The Other Side of Power

[gatito]

 

http://www.claudesteiner.com/osp.htm

[Wells]

.

Edited March 2, 2017 by Wells

[gatito]

 

Introduction

THE AMERICAN POWER NIGHTMARE

Thirty years ago in the 1970's, when I started writing this book, there was an upsurge of interest in power. The cold war was in full force and America faced a formidable, seemingly perpetual antagonist. It seemed that in spite of all of its might, the nation was impotent. Understandably, the US citizenry became interested in power and powerlesness at the national and personal level. Books like The Power Broker, by Robert A. Caro; The Price of Power, by Arnold Hucschnecker, The Abuse of Power, by Newfield and Du Brill; Power, Inc., by Mintz and Cohen, Power and Innocence, by Rollo May; Tales of Power, by Carlos Castaneda; Power, the Inner Experience, by David McClelland;  On Personal Power, by Carl Rogers, and many others, appeared continuously over a span of a few years. Of all the books on power, Michael Korda's, Power! How to Get It, How to Use It was practical, readable and sophisticated and became a sensational best-seller. It spoke directly and clearly about the everyday realities of power as it operates in the mainstream of American life: the business world. Almost simultaneously with Korda's book, How to Win Through Intimidation, by Robert Ringer, also became an instant best-seller. Ringer's book was less intricate and thoughtful, more down-to-earth; the common man's version of Korda's book. They both faithfully portrayed the kind of power relations we are all immersed in wherever we go.

Korda's book was an encyclopedia of observations about power behavior and because it was a major best seller I imagine that it had a definite effect on power behavior in industry and commerce. Korda pointed to the importance of the brief-cases, watches, shoes, and clothes that people wear. He proposed that ears, noses, eyes, and feet are as important as where we sit in our own or someone else's office, how we move around at an office party, or how we answer the phone. He claimed that all of these items are related to our level of power.

In a March 1977 Mainliner interview with Joseph Poindexter, Korda defines power extremely narrowly as "the ability to control people, events, and oneself.... In a word, power is control." He also subtly but very definitely admires power abuse: "(A) notion of power I'm fond of is: is the extent to which you can make others wait for you as opposed to having to wait for them. "

In his definition of power as strictly a matter of control over others, Korda followed the most common view. This all-pervasive notion is shared by most writers on the subject; power is defined by the control we have over others. The only disagreement about power seems to be whether power (control over others) is good or bad, desirable or undesirable.

Korda seems to admire people who are powerful but use their power over others smoothly and elegantly. For instance, he speaks almost lovingly of David Mahoney, his boss, chief executive of Norton Simon, Inc., at that time 52 years old, whose office "seems to have been designed to reflect the presence of power and money, in a quiet, self-assured style that is peculiar to late twentieth-century America." He describes stainless steel and leather furniture, enormous abstract paintings; everything is solid and expensive, "... what makes the difference is money." 

Korda describes Mahoney's eyes: large, intelligent, hypnotic, unblinking, cold, shrewd. For Korda, Mahoney seemed to exemplify the ideal of power and success. Impressive offices, limousines, obedient and efficient employees, expense accounts, servants; in short, maximum control, minimum effort. In example after example in his book he endorses maneuvers for the same goal--control--as long as they are subtle, elegant, smooth, and secretive. He is a sophisticate of power abuse; it's good to have power and to use it to control others, as long as it is done with style. Most stylish, of course, is the capacity to appear to have no power at all while being all-powerful: "The contemporary American's type of power is to pretend that one has none."

In contrast to Korda's veiled support of power abuse, Robert Ringer, in his book  Winning Through Intimidation, cuts to the chase. He assures us at the onset that there are only three types of people, all three of which are out to screw you so that you need not have any qualms regarding rapacious behavior of your own.

"Type #1 lets you know from the beginning that he is out to get all of your chips and attempts to do just that.

Type #2 assures you that he's not interested in getting your chips and implies that he wants to be fair with you. He then follows through and tries to grab all of your chips anyway.

Type #3 assures you that he is not interested in getting any of your chips, and he sincerely means it. In the end, due to any number of reasons, he, like Type #1 and #2, still ends up trying to grab your chips. His motto is 'I really didn't mean to cut off your hand at the wrist, but I had no choice when you reached for your chips.' "

According to Ringer, there are no Type #4 people: your choice is between #1, #2, and #3. In other words there is no such thing as a person who won’t try to grab all the chips only different levels of self deception.

