On the nature of power – where it comes from, how it spirals out of control

Power. That is the abstract concept behind the one of leadership, fundamental to understand the evolution of human sociality. The nature of power is elusive and yet fascinating. 

Everyone wants power. There are the ones who want to rule, and they need power; the ones who strive to accomplish, and they need power; even the ones who just wish to live quiet and unnoticed, they need the power to have someone else manage responsibilities in their place. Any ambition has to be sustained by power. And power is in the first place the power to choose; who to be, what to do, how to act or even to not act at all.

What is power?

So many variables and just one word, then. What is power? How would you define it? ‘Power’ has many possible facets, depending on the contexts. In general, we can say that power is the capability to bend and shape specific aspects of reality according to one’s will. This is magnified when people work together – humans are a social species and our greatest accomplishments come from unlocking our potential to cooperate. The strongest form of power is to motivate people to act, doing together what a single can not. Thus, in our world, who achieves leadership and exerts it detains the highest degree of power. 

from Futurama, S3E20 Godfellas (2002), by Matt Groening,

for Fox Broadcasting Company

What are the sources of that power, then? Money, social status and hierarchy, specific skills and competence, and many others – all of them can grant some degrees of power to the ones wielding them. Other people acknowledging that power also accept the authority that comes with it. In a functional society, this translates into following the lead of the ones with greater resources, charisma or expertise to improve everyone’s results – originally, to literally enhance survival chances. Again, that goes back to the concept of leadership.

For authority to be accepted, power has to be constantly wielded and carefully administered. It is a delicate balance always ready to shift. It even is independent from the context, with all the stages and all the plays working the same. Likely, an imbalanced system of power can be described as follows:

i)        use power too pro-actively and you will seem a control freak;

ii)      use it too sparingly, and you will be perceived as indecisive;

iii)    use it inefficiently and you will look as incompetent.

Any mistake will make the one detaining power appear weak. That will invite less respect from people – with someone eventually rising to challenge and seize power itself.

People’s emotions are fuel for power

Knowing that, which is the right amount of power in any given situation? How should it be applied, when and where? To achieve what, directly or indirectly? Ideally, a good management of power in a position of leadership requires great evaluation and analysis skills, both precise planning and flexible improvisation. People are important variables and they have to be accounted for. To achieve and maintain leadership, people’s emotions must be harnessed and channeled. 

The gears of emotions keep power turning.

Thus, which emotions are the best gears to get people moving? On the positive side there is hope and on the negative is fear. They can grind independently or not, with varying results. In a pro-active situation, hope can lead to enthusiasm while fear is poised to bring wrath. Otherwise, hope can fall back into complacency and fear into desperation. The possible outcomes, desirable and not, again will depend on how power is managed.

Once power is available, how would it be safe to determine when to employ it, in which conditions and to which goal? What happens when power is used to try and reach unrealistic goals? Why does it happen, anyway?

The evolution of power on a graph

To make will into reality, power is a tool. As with any tool, the mastery in handling it varies depending on people and circumstances. It all starts with some needs to answer; that requires power. Its correct use will resolve that particular situation, enhancing confidence and allowing greater ambition. From there, we can identify axis to develop all the three variables, in a way similar to our previous description of progressing fields. Indeed:

i)                x axis, objective needs, motivating action;

ii)              y axis, power, enabling action;

iii)             z axis, ambition, asking for more power.

Point 1, a slowly expanding sphere.

How much those variables are correlated and can influence each other depends on many factors – social, economic, human. They do not necessarily work in synergy and they may even act independently. 

At first (Point 1), issues limited in scope and time confronts people who have to solve them. Not much more than that, they are not people used to wield power and they do not draw more than needed. Likely, they could not anyway – there would be resistance as power is not an easily shared resource. In this phase, expansion will be slow – the variables would not change much and on the x, y and z axis they may appear as a somehow unstable sphere.

