We’re not trying to live like our ancestors, but to do something totally new: to preserve the most helpful complex technologies, while shifting to a political and economic system where power is fully shared.
— Ran Prieur
It seems like ages ago when I wrote about the logic of power. To sum up that post, I argued that it is not possible to fix domination by seizing power. When a group outdominates the current dominators, they become the new dominators. This really ought to be clear by now to anyone looking to “change the world.” It has nothing to do with faulty characters of the revolutionaries. It has to do with the logic of power. Boggles the mind, though; people still try again and again to grab power from their “oppressors.” And they are equally frequently admonishing fellow revolutionary spirits to “dismantle” power as though it were scaffolding.
What is power, anyway? It seems to me that power in its most basic sense is potency. Ability to do, to accomplish. We are all given power along with life, and all adults have, fundamentally, more or less the same amount. In the personal sense, of course, individuals vary somewhat, depending on their levels of energy, their vitality, strength and perseverance, and their specific talents. Their power also waxes and wanes depending on state of health, age, and other factors. But in the “state of nature” personal power fluctuates within a relatively narrow range.
So this type of power is often spoken of as “power-to.” Looking at the uses of power specifically within social settings, however, there appear to be two other kinds of power: power-over, the ability to force others to do one’s bidding against their will, and power-with, the use of power together with others in a variety of voluntary, collaborative ways. Much of the malfunction of “this civilization” has to do with its heavyhanded reliance on power-over.
Power is a form of energy, then. And as other forms of energy can be temporarily gathered up and stored, so can human power. Temporary power acquisition by individuals can be beneficial. The leader of the hunt is given the power to direct the day’s maneuvers. Back in the village, though, he gives that power back. He does not hoard it, bossing people around. And if he does try, tribal folk have in their repertoire a variety of tactics to put him back in his place, and will be less likely to grant him power next time around.
Even in our culture, such ad hoc power acquisition can be a force for good. The fire brigade captain alone directs the action during a fire, and the team is better off. It can be argued that temporary concentration of power in an individual or group is one of the ways healthy power can be used. It is when someone begins to accumulate power the way an alcoholic hoards booze that things go awry.
Power, like water, needs to flow to stay healthy. When it is hoarded and congealed, it goes stale and eventually poisonous. And when it turns toxic, we find ourselves in a grim fairy tale: the person who hoards it will be sickened by the power he wields, and anyone who tries to grab that toxic power away from him will be poisoned and corrupted in turn. Once you touch that poison, its evil magic will turn you into yet another marionette goose-stepping in the domination death march.
How then do we deal with power gone toxic? How can we change the world without touching that poison, without trying to “dismantle” it, without any involvement with it at all?
Congealed power is an attractor. You cannot seize or dismantle an attractor any more than you can seize or dismantle a whirlpool in a river. When the river no longer feeds energy to that particular whirlpool, the eddy will weaken and disappear. Attractors are ‘dissipative dynamic structures.’ They need constant input of energy to keep going, just like a lightbulb needs a constant flow of electricity to keep emitting light. Once the flow stops, the light goes dark. There is no need to seize the lightbulb, nor to dismantle it, right? If we want another type of light, that’s where we direct power and attention.
If we want our power to flow and stay healthy, we pass it from hand to hand; we share it. We pay it forward.
Leaving Babylon 
March 20, 2015 at 8:55 am
It strikes me that political power amounts to influence. On the smallest and most local level, it’s the personal qualities that allow one person to persuade others to follow that one’s chosen course of action, rather than an alternative. Once you get to a larger scale, enforcers come in, men (almost always) paid to use violence to thwart resistance to the powerful one’s edicts. It’s still the case, though, that the powerful one only has power because people–a greater number of them now, and for more different reasons–are choosing to follow his (occasionally her) commands. Even on the scale of the US empire, the horrors going on all over the world happen only because of a sort of mass hallucination, a folie a plusieurs, in which millions of people take the dictates of a secretive cabal, fronted by a US president and perhaps the head of NATO, etc., as legitimate commands that of course all good people comply with. At this level it clearly has nothing to do with charisma, although that may be part of the explanation for how an individual worms his way into the inner circle where decisions are made. Why do millions of men follow obviously immoral orders to thwart democracy, whether as part of an army, a police unit, a secret police unit, etc? Why is this work considered acceptable, even noble, by so many of the people affected…mothers from lower middle class backgrounds putting “Proud mother of a Marine” bumperstickers on their cars?
