Power in society Who has it how to get it and how to use it well
[Music]
do you want
power it’s a strange question right
it kind of feels wrong we tend to think
of wanting power as something only
comic book villains do that’s probably
partly because
we’re tragically familiar with abuses of
power
i know i’ve seen it up close and maybe
you have too in fact statistics would
tell me you probably have to
one in four women experience severe
physical
abuse in their lifetimes from an
intimate partner
three out of four employees say that the
worst
or most stressful part of their job is
their boss
now even if you’re fortunate enough not
to have seen or experienced abusive
power
in a workplace setting or in a domestic
setting
i know you’ve seen it in the news we all
see it all the time
every day it’s in pop culture
all through politic politics of every
stripe and color
i mean just in recent history we’ve seen
a president
try to subvert justice using his
position uh
intimidate those who tried to call him
out sabotage
and try to steal from an opponent’s
campaign and minimize and deny his play
and blame his behavior on others nixon
i’m talking about richard nixon just to
be clear um
i could tell you that the patterns of
behavior that i saw
during more than 200 interviews with
perpetrators of power-based crimes
are nearly identical to
so much of the civil and cultural
discourse that we see
today just
recently we all got a front row seat and
watched in horror
as a man used positional and physical
power to kneel on george floyd’s neck
for nearly nine minutes while he died
crying out for his mother
all of these things are connected by a
common thread
a pernicious desire for or expression of
power but i didn’t actually come here to
talk to you about all of that i actually
came here to tell you
that i want power and in fact
you want power right now at this very
moment you and i are both
trying to obtain more power whether we
realize it not
whether we realize it or not maybe
you’re not convinced
but what if i turn this question around
do you want to be
powerless in the mid-1500s thomas hobb
said that power is a man’s current means
to obtain some future good
the word power comes from the latin
posse which means to be able
and it is also where we get the english
word possibility you see power is not
wrong it’s simply to be able to create
possibility
we could simply define it as power is to
be able to
affect outcomes or people
in a desired direction
there’s my pursuit of power my pursuit
of power
is based on my partner captain marvel
and i
and our desire to obtain future good
for hulk and for black widow
we want our children to have the power
to dream and to learn and to create and
to achieve and to build
and to love and in my best moments i
want that for
every child in my community
but what does that really mean what
exactly is power how do i get more and
how do i use it in such a way
that every person rich or poor religious
or irreligious black or white is
empowered by my actions given more
potential
to affect the outcomes of their lives
in order to sort through some of these
questions let’s tap
three quick hooks into the conversation
that i think will help us
give us something to hang our thoughts
on hook number one
identify what exactly are the types of
power
hook number two understand
how does power really work and hook
number three of course how do we put
this all into action
and use power well
first of all types of power what are the
types of power what are the things in
society that help us
to influence the outcomes of our lives
and our families lives well the most
obvious of course is money
you have to have money to influence
outcomes but what about education
position a skill a specialized skill set
or a trade
internal power heart those kind of
things that happen on the inside
self-esteem and
and a work ethic and and love
what about an influential network even
spiritual belonging or religious
belonging
these are all things that most of us use
on a regular basis one or more of these
things
to influence or affect the outcomes of
our lives
there’s one that we hear a lot about but
we don’t
i don’t think understand as much and so
i want to take a couple of extra minutes
on that and that’s
cultural or social privilege now
privilege is a type of power and don’t
let the word privilege bother you or
make you feel defensive
not all types of privilege are
illegitimate
and even illegitimate privilege
is not always usually in fact not
your individual fault if you have it
it’s the result of larger social
uh evolutions now
uh privilege it can manifest in several
different ways i remember talking to
john
and i was in a little police department
interview room and john says to me
i didn’t yell i don’t have to yell i
just shot my pistol into the floor to
get her attention because she wouldn’t
listen
i mean she’s supposed to listen you’re a
preacher you know what the bible says
the husband’s the head the wife is the
tail
by the way the bible doesn’t say that
but john had male privilege he’d been
given by society
a greater degree of ability to influence
and control
outcomes and if you’re a man like me and
you live in a society
where your culture has given default
authority
and leadership decision making a power
to men then you have male privilege
regardless of how you use
that privilege and you should understand
we should all recognize that if our
culture has historically done that
then our traditions our social and legal
structures our economic structures
our religious beliefs all of these
things are gender roles they’ve all
evolved over time
to mirror and to reinforce that
privilege
white privilege is the same way if a
society builds its foundations
on a presumption of the superiority of
people with light-colored skin
then it’s legal and social institutions
it’s implicit biases it’s societal roles
everything all of these things are
interconnected and they evolve over time
to give certain people power and to keep
certain people from
power class privilege is another
important one or we could call this
socioeconomic privilege
this is typically inherited but it’s
normally one of the more powerful types
of privilege because it’s a combination
of several types of power
including occupation income and
education
now this is not an exhaustive list of
all the types of power i’m sure you
could add to the list
but these are some of the things in
society that move the needle
the things that help ordinary people
like you and like me
influence the outcomes of our lives
but how do they really work how do these
types of power
really work we’ve got to understand
power these types of power are not just
laying around on the street for anybody
to pick up and use any time they want
