Recently I've been working on an essay about power, specifically the power to make a difference and the question of whether ordinary people can have any of that, or if it's just for people with money and, well, power. This is a short excerpt from it since I keep getting tangled up and stuck with the longer essay (not unusual for me).
So. I'm not talking just about power, but about two utterly different kinds of power - so much so that they really need different names. Here, I'm calling them "power-over," and "power-with."
Power-over
The first kind of power is the one we're very familiar with -- "power over" other things and beings in the material world outside our separate selves.
This kind of power belongs to a worldview--a story--that has shaped the dominant culture on earth for a long time and has pitted us against our environment and against each other.
This story developed partly as a result of monotheistic patriarchal religion1 replacing polytheistic, animistic spirituality2 and partly as a result of the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th Centuries.
For the last 600 years, give or take, the story of how our world works and the relationship we have with it has included basic tenants like these:
- the universe is made up of unintelligent bits of matter,
- our bodies are like machines, just softer and warmer,
- there is no intelligence outside of our heads,
- everything is separate and unrelated,
- everything is measurable,
- only things that move in ways obvious to our physical senses are alive or sentient3,
- change happens only when a force is exerted upon a mass.
In this story, bigger is always better and it takes some kind of force to make things happen or create change.
Which is why participating in this story without questioning it is a recipe for despair, paralysis, and burnout if you’re an ordinary person who is working or longing for social and ecological justice and well-being4.
Power-with
The second kind of power is new-to-us (new to us modern, domesticated people). It could be called "power-with" and it arises from within us and from within the space between our interconnected selves (interconnected with each other and also with the non-human world).
In this story, 21st Century science has come the long way round5 and has begun to consider ideas that align with mystical and indigenous wisdom about the nature of our world.
In this story, causality isn’t limited to what you and I were taught in school, and self and universe are so intimately connected that they mirror each other. In this world, whatever happens “out there” is also happening in some way “in here.6"
... All of those different species, different individual animals and plants are all part of an implicit wholeness that is the planet itself. It’s all not only interconnected, it’s deeply, deeply interdependent.”
Both stories are true, but we can only choose one of them
In a bit of a mind-bending paradox, both the stories I've just described are true.
The first story excludes the second one; the second story transcends the first one.
But as far as I can see, even though both stories can be true simultaneously we can't live in both of them at once. In any given moment, our thoughts, choices, and actions (or inaction) declare which story we’re participating in.
If you choose the story that holds us all as separate and change as only able to occur as a result of force, you are just one small, isolated, vulnerable individual without much power to make a difference.
In the second story, where a change in any part corresponds to a change in the whole7, how can what you do or think not make a difference?
We ... believe that this is a fundamentally intelligent, benevolent, creative and playful universe in which we, as individual expressions of ... one Universal Mind, co-create our reality.”
Please comment
Please scroll down below the footnotes and share your thoughts - thank you! 🙂
would you like to receive new posts in your inbox?
after clicking subscribe, sit tight for a confirmation message
Footnotes
- One male God.
- Polytheistic - multiple divine beings. Animism -- the belief that all natural things including animals, birds, plants, rivers, landscapes have spirits and can influence human events
- Sentient - able to perceive or feel things
- Charles Eisenstein addresses this in his talk: Story Disruption & Morphogenesis
- See, for example, the work of The Scientific and Medical Network
- Here are two related articles if you'd like to explore further - "Quantum Physics Reveals the Unity of the Universe," and "Morphic Resonance: An Introduction to Biofield Science."
- ...this Report points to the existence of a deeper informing structure and level of reality accessible to humans through experience and in which we are intrinsically connected in a holographic web of consciousness." - Introduction to the Galileo Commission Project