explorations on power
for this exploration on power i begin with a few inquiries:
Where does power come from? What do a tree, a tiger and a human have in common? What power is innate; what is power contortion? What is it we've been calling power that is really a distortion and something else altogether?
Before we go anywhere with these inquiries, i strive to hone our definition of power. Let’s get clear on what it is we’re exploring. I’d like to start by unbraiding power into three different strands: true power, contorted power, and collective power. Sarah Jaffe – author of Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone – talks about two ways we culturally use the word “power”: power-over (someone or something) and power-to (do or be). As embodied earthlings a certain amount of power-to is innate. We use power to exist, and without we die. I consider this kind to be ‘true’ power. Power-over is a corruption of what power is. Power-over is something else altogether… deserving of a new name. For its shadow grows so large we are disconnected from our own power-to and the power of others (human and larger nature.) Power-over is the capacity to influence or direct amassed power for the benefit of oneself at the detriment of others. Power-over is the hottest commodity of supremacy culture and the pyramid scheme that is white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
In this exploration on power, i’m most interested in exploring the power-to (power to do, power to be, power to negate). In re-embodying our power-to, we pull energy away from the systems that reinforce power-over. Power-to is often built With others - not in isolation. (Earthlings of every sort exist within interrelation.)
Mary Parker Follett was a social worker and theorist who explored different types of collective power. Thought Co’s biography of her states “In a 1924 essay, "Power," Follett coined the terms "power-over" and "power-with" to differentiate coercive power from participative decision-making, showing how "power-with" can be greater than "power-over."’
Power-over is a massive energy suck. It takes a lot of strategy and force to continually coerce, dominate, and extract power. Power-with recognizes the autonomy and self-sovereignty of each agent or group & draws strength from the collaboration and communion between the differing agents and groups within a larger network. Power-with grows and is reinforced by the collective use and sharing of power-to (each of the individual agents and groups’ power). Mutual influence has a probability of leading to productive growth/change in the earth realm. This is how natural hybrids are made and evolution occurs in self-organizing systems*. The earth and the cosmos are complex interconnected webs that contain far too much energy and information to be organized and understood fully by any one group or being. The balance is thrown when a single agent or group unilaterally imposes its will onto another agent or group without the collaborative nature of cocreation. Energy and power reproduce when they are shared. so power-with or copower is a renewable quantum resource. The stifling-of or cutting-off-from power creates stagnation. Power-with is an extension of the principles of power-to which are strengthened and multiplied when in cocreation/collaboration. The power-to will henceforth be referred to as Power; power-over will henceforth be referred to as exploitative control. Power-with will henceforth be referred to as Power or copower. (I encourage all-ways to play with the language and redefine/ blossom new words as needed. Lexicons are living building blocks for our shared realities and we all have the power to morph them.)
During a group-inquiry driven fellowship program last summer, i chose to explore power together. (I love practices of group-inquiry as i notice the access to co-power heightens my senses and connection to the universe’s ideas and information.) Thru a focused process of stormbraining our notions, beliefs, and noticings of power we emerge ways that we have come to know and use the word. In one place, we can see things society has taught or showed us as well as the truths of power that we may not notice or lean into. All these layers began unraveling for me. In the process the fear began loosening. I thought power was: oppression, cancerous, evil, unnatural, exploitative. I learned power is: natural, inevitable, neutral, available, creative.
Power truths unfolding for me daily: I wake up everyday with a well of power in my center that can spout and slosh and direct as i please; i sometimes let my power leak away. I give my power away sometimes in exchange - real or perceived - for safety, likeability, ease, fear. I have believed lies that i do not have power or that i must do something to deserve it. There is some power uncorrupt. Power exists before distortion and outside of systems of manipulation. Power is nature and power is flow. Power is inextricably linked with life regardless of systems that desire us to think we need their source or their permission to connect with it.
a spirit transmission on power: power comes from your hips you can wiggle them and rise it up through your core. power comes from your walk. power comes from your lips power comes on your breath. it is a rhythm an energy a motion you can take into your body and ride. it is a beauty blessing of the earth. physical power, energetic lines of rhythm that connect us out to energies unseen. there is a web of force that can be touched and electrified and in this way power is not finite it is an intimate interwoven energy and system. it is a quantum resource and it has only limit of potentiality which is different than being finite. it is only the limit of the body riding it. true power embodied is a meeting of this space. — it is the tree that takes up space and reaches skyward snuggling its mingled roots deep in the earth. it is the tiger that leaps and tears flexing its biology to the fullest. it is me moving radially thru the world, nurturing an electric center that reaches out to tether and play with the earthies. in this way power is not something that can be taken or given, it is something we have access to that we can pull within and intermingle and pull from within to mingle out. as in introducing our power to the physical with creation, with action, movement, communication.
