Power for Livingkind

What is power?

Power as a concept doesn’t necessarily determine good or bad. If I were to define power I would say it is a force or a strength of capability. Personal power feels different though – I think it has something to do with spirituality, which translates to something sacred. A sacredness that is motivated by love, is embodied, and easily understood. So, if power is neither good nor bad, and instead is simply the force that gets things done or motivates oneself, then what makes this topic interesting (and challenging) is the range of ways in which power has been personally understood. What I am attempting to do with this writing is to explore who and what power should serve through my personal understanding of power.

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Individual Power

Defining power as either a dominating force that compels objects, or as a love that moves and is moved by, leaves me to question what power values? Power alone is directionless, careless, valueless, relationshipless. Because of this, power needs to be guided by a set of values which will hopefully determine who or what power should serve.

So where does power get its set of values? If I determine that power gets its set of values in the context of my individual spirituality or if I define the boundaries of what power should serve, then I am serving only myself and the values that motivate me. This is problematic because, even if my values are greater than simply serving myself, I only have the perspective of my inner knowing. Meaning, my value system, however honorable, is limited only to me and my knowledge. Since there is no world in which I want to live where I am alone and serving only myself, I cannot agree that my spiritual values, nor any other individual, should guide what power serves.

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Community Power

If power should not be guided by the individual then maybe power should be guided by what the community values. On one hand, many evolutionary biologists tell us that survival of the fittest mandates that only the fittest will make it. But the problem with this “law of nature” is if those who qualify as the fittest want anyone else around, like family, life partner, friends, then survival of the community over survival of the individual is a better guide. Moreover, if power is guided by the values of the community, then it’s more likely that power will be guided by a diverse set of values, all motivated by a multitude of life experiences, which ultimately would seek to serve the whole community as opposed to just the individual.

If power should be driven by community values, then what defines the community? I could start with my family, or expand to include my neighbors, maybe my families’ neighbors. I might even throw the net wider and include my city and state or even my country. But why stop there? Air pollution, weather, fires all cross geo-political boundaries, maybe I should too? So let’s include all of humanity, or better yet, all of livingkind. That’s it, power should serve all of livingkind.

All of livingkind feels huge… maybe too big. It’s making me think I need to make sure I’m positive about power serving everything, and everyone. Because some people suck. So, here’s a story: I remember when I was getting my MBA and first learning about the word, externalities. During any number of business and/or economics lessons about inflows, outflows, or labor, externalities would get defined by placing labels on what is “in” vs what is “out”. To be clear, externalities meant “out.”

As I reflect on my professors’ interpretation of externalities, I wonder if they simply used the word to create a boundary between what they knew how to calculate vs what they didn’t know how to calculate. And I suppose I’m telling the story because I’m wondering if I’m trying to externalize those people who suck because I don’t understand them and therefore ban them from my community definition of “all of livingkind.”

The other day my cousin advised me that one of the biggest problems of today is that we are not tough enough on the people who do horrible things like rape children and kill other people. She said we need to do to them what they do to others. I’m not sure if that means we need to find someone to rape a rapist but I do know that means she believes we must kill those who have killed. After her proclamation, I remembered my friend who is running a non-profit. He goes into prisons, teaches restorative justice to incarcerated folks and helps them start to make sense of the often violent crimes they have committed. To date, he has had 120 people graduate from his 18-month program and only 2 have fallen back into prison for parole violations – that’s a 1% recidivism rate. Now compare that to the current prison recidivism rate in the US, which is over 50%. And here’s the kicker, my friend previously served 20 years for killing someone. At one point I may have called him an externality because I didn’t know what to make of him. Today my cousin would kill him.

Bringing this back to the exploration of who should power serve, I am thankful that my friend is included in my definition of community and even more thankful that my cousin can’t get her hands on him. I believe there are no externalities to our global system, only more complex situations and systems. Because of this, power should serve the whole mess – all of livingkind, including the earth, AND the people who may suck.

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Power Serving Powerless

Power, like privilege, should be used for those who don’t have it, not for those who do. Because, power serving power creates an imbalance and ultimately raises up those who don’t need it while squashing those who do.

I just listened to Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth. She tells a story about the game, Monopoly. It was originally called, The Landlord’s Game and was designed by a woman named Elizabeth Magie. Magie wanted to demonstrate the destructive nature of monopolies. Specifically, she wanted to teach about what happens when one person owns more than their equitable share of property. So she created a game where antimonopolist rules reward all during wealth creation.

In contrast, Monopoly has the goal where only one person wins after purchasing as many properties as possible and all the while increasing rents until the other players go bankrupt. The Landlord’s Game is a cooperative game where winning means everyone works together while Monopoly is a competitive game where only one person wins.

I guess I’m telling this anecdote because I think Magie was seeking to teach a valuable lesson – one that I’m finally letting sink in today as I write – that power should be guided by the needs and values of those who don’t have power. Because when power serves power, it serves as a monopoly for power and increases the disparity between those who have and those who don’t.

So recapping, power should be guided by a set of values that are determined by all livingkind, including those who suck, and which serves those who are in need.