Power: Some things history reveals about it.

I was working on a project today and came across a paper I filed away a few years ago about “power.” So, after cogitating on it for a little while, I decided to share some of the highlights with you. Understanding what power is and some time-tested truths about it is an essential step to more accurately understanding history, as well as changing things today.

What is power?

Power is the capacity of some persons to realize their wishes; to produce the effects they want to produce; and to produce intended and foreseen effects on others.

Basic Axioms about Power

(1) Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. -- Whether it is kings, presidents, or CEOs, or petty tyrants around the community, they get so full of themselves that they cut corners, cheat, treat people badly, or make such gross displays of their status that they alienate their followers or stir up an opposition.

(2) The fact that power corrupts means that power congeals. -- People and organization try to hold on to power at all costs. Once there is a power structure, it is very hard to change it or dislodge it.

(3) The powerful always try to create an outside enemy, real or imagined, to bind the followers to the leaders. -- The human tendency to divide people into "us" and "them," which social psychology experiments suggest is readily triggered, makes this a very easy task to accomplish.

(4) Divide and conquer. -- If the followers are not faithfully bound to the leader by the dread of the outside enemy, then leaders can stay in power by favoring some followers and punishing others.

(5) Provide the followers with bread and circuses.  Capitalize on the fact that people's everyday life can be compelling for many reasons: a love of friends and family, pleasure in work or artistic or athletic skills, and a desire for routines. If everyday life is possible, then people are less likely to try to challenge a power structure.

(6) The powerful believe that the enemy of their enemy is their friend. -- Only by understanding this axiom is it possible to realize that there is a rationale to the constantly shifting alliances that occur in human power struggles at any level from the personal to the international. When the issue is power, principles usually go out the window.

Source: Basics of Studying Power by G. William Domhoff / April 2005 -- http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/methods/studying_power.html

Thanks for join the cogitation emergence!
JM