Complications

It may be that the dynamic of power as described appears a little simplistic. After all it doesn't feel that straight forward when you are deep in the experience and the feelings of power. When the anger is welling up from the feeling of being controlled by another person, to suggest that you should have better control of your needs, seems to ignore the magnitude of the situation.

The reason this appears at first blush to be an over-simplification is because all of our needs are active in some degree at the same time. They compete and compound with each other in ways that inhibit our ability to isolate one operating need.

We are simply a walking pool of needs. We have thousands in a given day and each one compels us to respond to it.

And they don’t wait their turn. Whether it is the result of some internal or external event or because some actor has tried to stimulate it, we can experience any need at ant time. We may be living one need when another comes forward and demands a response.

The needs we have compete for satisfaction. When a power dynamic is started with some other set of needs as the target, those new needs compete with those we are presently addressing. This exacerbates our feelings, frustrates our ability to satisfy them and enhances the actor’s ability to generate some power effect on the choices we are making at the time.

Two sets of power dynamics taking place from the efforts of two people can make our lives feel like hell. Imagine three or more…

When the boss wants you to work late and your spouse wants you at home and your child wants to play and you are hungry and need to eat and you are stressing over the unpaid bills, and you know that if you don’t get some exercise and stress relief you will have a heart attack, you are having some pretty complicated power dynamics.

Not only do they compete but they compound.

Sometimes a set of needs is augmented by other sets of needs that may or may not be related.

The effect of one need may be something you can over come.

You may be hungry and have a need for some nourishment.

But compound that with the need to feed your children and you have some pretty compelling power dynamics. So you can be understanding with someone who accepts a demotion and a cut in pay when you compound their need for food with the need to feed the children and the need to have shelter and the need to pay the bills and the need to have some self esteem and to have something like a career.

One set of needs adds to the next and soon the compounding effect makes it hard to distinguish one need from the other and impossible to isolate which need is the one that this power dynamic is playing on.

But there is more.

Needs can be complex.

Some needs are mental constructions that are built from a series of other needs that may need to be satisfied in some sequence or aggregate.

The need for a happy marriage is something that is built on a balance of satisfying other needs. This combines the need for self fulfillment and the fulfillment of others. You may start with your need for love and to be loved. There is the need to be appreciated for you as a person. You will have a little bit of companionship and common interests that need to be satisfied. You will have sex and affection. You will add a little bit of career with a little bit of child rearing. A dream or two for each of you. And maybe a little time for solitude and quiet.

All these needs must be satisfied. And each of them will have steps and increments for satisfaction.

All of them compounding and competing with each other – seeking satisfaction and thus compelling choices and behaviors. All being managed by you, day to day, moment to moment, to achieve the larger more complex goals…

Until some rotten SOB comes along and starts to use them as a source of power to control, influence or seduce your choices and get you to do, say or think what they want.

So when I say to you that the Dynamic of power is the simple application of a mechanism – an ability to help or hinder some operating need – to some active need that the actor has isolated and decided to use to create a feeling of control influence or seduction in you – you say it ain’t so simple…

Sometimes the mechanism will address more than the targeted need. Now here they are compounding with each other and those others we were busy trying to respond to. Sometimes the mechanism targets needs which we have sleeping happily waiting for later. Soon they compete for satisfaction. Sometimes the mechanism targets such a complicated complex set of needs that it is hard to see which part of that complex set is being activated. Sometimes that mechanism is so sweet that we cannot stop to think about anything.

The whole thing doesn’t feel simple. It feels so compelling and complicated. How can you simplify power this way?

No, the experience of Power is not simple.

It is not the dynamic that is complicated.

The needs are complicated. The dynamic is simple.

So when Power Dynamics compete, compound and are complex, it is because the needs one lives are competing, compounding and complex.

They are the source of that power.