Power to do, be, and negate (not do or not be) is a birthright. More than a right it is a fact. Innate and inherent to life is Power. Innate power is the potentiality of energy expression/transmutation of any earthly entity. Innate means inborn so this is specific to birthed energies/entities already in material expression. The power to breathe, digest, excrete are some of our most basic potentialities that are filled by living. Even those who receive assistance for these tasks like breathing and feeding tubes meet their potentiality to express and transmute, just with assistance. To be truly power-less is synonymous with death, and does not happen before (and fully not even then). This is not to undermine the realities of disempowerment that rage in the multitudes of experiences now. Rather our task is to recover, re-member the power that is ours and inviolate. It is from this space of sovereignty and connective imagination that we build something better – that honors and holds the earth with all its entities.
True power begets power – it is a quantum sustainable, renewable source of embodying energy. It is in harmony with cosmic order and flows thru its individual agents when not impeded.
There needn’t be so much heaviness around power. True power is not so entwined with exploitative control. It is not something to avoid, fear or shrink from. It is for you, just for being alive. If someone gives you their power, hand it back to them. We are in a state of re-membering how much power we have. You may feel tempted into the hierarchy of misappropriated power and disempowerment… convincing someone they are powerless will not gain you anything worth keeping. The new paradigm we're building won't come with so many nasty side effects when we grow together with true power. True power, in this instance means power uncontorted. power connected to innate potentiality. power that is in harmony with the full earth web of interconnected parts. power that is fluid and flowing.
a cycle to embodying power more fully - notice > ground (connect) > activate > reflect
A well of power lives in our gut, the cradle of our sacrum, our hips. (power being expressed energy potentiality). It is kinetic energy but specifically refers to the ability or action of expressing that energy.
There are different types of power, physical power, emotional power, creative power, personal power, spiritual power, mental power, people power, systemic power, natural power, innate power, external power, electrical power to name a few (further defined and explored below).. and there are different types of fuel, which is like prepower; a part of the formula for using or expressing power. ie food, fossil fuels, any combustible/processable raw material to increase access to power potentiality, information or connection that increases access to power potentiality.
journal:
what could be some fuels for other types of power that we don't think about as much?+
what are the ways you engage, flex and interact with your personal & innate power?
I love listening to Priya Parker talk about power.* She describes leaning into power and directly engaging cultivation when recognizing new forms. In that vein i’d like to explore different categorical expressions of power and their fuels:
types of power and their fuel explored ~~~
physical power - strength, force, leverage, expressed bodily ability
emotional power - command of engagement with the sensations of feeling energies that pass thru our bodies
creative power - focused transformation of inner connections, ideas, matter and experiences into external expressions (we might venture to measure this type of power by its ability to connect us to other or by its ability to heal or delight ourselves)
personal power - innate inner connection to source and embodied potentiality of self expression
spiritual power - meeting of potentiality for connection, communion, and transmutation with energies and entities unseen
mental power - the potentiality of the mind to focus, notice connections, reason solutions, and make meaning
people power - the heightened potentiality of many bodies and/or nervous systems acting in harmony/synchrony. as in "power in numbers"
systemic power - potentiality for controlling outcomes by a group of mechanisms and rules (that are often agreed upon & imposed by a group of people) and with the ability to affect much more than individual parts or the system's incepters. (note systemic power is not inherently exploitative control though it is easy for it to slip into this expression when the system or group’s goal is exploitation). systemic exploitative control arises when the sovereignty, empowerment, and importance of each individual agent is not honored.
natural power - potentiality of expression of earth & its beings that is in flow with earth cycles & regeneration.
innate power - essential and inseparable available expression (inborn power)
external power - potentiality that lives or is sourced from outside the body
electrical power - the potential ability of an atom's charged particles to cause an action by movement of electrons between atoms
what could be some fuels for other types of power that we don't think about as much? (enjoy reading my list and i encourage you to make your own!)
+considering fuel as prepower - raw 'material' that increases access to power potentiality
physical power fuel - nourishing food, rest, hydration, resistance, repetition
emotional power fuel - quality time & affirmations from supportive community, spaciousness thru mindfulness (ie meditation, self-reflection, embodiment practice), our breath, movement
creative power fuel - internal listening, intention, play, enthusiasm/desire, limitation
personal power fuel - spiritual practice, self expression, self knowledge, supportive relationships/community, body-tending
spiritual power fuel - communing with nature, communing with spirits, cultivating intention, gathering with others around spiritual goals/intentions, celebrating the unseen, noticing the immaterial
mental power fuel - food (especially fatty acids, nutrient dense food, electrolytes), noticing (especially patterns & connections), naming, storytelling, connecting thought processes, reasoning with others
people power fuel - accessibly shared values & education, access for varying bodies/abilities in general, pre-care & after-care (emotional, mental, spiritual etc), communication
systemic power fuel - cocreation/collaboration, investment (belief?), connected parts and shared meaning, (a defined goal?)
innate power fuel - self knowledge, presence practice/mindfulness, self inquiry, self expression
*Tyson Yunkaporta talks about the principles of self-organizing systems in his book Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save The World. In this book he examines global systems from an indigenous perspective.
*Priya Parker discusses cultivating power in her episode: Power, Intention, & Gathering with Prentice Hemphill on their podcast Finding Our Way.
Thought Co article on Mary Parker Follett (https://www.thoughtco.com/mary-parker-follett-biography-3528601)
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