What does “power” mean?

Oct 6

“Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Power is a topic which I’ve found many students do enjoy grappling with, yet feel a little overwhelmed by. Many, many books have been written on the subject, and I will suggest a few you might be interested in at the end of the post, but here are some ways to start thinking about the concept in a complex way and what it means to you.

Can vs Should

Boiled down to its very basics, a person or entity (such as a business, governing body, institution, etc.) has power when they can take an action, enact a change, make a decision, or even choose not to act. Put differently, having power is having possibility on your side.

Of course, just because one can do a thing, does not necessarily mean one should do a thing. And it is precisely this gap between “can” and “should” which leads to, at best, disagreements and struggles with external forces (other people, other entities, etc.), but also at its worst, abuses of power.

The Physicists Were Right

When we consider what it means to be able to take an action, we realise that just because you can do something, doesn’t necessarily mean acting in that way will be entirely free of consequence. In fact, sometimes just because you think you should do something, doesn’t mean everyone else will agree. This is why we should perhaps consider power almost like gravity—an omnipresent force acting upon all entities in a given space. For example, I can go around criticizing everyone around me—but then they too have different ways they can react. Or, if I were to use a more positive example, I could, as a leader of a group, decide on a particular cause of action for the group, but the people whom I’m leading need not agree with my choice.

So really, if you think about it, power isn’t just like gravity—power behaves like energy. And according to the law of conservation, energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transferred from one form to another. Similarly, power can neither be created nor destroyed: assassinating a leader, for instance, does not eradicate the power held by that leader. It simply leaves a power vacuum (if you’re studying Julius Caesar or Macbeth, this creation of a power vacuum is central to these plays!). When a leader steps down—or is forced down—their power is not destroyed; this ability to act now falls into someone else’s hands or is dissipated amongst many someones.

Power Differentials

So now we have a view of power as a complex web of actions, reactions, and counter-actions, all happening at the same time. If we zoom all the way out, then, and take a larger view of any given group of people: depending on how each person or entity in a given scenario behaves and reacts to one another, and depending on the value assigned to each action they take (or choose not to take), we might say such a person, entity, or group has power, overall, compared to another.

Intangible Power

Hang on—so who, or what, might be assigning value to the actions taken by people or entities in a given situation? If power takes the form of interactions, or possibilities of interaction, between people or entities, then think of this additional layer almost like a filter (yes, like an Instagram filter) overlaying the “real world.” I.e. power does not just take the form of physical action; there are also intangible forms of power, such as the power to shape narratives, or to decide what the value of an action might be.

You may have encountered the idea that “history is written by the victor” (which, sad to say, apparently was not a quote by Churchill.) Consider: whoever actually survives or wins, e.g. a way, does have the possibility of telling everyone else their story—and this matters because it shapes how other people will from that point on think of the actions of the people who went into this war. In this social media dominated society, it is clear that there is great power in the control of narratives and impressions: being able to convince others that your side of the story is the true one could mean the difference between being celebrated and being cancelled.

Context Adds Complexity

Again, remember to consider individual struggles for/over power within a larger context!

Imagine two social media influencers engaging in an epic war of words on Twitter, for instance. Let’s say the Twitter spat is over critical race theory, and whether it should be taught in schools. Depending on the societies in which they live and operate (and in our modern era, these two need not be the same at all), each influencer might be advantaged, and/or disadvantaged, by the values assigned by other groups within the societies in which they live, or wherein their audience lives. It becomes clear, then, that depending on who is reading these tweets, and depending on society at large, and even depending on the international context—many, many different groups are enacting various forms of power at the same time, and engaging in a struggle over meaning making. That said, the power of the individual should not be ignored: it may very well be that this “minor” clash between two people could send out ripples, changing the minds of others, and potentially contributing to changes in attitudes and policy further down the line.

The Burden of Change

I’m going to end off by considering the concept of power from just one last angle. I started by defining power as the ability to take action; you have power when you can do a thing. Interestingly, though, I’m starting to notice that power also lies in shifting the burden of change away, onto someone else.

In today’s Straits Times Forum, Peh Chwee Hoe wrote in to comment on how agencies and governing bodies tended to respond to feedback from members of the public by listing measures they were already taking, rather than addressing the problems being brought up in the feedback. As Peh points out, “the impression given at times is that the replies are more focused on the agency having done its part and how it is not to blame.”

I could not agree with Peh more! In the context of this lesson on power, though, I’d point out that these official replies give such an impression—precisely because that’s what they’re designed to do. They’re not so much replies, as attempts to shift the burden of change away from themselves.

By “burden of change,” I mean not just the onerous, actual work needed in the physical world when problems are acknowledged and action must be taken, e.g. changing the design of drain covers or setting up mental health resources in the workplace. I also mean the mental work of acknowledging that the agency/governing body/institution is imperfect and might need the help of random members of the public (aka outsiders/laymen/etc.)

This refusal, by any group in power, to acknowledge that they need to change, is what Dr Martin Luther King Jr was referring to when he noted that “Whites . . . are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance.”

It might be necessary for each of us then, when we think about power imbalances in the world today, to ask ourselves: who has the power to shape narratives, and who has the power to shift the burden of change onto others?