A second phase (Point 2) is introduced because ultimately an expansion on at least one axis is bound to happen. The variable(s) on the other axis will adjust, forced to compensate – if possible. Why so? For instance: 

i)                new and more complicated problems could arise or eventually become relevant (hence a faster increase on the x axis), requiring rapid and appropriate solutions;

ii)              more power may become available (on the y axis) and it should be employed rationally and efficiently.

Point 2, a balanced growth.

iii)          after good performances up to this point, people may look for enhanced challenges (reflecting on the z axis). 

All of these aspects would be part of the system’s normal management on a controlled growth. Even if the proportions of one variable get reduced, they do not begin so inflated that the impact has to be deleterious. In this phase, the dynamic equilibrium of the three variables can be maintained. The system even offers some flexibility to overcome stressful situations. At least in theory, it demonstrates that a wise, long-term management of power is possible.

However, we already know that no system in history ever maintained a stable and indefinite loop like the one described above. When at least one of the three axis falters too much, the entire structure spirals out of control and results in a collapse (Point 3) – how much catastrophic will depend on the specific conditions. The system of power will reset itself to one of the previous phases (at Point 1 or Point 2) and the cycle would start again. Then, what could cause such an imbalance in our three parameters?

We can again present cases:

i)                needs may inflate due to an independent crisis – or the same needs could be satisfied faster than expected. In both cases, sudden and huge fluctuations on the x axis leads to contraption of the whole system;

Point 3, a decaying system

ii)              power is subject to similar limitations and uncertainty, as it can be withdrawn or made too much available. The variable on the y axis is a delicate one, because it offers solutions but if misused is by itself a source of more problems. An immediate example of this was the discovery of nuclear energy and its weaponization;

iii)             ambition is made of human factors. People who pushed the system up to this phase likely would not recede from their ambitions. Because of this, the z axis is the one bent to expand constantly. Human arrogance eventually leads to focus on exaggerated goals.

This is what happens when crisis are not properly contained, even in the best cases leading to abrupt shifts between the steps highlighted above.

Bad managed power is self-defeating

Human history is full of instances in which we may identify one of the situations we described, likely in forms of combinations of more than one variable changing. Complex and dynamic systems like to go wild and craft their own evolution under different kinds of pressure. Each of the three main parameters is thus enhanced or hindered by lots of major and minor other vectors. Power still is one of the main keys in that, highly dependent on the context and also very adaptable. It all goes back to the people themselves, to how they enable power and give it to whoever is ruling. This is a fundamental factor in designing our y axis – how people feel, what they agree on, how they can cooperate, which boundaries they are willing to ignore.

We observed how power acquires meaning only by interfacing itself with reality – the material, objective one and the one of human psychology. Power is one of the great connectors between the two sides of reality, external and internal, but it is far from the solution to all the problems. Power is a tool and it must be handled correctly. It does not work alone, it sustains and has to be sustained. Power can be taken, but someone has to give it – and it comes with responsibilities. Misuse of power is tightly coupled with avoiding those responsibilities and enabling moral relativism and hypocrisy. 

The rapid decay of systems, where power is obtained by means of competence and manipulation and then lost again, are part of everyday news upon times of crisis. Then, when power is not wielded in the right ways to resolve present issues and prevent future ones, power turns on itself and is self-defeating. If people having power consistently prove themselves unsuccessful, the trust in them fails and that power eventually vanishes. People’s perception is extremely important in this. It can be diverted and manipulated, along with the emotions driving it, but those means get more imperfect as the discrepancies between reality and manipulations become wider. This leads to continuous cycles of making and unmaking of systems of power – some imposing enough that their rise and their fall can shape shards of history. 

A prime example of this is the unrest within the European Union. It is a symptom of what happens when power is not wielded constructively and employed efficiently. The lasting crisis that the West is experimenting now encompasses multiple levels – again, economic, moral, social – indicating that it is a systemic crisis and not bound just to temporary contingences.

At last, power can be used to elevate oneself above the others – but if one is not careful, it also will directly bring them to their downfall.