The nature of power.

I think that there are two major axes around which human power is deployed. One is
external, the other internal. External power manifests itself in the form of the distribution
of bodies – one is powerful to the degree to which one can influence the world to
distribute bodies in the way that one desires. This might be economic power (I can fly to
Chicago whenever I want, something that is simply out of the reach of a peasant in
mexico); political power (I can cause an entire army of men to organize and deploy with
a single word); military power (and they, in turn, can cause whole nations to obey my
command).

Internal power manifests itself as the felt and actual consequences of these distributions.
I may not be able to move a nation to my will, but I can entirely choose how I feel about
it. Because internal power is so, well, internal, it can seem less “powerful” – but we
should never underestimate the power of a man who can choose to live at an existential
level however he wishes – regardless of the external circumstance. The great king who is
happy only when he is in control of the world around him is always going to be less
happy and satisfied than the lone monk who is happy regardless of what the world throws
at him. Not that happiness is any key measure – only that it allows an index of the
potency of power.

In physics, the measure of electrical power is the product of electrical charge (how many
electrons you are moving) and field intensity (how hard it is to move them). Physics
gives us many metaphors of power that will be useful to think about human power.
Power is very closely related to energy. Indeed, power is the playing-out of energy in
time. A gallon of gas contains so much energy – so much “potential” to do something.
The horsepower of a gasoline engine is a measure of how much of this energy the engine
can deploy in a given time. The more horsepower, the more energy can be put to use in a
given unit of time. (As a side note, there are only two ways you can increase the
horsepower of an engine – you can either increase its efficiency, the degree to which it is
able to deploy the energy in the gasoline it uses, or you can increase the amount of
gasoline it consumes in a unit time. A jet engine, for example, is much more efficient
than a piston engine – so produces more power per gallon of gasoline.)

This is power – A very brute and simple manifestation of power. If I have a mass that I
want to accelerate, I have to deploy a force. The more power I have, the more force I can
deploy in a given unit of time. With a lot of power, I can accelerate a mass to high
speeds quickly. This is, of course, incredibly powerful – it is the basis of motorized
transport, powered weapons and construction machinery. In the human domain, it is
perhaps closest to the consequences of these physical manifestations: the movement of
peoples, the clash of armies, the sort of brute movements of bodies through space without
a whole lot of subtlety. Big, macro forces like food and energy resources – the control
off which affords big shifts in the ability to control space. And people.

Mechanical motion is, notoriously, both reversible and entropic. That is, if it takes you
ten units of power to accelerate a mass to a certain velocity; it will get you ten units of
power if you decelerate it back to where you started. Power-in, power-out. You get out
exactly what you put in. And, since the system is entropic, it is always losing and
wasting power (friction, turbulence, etc.). You actually always get out a bit less than you
put in. There is an essential scarcity here.

But then we can look at another kind of power. When a cell replicates into another cell,
there is a tremendous amount of power involved. But, this time, power of a different
order. It is still all about the deployment of energy – but now not for the purpose of
moving a mass in space – now for the purpose of the creation and dissolution of forms.
The delicate, seemingly architected, bonding of chemical to chemical and mapping of
protein to protein. Here power is a measure of throughput – the number of transactions
that can be completed in a given unit of time. Metabolism. What a beautiful engine –
that takes in sugar and outputs not motion but form. Body and mind. This is a very
sideways turning. A “capture” of the simple process of mechanical power into a rococo
mechanism that flows into a, well, completely different form. Like a music box that
converts simple mechanical energy (the turning of the key, the tension of the spring) into
a song and the twirling of a dancer on a pedestal. Energy converted to energy converted
to energy by a network of translation mechanisms. Outputting something of an entirely
different nature – and something of a much more enduring value.

This more subtle kind of power behaves a little differently. When you turn the key on
your music box, the resulting effect requires the input of the mechanical energy that
tightens the spring. But the output is very different indeed. The music bears no relation
to the power that you put in. Instead, the process of production – the creation of the song,
the invention of the technique to convert the song to some form of recording, the actual
manufacture of that object in the music-box, the assembly of the box and the tying of the
music system to the spring – all of this is an input of energy that is non-entropic and
enables an output that is qualitatively novel. Compare turning the key to get noise with
turning the key to get The Ode to Joy.

Power is not just the deployment of power in a mechanical sense, it is also the creation of
power. The creation of power-systems that transform and ramify power in deep and
complex ways.