Ownership of the media by the corporate elite is one part of the answer; the cooperation of certain churches is another; and the clever manipulation of various ways to keep people divided, such as racism and “culture wars” is another. I wonder what else is in there…
March 20, 2015 at 2:25 pm
It starts with mild influence and ends with brutal coercion. A slippery slope…
I think there is plenty of evidence that the early Big Men were very careful and used various forms of persuasion and cajoling, extolling the benefits of their schemes to the community, plus indebtedness, to get their mates to go along. They were generally very hardworking types. But over time… Hayden says, you give’em an inch and they stretch that inch to a mile and keep on going. 🙂
And the interesting thing is, where does persuasion cross over into manipulation?
March 20, 2015 at 8:06 pm
Vera—this subject of Power is deeply interesting to me, and I have been looking into it for awhile now. That doesn’t mean I understand much about it, but I do keep trying to get a handle on it, because it seem so central to both our history and our present predicament. Just today I finished a 31 page article on the subject, called “Two Conceptions of Power,” by Bernard Loomer. What you describe as power-over and power-with he describes as linear or unilateral power, and relational power. He spends most of this long presentation on relational power, where he speaks of ‘the constitutive role of relationships’ and of ‘being present to another.’ It is a pretty nuanced argument he makes, but it very much reminded me of the anthropological work of Richard Sorenson in South New Guinea, and a short (1100 word) piece I wrote about the marked differences between pre-conquest and post-conquest peoples, and what this has to do with power. If think you might be interested, I can post that here.
I find the distinctions you make in this short piece of yours to be valid and valuable, if a little brief and sketch-like. If you have an interest in pursuing more on the subject of power, that is a conversation I would like to get into.
March 20, 2015 at 8:49 pm
I have seen Ran Prieur when he makes some sense, but it is clear from the quote above that he doesn’t understand the first thing about technology.
March 20, 2015 at 10:13 pm
I would be delighted if you posted Sorenson’s article here, or the link. I am also delighted that this topic has elicited unexpected enthusiasm! More tomorrow. I am going to look into Loomis.
March 21, 2015 at 3:55 pm
I know it’s a bunny trail, but… tell more? I tend to agree with Ran, some complex technologies can be kept. Antibiotics, for example. The scientific method. Glass… mostly recycled. Wish someone would do a whole write up on this. (Not me.) Heck, the Neanderthals were cooking pretty fancy glue 100,000 years ago…
March 21, 2015 at 4:01 pm
Groan. This Loomis article reminded me why I hate academic writing. The pain, the pain! But I did struggle through it. I think he is basically right in his presentation. I particularly liked his sense that in relational power, the doing emerges out of the relationship, not out of one person’s goals.
Here’s a quote: “Under the relational conception of power what is truly for the good of any one or all of the relational partners is not a preconceived good. The true good is not a function of controlling or dominating influence. The true good is an emergent from deeply mutual relationships.”
Indeed. And I definitely plant to write more on it. But don’t wait for me to keep the conversation going!
March 21, 2015 at 7:50 pm
This piece of mine is a once over lightly treatment of some key insights of the anthropologist Richard Sorenson–but it breaks some critical ice regarding the human psyche, and human relations, in the context of pre-conquest and post-conquest individuals. When Loomer speaks of being present to the other, it sounds exactly like the way pre-conquest people relate to ne another in a small band context. And how the self is defined–whether as an isolated individual or as a part of something bigger–is also critical to which sort of power one is attracted to.
A Deeper Human Field of Being
Certain myths of our culture hint at a time of greater innocence and deeper knowledge when humans had developed a form of consciousness and a way of relating to each other unavailable to us today. The subtext suggests that with the rise of civilization came a fall, a loss of something valuable. Science tends not to credit this kind of cultural myth, but rather to discount or discredit it, and instead supports the view that civilized man is the absolute evolutionary pinnacle, and that our wild ancestors were benighted lesser beings. For instance, books like Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and offers a Path to a Safer World, by Malcolm Potts, and The World until Yesterday, by Jared Diamond, portray indigenous tribal people as excessively violent, and ascribe this violence to a kind of genetic determinism. This view is consistent with the doctrines of both scientific materialism (with its roots in mechanistic physics) and the brand of Neo-Darwinism espoused by the likes of Richard Dawkins. I call these views doctrines because that is what they are: non-science posing as science. They are based on assumptions held by some scientists, but the assumptions themselves will not hold up to scientific scrutiny. Or so it appears to me. Fortunately, theirs is not the only view available on this subject of human potential, and how it has been observed to manifest among unconquered Natives.