Ringer calls these three types his professors at "Screw U." If asked, I imagine Korda would seem to be ambivalent about just which, of these three, he particularly prefers: Ringer's mind is made up. Type #1, the honest (because straightforward) vulture is his clear favorite, since he would rather deal with a straightforward competitor than with a Type #2, who has every intention of screwing him, but disguises his intentions successfully enough to confuse his victim. Type #3, the mystifying vulture, may be Michael Korda's favorite, since he seems to feel that the trick is "to make people do what you want them to, and like it, to persuade them that they want what you want." But regardless of type every one of these people deserves the same treatment "Grab their chips before they grab yours."

Korda and Ringer reflected what was going on and still is going on in a very large and influential portion of the world of business. In this world:

"There is a fixed amount applicable to a given situation at a given time, and what you have diminishes what someone else has by that amount. Your gain is someone else's loss; your failure, someone else's victory."

Mainliner Interview

Indeed, for many, it is hard to see what is wrong with this approach. Control, power, and money do seem awfully attractive don't they? What else can make us feel as good? Who can argue that it is better to be without them? Why not pursue them? Love, fairness, and generosity sound good, but can we feed our children on them?

Still, the values of cooperation, mutual aid, kindness and compassion are equally attractive and they die hard. The fact is that by committing themselves to the power hungry life-style, people are leaving behind all of the different options in which achievement of power doesn't depend on reducing someone else's, or risking one's own, in a competitive gamble. The heartless attitudes about people and their feelings required by this approach to life have many well recognized, though silent consequences: alienated marriages, nasty divorces, ruined friendships, sullen, angry, drug-taking children, ulcers, hypertension, heart disease.

Ironically, Robert Ringer who wrote about the "Ringer Method" for automobile sales in which he details how to intimidate and screw your costumer, become a self-made philosopher for "free enterprise." In his later book, Restoring the American Dream, he cleaned up his act and re-sold it in the form of a Right Wing manifesto on Freedom, Individualism, and the American Dream. According to Ringer, "America can't afford not to have rich people, for they are the very backbone of productivity, employment, and a better life for all."  The aplomb with which Ringer states his views can be understood if one remembers that he is, first and foremost, a salesman. It all sounds so plausible somehow. How did the rich become the backbone of productivity? What happened to the workers and their backs? 

                                                                 ******

Politics is about power and how we get what we want. The personal is political; out personal struggles follow the same patterns and motivations observed in local, regional, national and global politics. 

Today as we enter the XXI century the US, without any credible challengers in the international power struggle, has thoroughly absorbed the power grabbing notions to the point that they have become national goals. George W. Bush has endorsed them as guidelines for this country in his administration's National Defense Policy. In this policy the position outlined is that the US is the most powerful nation in the world and that it is reasonable that the US should maintain that superiority and deter by any means, even war if necessary, any nation that threatens that superiority. The American Dream, if the  nation follows this path, is about to become a global nightmare.

Let me turn away from the global power struggles to personal ones. In my own personal history I can say that power has been of central importance. My childhood and adolescence was replete with power struggles between myself and my siblings, parents and teachers. In the early days of my adult career I was  mighty proud of my accomplishments. I had written several successful books, I had a thriving psychotherapy and lecturing practice and a modest but secure financial position.  It seemed to me-and others similarly fortunate-that with a little hard work anybody could achieve similar success. 

What I didn't realize is that I was the privileged white, male child of educated parents in a land and time of plenty. I didn't realize that many other people worked twice as hard as I did, and didn't succeed at all. I didn't know that people, just as smart, just as hardworking as myself went through life unable to keep up with their basic needs and spent their "golden" years in abject poverty-if they lived that long. I happened to be on the top one tenth of one percent levels of privilege in a global pyramid which funneled its resources in my direction, and I was not aware of it.

I did not at the time see how much of what I had accomplished was based on resources which were mostly not my own. In other words; my power was not really mine. It had a large portion of its source elsewhere, and I had mistakenly assumed that it came solely from me. I wasn't as entitled to the feelings of mastery and power that I enjoyed as I believed. As I became more aware of the realities of my position on the "ladder of success," I had more and more difficulty when trying to assert my privilege because I saw that my power was based on the powerlessness of others.