This, of course, is the structure of the vast majority of human power. We are embedded
in a vast network of translation mechanisms that tie us all together. Mechanisms that
have been constructed over the total of historical time and have encoded (memorized)
particular mechanisms for the re-production of power. When a musician plays a song, he
is (at the simplest level) converting chemical energy (sugar) into mechanical energy
(strumming a guitar for example). This is an exercise of power. But the majority of his
power results from his ability to attach his strumming into the vast system of music that
has been built and maintained and trained over thousands of years. Key and meter.
Rhythm and reference. We are a trained audience, already primed to resonate at the right
frequency. The metaphor is not that metaphorical. When you are listening to a song, you
can easily imagine the threads that connect you, the emotions you are feeling, the images
you are seeing, the movements that are created in your body, directly back through to the
musician. He is like a puppet-master leveraging an enormous “affect-producing
machine” that was constructed by the history of biology, music and culture. For good or
for ill.

Almost the totality of external power works like this. A powerful man is not powerful in
himself. He is wearing power. Like a second skin (a power suit?) that he is able to
control (to a greater and lesser extent) – and which dramatically magnifies his power.
Like the musician who plugs-in to the history of music, any form of external power is a
“pulling of threads” that are linked-together in a tight and impersonal mesh. This is why
a fool can become (externally) powerful, simply by putting on the suit of “President”.

Of course, the threads of a power-system are tightly woven. Wearing a given power
system can be as constraining as empowering. The Queen of England surely has much
power. But, just as surely, she is as constrained, restricted, constricted, shaped and
cajoled by her power system as she is empowered. This, I think, is the trap that many
find themselves in. As someone powerless, you might look at the powerful and feel them
more free than you – simply because they have access to a more potent power-system.
But unless you fully understand the degree to which they are at the mercy of their power-
system, you don’t know the whole story. Beware what you seek. In many ways, the
slave-owner is as much a victim as the slave.

Much of the potency of power-systems comes from their unconscious, almost “law of
nature” coercive impact on people. The vast majority of people just don’t think to behave
differently. Much of this is necessary. Teams go to great effort to create a collective
power-system that allows them to work with a single, seamless will. By so doing, they
dramatically increase their collective power. If each member of a team had to consider
and define his role at each moment in a game, they wouldn’t be a team at all. While
individuals can be more or less capable than other individuals, the differential between
power systems is even more significant – precisely because a power system can integrate
a potentially indefinite mass of people into its unified will.

The majority of blocks and behaviors that people feel imposing an external will on them
stem from the various nested power systems that make up society. That you ought to do
this, or ought to do that. Even as a child, you begin to feel the ought nature of emergent
power systems. Whatever position you have in the power system, you are in the power
system and fell the tug of its obligations, the consequences of its valuations and
evaluations. All of racism is and was a vast power system – the consequences of which
are clearly still being played-out. All of racism – and all of each and every role that one
can play in society. A role is defined by the power systems that grab ahold of it and
cause it to dance in one way or another, invest it with attributes and potentialities (strong
or weak). Large and small – most of our actions are determined by the integrated totality
of the various power systems. Very little freedom actually exists in the world.

Yet, we need our power-systems. At an economic level, humanity has expanded well
beyond our ability to provide for our own survival using simple, ephemeral (tribal) modes
of power. If we were, all at once, to rid ourselves of the accreted power systems of
history – the nation, the state, the corporation, we would implode as a species in very
short form. But the utility of power systems is not simply economic. Art is an extended
power system for magnifying the potency of individual expression. Language.
Medicine. Science. All of these institutions and their training, their roles, their
knowledge. We can’t get along without them – but do we have to take them as they
come?

Power-systems pervade and enshroud us. But they are not all of a single voice. Even a
given power-system is full of contradictions and tensions. The power system of slavery
found itself on the short-end of the stick when the power systems of liberal democracy
and capitalism combined to negate its power-distributions. Certainly the increasingly
global field off power is absolutely ripe with opportunities to constitute and reconstitute
new power-systems. Play one tension off of another tension. Make novel use of a thread
here. Break a connection there. All it takes is consciousness of power and the ability to
play with it.

What is power as it is experienced? At first blush, power is easy. An exercise of power

occurs when you are able to impose your will upon the world – to desire something and
to get what you desire. Such an exercise in power feels good – no doubt this is closely
linked to the obvious survival advantages associated with becoming more powerful.

