Power and the self

Why people use power is a much more important question than you would expect on first consideration.

On the surface we have quick and easy answers.

People use power to get what they want.

And I suppose that may be sufficient for some - but not for me.

Why do we want? Why is it that we want what we want? What creates those particular desires and needs?

Why do we choose to use power rather than be independent? Why would we make exploiting others’ abilities our principle means of getting what we want? Aren’t there other ways?

Why is it that some just want power? Why do they make the pursuit of power a quest unto itself?

Using power is much more than a means to an end. It has become a singular goal for a vast part of humanity.

Why would someone want to have a political office? Why would someone want a position of authority? Why would someone want to have power over another?

Power itself – the ability to control, influence or seduce others is viewed as a destination rather than a path. We see it as a character trait rather than a behavior. We see it as something you can be, rather than something you can use.

People don’t just want what they want. They don’t just need what they need. People want power.

They don’t just want it to get what they want. Some days we just want to feel like nobody can tell us what to do. Some days we just want to show the world. Some days we just want to make others ask - or wait - or give in. Some days we just want to feel like we have power.

You might say that having power guarantees, or at least increases the chances, that one would always get what they want.

Thomas Hobbes said power takes us beyond our brutish and nasty existence. The reason we seek power is to rise above and we seek more power to secure the power that we have.
Think about that.

There may be some truth in his words. But it does not answer the question why. It only answers why the quest for power doesn’t seem to have limits. It implies that the pursuit of power requires a constant or continuous effort. In the great competition for power, people see it as a limited resource and must repeatedly reacquire it.

Power is about the idea of self. Some days we just want to feel like nobody can tell us what to do. Some days we just want to show the world. Some days we just want to make others ask or wait or give in. Some days we just want to feel like we have power.

We all are individuals who see themselves as discreet and unique. We want to think that as an individual we are at least as important as anyone else.

We build on our uniqueness. We pursue it. We build up a sense and feeling of a self. We actively make a distinction between ourselves and others.

Then we judge that self.

Who is better? Who is more important? Who is bigger, stronger, faster, smarter, prettier, sexier, or wiser – who is better?

Our desires feed this. If we have more of this, or better of that, then we are more of a person. We are a better self.

If I have a better car I must be better than others. If I have more expensive shoes than others then it must be because I am more deserving. If I am rich I am better. If I am the boss, it means I am better.

It makes us feel like we are more. We feel expanded. Enlarged. MORE.

We look to celebrities and authorities and aspire to their level. Always wanting to be more than just a person. More than just me. More than just another.

We take on hobbies, collections, obsessions. We invest and buy. Nothing really matches the feeling of buying something. The acquisition of that which we have yearned for makes us feel like we are somehow more deserving than we were just moments ago. We are more.

Having power makes us feel like we are more than others. And in being more we think we will be happier.

That is the quest. We all live it - every day - all day long. All we really want is that feeling of happiness.

Although it is fleeting – like the thrill of your first drive in your new BMW – for a few moments you feel like more. Then after it fades, we rush to find that feeling again. Because the feeling of power is gone we are afraid that we must have lost some of who we are. Somehow, someway, we must get it back.

We must feed the self.

We call it happiness but is that what it is?

Is our problem not that we aren’t powerful enough – or that we don’t have enough of everything – but that we have not yet understood what happiness is?

I believe that the pursuit of power is about the creation of the self.

We don’t understand the context in which we live as distinct human beings – we don’t recognize our interconnectedness. There is a complex integration of everything with everything. Everything and everyone is part of everything and everyone.

No more than one blade of grass can make up a lawn – we are only a part of humanity - we cannot be humanity. We can never be more than part of the whole. And that is completely OK. It is how it is supposed to be.

And just like that blade of grass we forget that a single blade of grass could never survive alone. Each blade needs the others. The grass needs the elements. Earth, water, wind, and the heat of the sun – take away any of these and the grass ceases to exist. The grass needs other plants and animals. The grass needs the cow to eat it. To digest it. The grass needs the cow to expel past grass to feed the present grass. Otherwise the grass will end. The grass is part of a wider more intertwined existence.

The grass does not delude itself in pretending it is a tree. It plays its absolutely necessary role in the scheme of things.

We want power because we want to be unique. We want to create a self that matters.

Power feeds our sense of self.

We want power because we forget that we already are as powerful as we would ever need to be.

Hey Gunther

A long time ago Gunther asked about compassion.

I didn't answer him. I have been away. But on a Sunday morning and afternoon many thoughts came together and I offer this not as an answer so much as just a thought.

Gunther asked,

Is compassion really the opposite of power? Can't it be used for power? Compassion is a powerful thing that we can use as a mechanism to influence people. Then is compassion really the opposite of power?

There are those who are powerful because they use what others need to effect their choices.

There are those who appear powerful because they are what others want to be. They give of themselves in a way that creates admiration and a desire to emulate and therefore motivate behavior in a positive way. The difference is intention.

Can using compassion be a mechanism?–A means toward having power. Yes. But it is a question of intention and application not one of automatic power and choice manipulation. If someone needs compassion we can use it as a means of producing power.

Or we can just give it without a demand for a choice that serves us. If we offer compassion without any desire attached to it – it is simply compassion. If we offer affection, understanding and comfort only because we know we can use it to get what we desire – then the intention is not compassion. It is power. Compassion and power are intentions as much as they are phenomena. They are not just the result - they are the purpose. They are not just manifestations they are intentions.