The anthropologist Richard Sorenson worked for many years among the lesser contacted peoples of south New Guinea, and for many of those years didn’t quite register what it was he was witnessing. Like virtually all anthropologists, he was a captive of his own culture, and was unable to see his subjects in their own terms. Eventually, though, their reality penetrated his preconceptions, and he became witness to a phenomenon seen by few outsiders: a culturally developed way of achieving small group solidarity, empathy, and mutual understanding, little recognized in the West. He states that: “Preconquest groups are simultaneously individualistic and collective—traits immiscible and incompatible in modern thought and languages. This fusion of individuality and solidarity is another of the profound cognitive disparities that separate the preconquest and postconquest eras. It in part explains why even fundamental preconquest cultural traits are sometimes difficult to perceive, much less to appreciate, by postconquest peoples.”(p.4) The problem with conquered peoples being studied by their conquerors, and calling it science, shows up again and again in the field of anthropology. The concept of objectivity is open to serious question in any of the sciences, but in paternalistic anthropology (coming directly out of the White Man’s Burden, as it does) the pretense is ridiculous.
Of all the anthropological works I have read, the very best ones have invariably been written by anthropologists who have cast aside all pretenses of objectivity and have allowed themselves to feel empathy, acceptance, affection, and respect for their informants. The Forest People by Colin Turnbull and Make Prayers to the Raven by Richard Nelson are two notable examples. Sorenson has gone through a similar process, and finally begins to understand his “subjects” on their own terms. “In the real world of these preconquest people, feeling and awareness are focused on at-the-moment, point-blank sensory experience—as if the nub of life lay within that complex flux of collective sentient immediacy. Into that flux individuals thrust their inner thoughts and aspirations for all to see, appreciate, and relate to. This unabashed open honesty is the foundation on which their highly honed integrative empathy and rapport become possible. When that openness gives way, empathy and rapport shrivel. When deceit becomes a common practice, they disintegrate.” (p.4) The empathy and rapport that come so readily in this circle of trust are highly sensitive to any breach of integrity. But how is this honest and intimate way of relating nurtured in the first place?
Not surprisingly, it begins with how people are treated from the day of their birth. “In the isolated hamlets of the southern forests, infants were kept in continuous bodily contact with mothers or the mother’s friends—on laps when they were seated, on hips, under arms, against backs or on shoulders when they were standing. Even during intensive food preparation, or when heavy loads were being moved, babies were not put down. They had priority.” The effect of this physical closeness creates not only a sense of inclusion and belonging, but a physical and emotional sense of well-being. “Very quickly [the infant] began assembling a sophisticated tactile-speech to transmit desires, needs, and states of mind. They didn’t whine or cry to get attention; they touched. While babies everywhere are liminally aware , the constant empathetic contact required to produce a sophisticated type of preverbal communication is rare—except among preconquest peoples.” (p.5) This is true not only in New Guinea but also among tribes in South America, as documented in Jean Leidoff’s ground-breaking book, The Continuum Concept. Presumably, this way of childrearing and group interaction was once general among tribal peoples everywhere.
The kind of group closeness and cohesion engendered by this way of relating to one’s intimates apparently worked quite well in a world that was sparsely settled and not subject to colonization by outsiders. In a world of overcrowding and power politics , where duplicity and force are the norm, these preconquest groups have proven highly vulnerable. When postconquest groups—who had themselves been transformed by their conquerors– began to impinge on preconquest groups, the mindset and feeling –space of the latter could change quickly and radically.”In the face of sustained powerful exposure to anger, deceit, or greed, preconquest mentality collapsed. In the traumatic existential period that caused, instinctive compassion gave way to savagery, generosity to greed, and heartfelt harmony to basic sexuality. A ‘savage-savage’ arose from the ashes of the ‘noble savage.’”(p.16) Much of the anthropology that has been conducted—and almost all in the twentieth century– has taken place under these traumatic transitional conditions, when the people were not themselves.