or to have complete access to there are
social and cultural institutions
that maintain and guide the flow of
access to power
you can think of these as the
gatekeepers of power and it all starts
early on
in childhood development through family
structures
the landmark adverse childhood
experiences study showed
that people who experience significant
levels of household dysfunction
abuse or neglect had much higher risks
of negative health and well-being
outcomes when you destabilize or you
interrupt
childhood development in a traumatic way
you
take power from that child and the
results can be catastrophic
and often the impacts are generational
in nature
and it’s important to recognize that
childhood development
it cannot be interrupted and sometimes
this happens this trauma can happen
at a society-wide level through things
like slavery
or mass incarceration sometimes it
happens at a microcosm level
through individual situations like
domestic violence
what about civil structures this would
include governing bodies
things like your state legislature your
hoa even
anything that makes policy in your
community or affects policy in your
community but it also includes things
like schools
and libraries and public services these
impact people’s access to
power what about judicial structures
this includes the justice system and
law enforcement in your community and
how the law is enforced
and how breaking the law is punished has
a
profound impact on who has power in
society that’s why we have to
have a a meticulous examination
and an ongoing appraisal or feedback
loop for justice structures
our judicial structures in our
communities because historically
judicial structures tend to tip in favor
of those in society with means who
already have power
and to see the harshest impacts in the
communities that are already most
disadvantaged
of course we can’t leave out economic
structures right financial institutions
and employers
control access to capital which is a
major form of power
and a gateway to many other types of
power now all of these structures
are exaggerate the principle of
compounding
that power compounds in other words
just like wealth begets wealth power
gets begets power individuals
or communities who have power typically
have more access to or even outright
control
the means of producing and consolidating
exponentially
more power while individuals or
communities who have little power
have to typically work around the system
in order to gain access to power
they may have to have a benefactor who
has power who can help
or they simply have to overpower the
system
through sheer numbers in order to
actually increase their power
now that interaction that we’re talking
about there is core to our understanding
of power because by
definition power involves an interplay
or an interaction
between one or more parties excuse me
two or more parties
that is either antagonistic or
mutualistic
in an antagonistic context power is used
to
overpower coerce dominate control
in a mutualistic context power is used
to influence inspire collaborate
help now an antagonistic use of power
is always inefficient and it costs all
parties involved resulting in a net
loss of human potential individuals or
communities who
are forced to function for an extended
period of time
in an antagonistic context where they
have less power
experience what’s called toxic stress
and that leads to
destructive outcomes including escalated
violence physical and mental health
challenges
and even a complete loss of identity
individuals and communities who are on
the more powerful side of this
antagonistic context
also experience loss though they may get
more gross power in the short term
but over the course of the long term
they pay an awful price including
they lose the potential of
sustainability and collaboration
now that doesn’t mean that antagonistic
power is never necessary sometimes you
have to overpower sometimes you have to
intimidate
but antagonistic power is typically not
necessary for the reasons that are often
used to justify its use
usually the justifications and believe
me i’ve heard more than my fair share of
justifications for abusive power
and they usually involve an exaggerated
claim for the need of self-preservation
or self-defense
or a scarcity of resources but the truth
is
a scarcity of resources there’s almost
never been a true scarcity of resources
not in the world not in individual
settings
there’s almost always a scarcity of
imagination
of innovation of collaboration of
empathy
now on the other hand mutualistic power
is efficient
and it benefits all parties involved
resulting in a multiplication
of human potential everybody ends up
with more power
in the long term so how do we use
power well how do we take that
understanding and put it into action
it all starts when we acknowledge the
reality of power struggle
and that nobody has the same starting
line in life
there’s no such thing as a pure
meritocracy there’s no such thing as
pulling yourself up by your own
bootstraps
you have to have help you have to have
luck you have to have
opportunity you have to have community
and that should motivate
all of us to raise a hand and say i will
use my power whatever that power is to
help and empower those with less power
than i have
along the way we may have to learn or
re-learn
the difference between antagonistic and
mutualistic context
i spend a lot of time talking to
companies and to individuals
about what mutualistic behavior really
looks like what mutualistic use of power
looks like what mutualistic leadership
looks like we understand that as we’re
doing that kind of individual work to
become empowering people
in order to see widespread uh
empowerment and widespread
distribution of power it takes
collective action
and so that means we have to support
reforms or
institutions that help balance power in
society
i want you to ask with me what if
what if instead of one out of four women
experiencing severe physical abuse what
if it was four out of four men
holding each other and themselves
accountable to respectfully partner
with the women in their lives what if
instead of three out of four
employees saying that their bosses was
the worst part of their jobs
what if it was four out of four bosses
raising a hand and saying
i commit to becoming an empowering
leader
and being there in a mutualistic way for
my team
what if instead of 20 of the us
population having 77
of the wealth what if we lived in a
world where we proactively funneled
excess back into the lives and
businesses and communities
of those who struggle to gain access to
capital
what if all of us woke up every day
with gratitude and humility and
confidence
and determination to know what our power
is
and to use it well
thank you
you