Does that mean power has to be intentional to be power? No. But intending a result isn't always intending power. And if the result is not a compassionate thing, then it must be insome form Power. If the intended result may not be power but if it isn't based in a love of all for the good of ALL then it is power and needs were used to attain a result.

Power.

We use power to build up the self. It is the belief that we are unique and separate individuals who are in competition with all the other individuals in the quest to fulfill our desires. It is the belief that our life purpose is to fulfill desires and all others in the world are here to assist in that pursuit. Others are nothing more than tools for our use.

In truth we are all manifestations or expressions of the great consciousness that flows within and is the essence of all. We are all one. We are all expressions of life that are interconnected and interdependent and are ALL on the path back to that great source.

We are all walking the path. Everyone’s success in that journey is everyone else’s. We, as one great wave of life, are here - free to play within this world of expression.

But we are mislead by the distinctions between things. Those distinctions are creations of the mind and illusions. The distinctions between us are not real. We are al the same and all connected.

Each of us is so reliant on all the others. Each must – and does - support and provide for all the others. It is so obvious we miss it. Where does the matter that makes up our being come from? It comes from the rest of the earth and the living things within it. Soil, rain, worms, sun, animals, other humans. Fire, earth, water, air, chi. The cycle of water. The cycle of matter. The cycle of life. Flowing from one entity into the next. Changing from one form into another.

It is as obvious as our birth. One human being comes out of another. We are all connected and cannot exist without each other. Yet we are convinced that we are in competition and racing for the chance to control each other so we might have what we want.

There is nothing on the earth we can’t have. Each of us can have everything. This is a world of plenty and we are beasts of great ability and talent. Yet we are fixated not on what we want, but on what others want. Our success is not measured in having everything we want but in having more than others have.

We do not want to be great. We want to be better.

We don't want to be happy. We want to be happier.

We are fixated on the others. We want to control them and defeat them and to ultimately have so much more than they do.

This human desire to control others and be better than others is what has fascinated me for decades now. That is why I am so obsessed with power.

I don’t want to control others. My God, what kind of responsibility would that entail? I am afraid of even influencing others with my writing. What if I am wrong? What if all I do is show people how to go around and control each other? That's not why I am writing this stuff.

That’s why I am afraid of publishing these ideas. I am afraid of the responsibility attached to influencing people.

I simply want to help us all release from this painful pursuit of this false sense of self.

I am so completely shocked at people's need to to control other people.

That has been my focus. That is why I want to understand power and explain it. That is why I want all of us to be able to see through it and over come it. That is why I want to explain it so all could have it. Once we are all as power as each other, then there is nothing left but an acceptance that we must all survive or we must all die.

I don't want people to use compassion because it is powerful. I just want them to stop wanting to control others.

All that is left is compassion.

Yes little brother, compassion - like anything that some wants or needs - can be used as a mechanism of power. Anything can be a mechanism of power. It is all a question of intention.

Writing

I have begun the process of working with an editor.

Although I have, what I believe is, a working relationship with the English language, my status as a writer is still somewhat of a neophyte. I have written thousands of pages of material. Most of those pages were legal in nature.

Legal writing is almost mathematical in its structure. Although I believe there is an art in writing an effective, comprehensive and self-contained agreement, there is little artistic value in the words themselves. A client pays for the certainty of a lawyer’s writing but not the clarity. The average layperson does not understand the run-on, complex, multi-conditional sentences that make for good legal drafting. But the confusability factor alone gives appearance of good writing.

Certainly the law has had a significant formative impact on my lexicon and syntax. But before I was a lawyer I was a thinker. I was a guy who wanted to know the “why” – the “why” about everything. Of course that included the “why” about power.

Studying sociology and religion at university gave me more than ample opportunity to read and write. As much as I was able to read all the right things, I was prone to write in an overly stylistic and somewhat verbose manner.

As I struggled against the powers of authority – giving them my consent to use their ability to grade me to obtain from them my certification as an educated mind – I found that it was in my best interests to submit to the critique of a particular T.A. named Michel.

Michel was a divinity doctorial student in the heart of writing a thesis which was focused on the meaning and the historical socio-cultural implications of a small set of sentences in one of the Epistles of Paul.

Who would have thought that so much could be said about so little.

Nonetheless, given his task, I could find no better authority on the subject of communicating in writing.

After my third exasperating “B” from Michel I was left with two choices. Fight with him or submit to him.

So I asked him, “Why?”

He described my writing as full of ideas and logic but absent any discernible pattern of communication. Simply, he said that I wrote in circles using complex, hard-to-read sentences and repetitive language.

He encouraged me to simplify my language. He suggested that I avoid adjectives and adverbs and just say what I meant in one sentence – not six.
After two more papers, Michel told me I got it. I was rewarded with “A”s from that day on.

That lesson helped me with the ability to write legalistically. My law practice helped me hone that direct simple style. Those two experiences - those lessons in writing - made me a pretty good lawyer.

However, I am not sure either has helped me write for you.

Today my new-found ally in the world of words says that my sentences lack style. They are terse and uninteresting. So I turn to her for input to make my writing better.

Once again I submit to an authority – in this case an authority on writing and communication. I do so happily. I do so because I want to be a writer so bad that the desire over powers me.

Her ability to make me better is the mechanism that will make me pay her to listen to her criticisms.

Incredible power isn’t it?

Whether it is my T.A. Michel, my clients or my new found editor I submit to their power because more than anything else before, I want to write for you.

Power - is it good or bad?

I still can’t seem to answer that one.