I find all this information relevant both to the present and to the future. To the present, because it helps us see how preconceived ideas, and a failure to empathize with peoples of other cultures, impels us to draw false conclusions. Also, these cultural insights could prove relevant to the future, in case a few humans might actually survive the multiplying crises we are bringing down on ourselves. Small isolated groups of mobile hunter-gatherers might have a chance to not only hold their own, in a world made hostile by us, but do so in this fully recovered, highly adaptive old/new way of being fully human.
http://rewild.info/anthropik/vault/sorenson-preconquest/
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/30/savaging-primitives-why-jared-diamond-s-the-world-until-yesterday-is-completely-
March 21, 2015 at 7:57 pm
Yes, the Loomer article was a pain to read, but almost worth the effort for some of the distinctions he makes late in the piece. I couldn’t manage it in one sitting, and I am totally with you on academic writing. It is like immature writing within a fully predictable framework, and you wish the writer could just take off the training wheels and write in nuanced, but plain, English.
March 22, 2015 at 12:04 pm
Now, the question I have: can we recapture pre-conquest consciousness while being able to go back and forth between those states (meaning pre- and post-consciousness)?
Can you imagine?! What a dream. And I have a feeling that the people learning the stuff sorta known as “the power of now” is a path in the right direction.
March 22, 2015 at 3:04 pm
Yes, Vera, I can imagine human beings relating to one another in a circle of relational power, in a world where unilateral power has no foothold. But I don’t see us getting there from our current state of overshoot and our linear power fixation. We are a brutalized, post-conquest people, and what comes around goes around. If there are indeed survivors of the coming cataclysms, my hope for them is that they can get a fresh start, with none of the cultural baggage that is pulling the world down now, including any technology above the level of what one can make for him or herself. Otherwise–if they try to hang on to some aspects of civilization and the old culture—they will find that rot and poison comes along with their favored cultural institutions. Unfortunately, this includes any language of empire (including English) which carries culture encoded within it, to be disseminated later like a contagion.
This may seem to some like a grim view of things, but actually it is quite idealistic, because it sees the human conditions as potentially benign, or even as possessing virtue. The truly grim view is the biological determinism of the knee-jerk scientific materialists, who are blind to the pre-conquest mentality and see the human only as he appears traumatized by the Pandora’s Box of affliction we opened with domestication, agriculture, and private property.
March 23, 2015 at 5:08 am
[…] Logic of power II […]
March 23, 2015 at 3:14 pm
Vera, here is a short quote from Straw Dogs, by John Gray: ‘The new technologies that are springing up around us seem to be inventions that serve our ends, when they and we are moves in a game that has no end. Technology obeys no one’s will. Can we play along with it without laboring to master it?’ I think he has the last question wrong, but he is certainly right that technology obeys no one’s will.
If you are interested in pursuing this theme of technology in human life, I just published a piece on my blog, and that is what it is all about, http://wildearthman.com
March 24, 2015 at 2:20 am
Homo Sapiens has certain dynamics of power and submission genetically programmed – for better and for worse. It is not enough to invent abuse-proof democracy rules. The human nature of seeking leadership, guidance, inspiration (on one hand) and righteous zeal, superiority arrogance (on the other) has to be addressed.
March 24, 2015 at 10:01 am
Welcome, das monde! I am aware that we have two streaks working through us. One is domineering (and submissive), the other mutualistic, altruistic. Human nature exhibits both. But how do we strike the right balance? And how do we make sure that the domination/submission game does not ruin the mutualist, cooperative game?
March 24, 2015 at 10:16 am
I think what you are talking about, Leavergirl, is scale-dependent. What works well at the scale of the band (20-30 individuals) does not translate well to mass-society. The peer pressure that controls individuals and impulses in the small group, where everyone knows everyone else very well, breaks down once you get beyond the Dunbar number of 150. Then hierarchy sets in, along with its attendant ills.
March 24, 2015 at 10:49 am
It was a sad day when I found out that neither Dancing Rabbit or Earthaven ecovillages were patterned on these numbers. They shoulda known better…