However, that is not the end of the game. In fact, it is just the surface, the beginning. The
dynamics of power are complicated. The nature of power as “getting what you want” is
surely the primary way that power is felt and understood. But it is really only one way –
in a manifold hierarchy of power. Getting what you want, being able to get what you
want, being able to secure for yourself what is considered valuable – this is only one of
many orders of power. There are other orders of power:

1. Being able to secure values to yourself

2. Being able to forgo values (being rich-enough)
3. Being able to bestow values on others (being superfluous)
4. Being able to bestow power on others
5. Being able to create values

Look over this list. Think about different examples of each. You can see how each is a
kind of power. You can see how they are different and that a higher order power really is
a higher order power. In order to be able to bestow values on others, you first must be
able to forgo valuable things yourself. He who seeks that which is considered valuable is
really only at the lowest level of power. Each level of gentling of spirit and raising of
capacity increases the distance from that which is considered valuable. Until, at last, one
becomes a giver and creator of values – an artist of the power systems and not their
puppet.

With this progression, we can see how any relationship is in essence an opportunity for
mutual development and elevation. Indeed, it is only through the gift giving virtue and
the bestowing virtue that one can achieve distance from the lowest level of power. It is at
only the lowest level of power that there is any real struggle for power. The fact that the
vast majority of power relationships linger at this first order level is evidence of the many
challenges and weaknesses that keep our powers low.

• Doubt and lack of self confidence. That which thirsts for praise, or which turns to
wounding others.
• Distrust of others and the projection of ill motives onto others.
• Fear and greed
• Actual physical, nutritional and psychological lack

To achieve a higher-order power, we must be strong enough. Systems of power can

magnify our ability to exercise power – and in so doing make us capable of higher orders
of power. At the same time, systems of power can dampen our capacities. Indeed,
systems of power are almost always enormously dangerous nests of disability and
weakness. This is because most systems of power have been designed to secure and
control power of the first order. To secure (superficial) external power – at the expense
of a more profound internal power that would allow you to climb to higher orders of
power (higher in both the internal and external sense).

One can achieve and even maximize power of the first order through mechanisms of
domination – by utilizing techniques that make use of weakness and fear to dominate
others in order to secure your own ability to exercise power. In an environment of
scarcity and desperation, this can be the best or at least the easiest to understand path to
power.

These kinds of power can be seductive. Moreover, they can be infectious. One deals in
fear and weakness at ones own risk. It is precisely these “power suits” that most
constrain and control those that wear them. They make you feel powerful while really
making you dependent upon them and reducing your power – your ability to achieve
higher orders of power. Many, perhaps most, power systems are unhealthy – or at least
dangerous. But, power-systems are not “essentially” perverse.

We know that power has a specific history. Each power-system was born in a particular
environment and in response to particular conditions. To solve some specific problem.
All of our ideas about what is needful and good flow from our culture and history and our
biological inheritance as human beings - as living beings - as things that exist and persist
in time. The history of any power-system will always trace-back to some origin that made
sense at the time in human terms. Some trade-off that was worth making. It might have
been a mistake – or, quite frequently, short-sighted. But it was not capricious. Over time,
of course, a long history of mistakes, foolishness and short-sightedness, combined with
plenty of bad-faith on the part of those who were able to hold and control the power-
systems has erected one hell of a mess that we need to unwind.

The evaluation of any given act of power requires a complex review. Which systems of
power are at play and how is power being used? What order of power and what is being
done? Power never speaks with one voice and is frequently multi-faceted. Indeed, even
when you intend a particular exercise of power it is never certain that it is not power that
is exercising you. Perhaps it is not that we need to become conscious of power – but that
power needs to become conscious of power. A becoming self-conscious of power itself.

Go back and look at the five orders of power. Order five: being able to create values. No
longer dependent upon pre-existing and inherited values, one can transcend the existing
power-systems and begin bestowing value – creating new evaluations, new distinctions.
But if this is outside of the power-systems, from where does this power to create values
come?

Power looks like a geology. Plate tectonics. The values and power-systems that
distribute them are at the surface. But that is all that they are: a thin surface resting on a
molten core. Occasionally, this core will erupt and a form of power will break through
the surface which is entirely new and different. Occasionally, ebbs and flows in this
subterranean world will determine that huge chunks of the surface will break-apart and
flow. Occasionally, someone will dive down, deep, deep into the heart of the world, and
tap into this source. Herein lies power with a different name entirely.