop and think we can see that power is not inherently evil even if its ability to allow us to change the world makes it something we should be mindful of.

Power is positive because if we were minded no one could stand beyond our own ability to influence them. It is the abrogation of power (and the decision to abandon our responsibilities to one another) that makes power dangerous and affords those who will exercise it to achieve their ends the room to aggregate power and isolate themselves from others' visions of how the world should be.

Power is not to be feared. It is to be understood. It is to be learnt. It is to be exercised.