Power…
How to make sure that the world responds to the things that matter to us
It’s true that the world is incredibly large and mindbogglingly chaotic. Each of us is very small and possessed of barely sufficient amounts of willpower and energy to get us through the week. So it is pure nonsense to think that any of us or even all of us banding together could hope to make even a tiny dent in the machinery that runs the global systems that surround us.
At least, that’s what anyone in power would like to make us think.
While as individuals we are rarely powerful. Those that do end up wielding power usually fall into the trap of thinking that it has no limits.
That’s not true either. In order for power to even function it requires two closely connected elements: Legitimacy and Acceptance. In less enlightened times those who by hook or by crook managed to acquire power sought to justify their position through a Higher Agency thereby using it to gain our Acceptance.
Legitimacy without Acceptance is a contradiction in terms and though there are many diverse types of power which range from the relatively mild exercise of influence of a social media maven all the way to the coercive power of a Dictator and his henchmen, they all revolve around the same axis where each of its poles is respectively anchored by Legitimacy and Acceptance.
Power is Everywhere…
If all power, regardless, dances to the same dynamic principles it begs the question of where it really springs from. The French postmodernist thinker and philosopher, Michel Foucault, thought that ‘Power is everywhere’ and ‘comes from everywhere’.
He was (and still is) one of the few thinkers who consider power not just in negative terms: “it ‘excludes’, it ‘represses’, it ‘censors’, it ‘abstracts’, it ‘masks’, it ‘conceals’.” But also positive ones: “In fact power produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth.” Power, just like most of the forces that underpin our social constructs finds roots in the intersubjective space where objective reality intersects subjective beliefs.
In other words, just like belief in the value of money, the existence of a divine being and the stability of the banking system, power happens because our collective belief in it legitimizes it and our unwillingness to do anything to challenge it accepts its presence.
This creates an uneasy dynamic the successful perpetuation of which requires that we continue to believe ourselves incapable of influencing it. In other words, while the Divine Right of kings has been discredited those who wield power want us to continue to believe that their legitimacy comes from a higher authority that makes them unimpeachable and we are, somehow, less ordained in our existence.
This is really not true.
Power Stems From Us
When power is everywhere and comes from everywhere it basically arises out of our collective actions. Our ability to tacitly accept the status quo.
In our world the sustained existence of anything requires money. Nation states require taxes to be paid. Companies require customers.
The exchange of money is a relational one. It really cannot take place without trust. Trust requires four basic steps:
- Contact
- Perception
- Assessment
- Connection
These four steps, each of which signals a stage of the relationship between two agents, are present irrespective of whether we are talking about Apple products or a dictatorship. Whatever resistance may exist, in each case, it is never sufficiently strong or organized enough to overcome the cohesive group that benefits from what exists and believes in it sufficiently to be able to act to support it.
Money is the vehicle through which our beliefs become manifest.
So, there are millions who buy Apple products around the world regardless of how the company ties customers into its ecosystem, and there are millions who believe that the glorious leader Kim Jong-un, ceaselessly labors day and night to make them happy.
The connective thread between these two seemingly unrelated events is provided by belief.
Belief creates a reality that generates relationships which are sustained by trust. Trust requires a group of shared values, a sense of connection which feeds into the individual identities of those who connect and, finally, a sense of gain from the process so that the relationship is relatively symmetrical.
Take belief away and you begin to lose trust. The relationship breaks down. In our example Apple would lose market share and shrivel, its existence as a viable company under question and North Korea would undergo a revolution which would lead to regime change.
How does this relate to us and what happens in the world?
Money. It’s that simple really. Where we choose to spend it. How we spend it. What we buy. All of this are actions that allow power to move from us to a larger entity. It is our money that makes any brand large enough to become global. It is our sustained belief in the equitable distribution of our money that makes us want to pay our taxes. Money is the vehicle through which our beliefs become manifest.
The relatively small amounts of money we each possess, exercised judiciously has the ability to completely change the balance of power in the world. Power emanates from each of us. It aggregates in companies and brands, countries and institutions. But only if we let it.
My latest book is called The Tribe That Discovered Trust — How Trust is Created, Propagated, Lost and Regained in Commercial Interactions.
