The following discussion is the first in a series of primers for upcoming essays, and, unfortunately, likely to be the most tedious text on this site so far. Hopefully, an indication that, if an axiom is not at least slightly difficult to pin down, the entire ensuing theory is probably trivial and of little use to write about, but also hopefully the most complicated part of the entire line of reasoning.
Notwithstanding, the series' object of study is the internal mechanisms of power. More specifically power in the social sense, in contrast to the physical sense which is governed by Newton's laws of physics et.c.. I have searched for a definition of such power for quite a while, and the closest I have yet come is one by the American historian Steven Kotkin, whom I admire for his deep and systematic study of history, in particular of Stalin. Kotkin, in one of his talks, defines power as "stories", a definition that I feel is important to somehow incorporate in the upcoming discussion. However, while I appreciate the succinctness and realize that this is a profound insight, with great utility when trying to understand how power is wielded, I cannot help but feel that this definition also leaves out quite a lot of important structure that is needed to develop chains of arguments from it, as well as other supporting axioms around it.
So, in the spirit of building up logical infrastructure as a platform for future arguments and thoughts, the attempt at another definition of such power, found below, was originally meant to serve as a tool to investigate the main theme of an upcoming essay about why and how irrational narratives can be successfully used as means of power, by and over people with otherwise chiefly rational ways of going about their businesses. A phenomenon that has puzzled me for a long time, and which, as I have tried to study and understand why and when certain people are prone to engage in confusing or paradoxical rhetoric, has had me begin to suspect that there are recurring patterns in the way such things unfold, and that these things are seldom matters of stupidity or incompetence, even though that is how it might superficially appear.
The idea behind this definition also draws from the conclusions proposed in a previous discussion about anthropomorphization of social phenomena (The weakness of anthropomorphic analysis). More precisely, the realization that social phenomena are rather ripple effects in a social fabric, which are produced by continuous actions and counteractions taken by every single individual within it, as they are trying to parry and adapt to each others' behaviors, without ever being exactly sure what will happen next. To accommodate more formal reasoning about this network structure, my attempts at describing this crucial concept have evolved into a slightly more mathematical formulation than I would have hoped, but it is the closest thing to an intellectually foundational concept that I feel comfortable working with at this point. For this purpose, and in terms of the network-of-nodes-model described above, where every node is a single person, and the network is some social context to which these people are somehow tied, I suggest the following definitions of, first influence, and then power:
Influence: An action A of a node X in a network is more influential than an action B of another node Y within that network, if the direct and indirect effects of action A influences the behavior of a larger number of nodes than the direct and indirect effects of action B.
Power: A node X is more powerful than a node Y within a network, if the node X can voluntarily perform an action A that is more influential than any action B that node Y can voluntarily perform.
While I have kept apologizing, throughout the first part of the text, for the dry and mathematical formalism of this framing, at the same time, from a formal point of view, there is indeed room for improvement of this definition. An obvious example of an aspect that could have captured further conceptual nuance, if given a more prominent role, would have been to somehow measure the gravity, or the severity of the effects inflicted, but that was simply too difficult for me. Every way I tried, I found myself struggling with the relativity of severity, and the therefore quite subjective balance between that and its extent within the network. Nevertheless, and as the introduction suggests, for the sake of general readability, it could perhaps be allowed to serve at least as food for thought, even to the more pedantic logical formalist.
If so, there are at least four key conclusions we can now draw regarding the qualities of power, should we accept this premise as true. In a nutshell, these are that power is conscious, local, momentaneous and contextual. Below follows the respective arguments. Social power is:
- conscious, because it by definition needs to be consciously exercised in contrast to influence, which merely results as a consequence of some action.
- local, because it matters which set of nodes you confine your measurement to. A person that is influential with respect to a particular group of individuals might have little or no influence over another constellations of people.
- momentaneous, because at every instant, the circumstances under which a person can perform an action changes and the direct and indirect effects that action will have on the people they subsequently influence will therefore typically change, too.
- contextual, because the power of a particular person is only relevant to another person, at a specific point in time, if it in any way affects that other person's freedom to achieve a particular end. Therefore, if you exclude all possible actions that the former could take but that is of no significance to the latter's ability to reach that goal, the latter could be more powerful than the former within that confined set of actions, even if the former is generally more powerful than the latter according to the definition above.
This viewpoint suggests that, according to this definition, it is only actions that are influential, while people themselves can be powerful, if they know how to consciously act in a way that influences many people. In this perspective, a good way of thinking about the term influential person, could then be to equate that person's level of influence, at a particular moment in time, to the most influential action that the person can take, consciously or not, in that moment. To summarize, at a particular point in time and in a particular sphere of influence, a person is more powerful than another with respect to a specific competition of motives.
By implication, if the fundamental assumption of the previous section is accepted, powerful people must understand the rules of power. Granted, one could argue that the difference between power and influence in the above proposition is merely of semantic significance, and thereby rid oneself of the trouble of working this dimension into a more general understanding of historical and current events. However, it appears to me to provide an interesting nuance that better indicates, from whom one should learn to think, and who unwittingly just happened to end up near the epicenter of some famous event. Because, power in this sense, does not necessarily have to be wielded to be possessed, and it is a matter separate from, albeit related to, moral and ethics. Moreover, as much as it is, indeed, a position one can find oneself in, first and foremost it must be a skill. Forby, I hope that Kotkin would have been satisfied to see that stories remain central within this modified framework, since they are one of the primary elements through which influential effects ripple, in many practical examples.
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