I began to glimpse the realities of my fortunate dream as a result of the civil-rights movement of the late fifties. I had known, of course, that people of color were abused in this country, but I had not stopped to think about how their oppression benefited me, personally. The struggle of blacks did not affect me directly and I was sympathetic to its theoretical goals. Years later, in the late sixties, the full reality of my unearned personal privilege was served up to me by the women's movement. Women all around me began to stop cooking, doing dishes, taking care of children. Instead they started taking up space in conversations and questioning men's right to dominate every situation with their presence and opinions. It was clear now that if I was going to be serious about other people's rights I would actually have to give up some of my privileges.

To my surprise, I found that hard to take. My women friends report that I had to be forced to let go of my grip on things, finger by claw-like finger. I was lucky to have loving--as well as determined--teachers in this matter. Each concession of power on my part was rewarded and followed by a reward and a new, demanding lesson. I discovered that giving up privilege, though uncomfortable and frightening, can be exhilarating as well. I began to notice that being fair often felt better than getting my way and that the pleasure of sharing what I had made up for having to do with less. Eventually, I also saw that letting go of power caused people to treat me more lovingly and respectfully.

From then on it was a simple matter to realize that my privilege extended beyond blacks and women. I had an unfair advantage over young and old people, gay people, disabled people, fat people, single people, but above all over the vast numbers of poor people in this country and the world over. The illusion that I was entitled to that advantage dissolved, and this new awareness radically changed my view of myself and the world.

Let's face it: we of the affluent "First World" have been on a free ride for a long time; a free ride provided to us, for one thing, by hardworking people around the world. Just as importantly the free ride has been provided for us by the good Earth from which the First World has voraciously taken without any opposition and with only a few farseeing prophets making a fuss about it. Coming soon--actually here, right around the corner-- we will run out of easily appropriated natural resources. Cheap oil and therefore cheap energy are dwindling. The same is true of lumber, steel and many other commodities. The world's renewable resources are not renewing themselves, and our non-renewable resources are deteriorating in spite of conservationists efforts to limit further environmental destruction. On the other hand, the dispossessed are pressing their claims; women are demanding power and respect, racial minorities want what's coming to them, workers want a fair wage, decent housing, education and health care. More and more people want a a well deserved piece of the affluent dream. Still, the rich, here and everywhere, are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. 

In the end a few will be able to hold on to their increasingly unfair advantage; a few always do. The rest of us will have take a second job, recycle, conserve, car-pool, ride public transportation, walk, bicycle, work, sweat, wait in line, share, discuss, be outvoted, organize, vote again, demand our rights, and respect the rights of others. In short, we'll have to work harder and we'll possibly have to do with less. 

The fear of course is that if we let go of our advantage everything we have will be lost to the greed of others. After all power is a zero sum game, we fear, and whatever anyone else gets will be taken from our plate. But we need not be frightened because power is not a zero sum game. That is to say that when we cooperate with others we don't just give up some of our power but we amplify theirs and ours as I will illustrate throughout this book. A friend of mine expresses it as follows: "Power is in everything, omnipresent, locked in every cell, every molecule and atom. It naturally radiates from all matter. We are powerless only because we curtail and disbelieve in ourselves and each other". 

There is power and pleasure, hidden from our view by power greed. There is strength without abuse. There is power in cooperation with other people when we grow powerful together. There is power in love, passion, communication, intelligence and spirituality. None of these take power away from others and they can only develop in cooperation with others

I don't want to treat any person, living thing, or portion of the Earth as my exclusive property, to be used at will for my selfish purposes. I want the power of give and take when I put in as much as I take in every situation. I want the power of close loving friends and family. I want to be fair, considerate, and neighborly. I want the powerful feeling of being guided by my conscience in my actions. I want to grow old and crusty and be respected for my life and deeds. I want to be appreciated by my co-workers, neighbors and business competitors. I want to be fully alive to my powers and to the portion of the earth I inhabit. I want all of those powerful things without abusing power, and I want you to have the same. And not just you, but all of us who inhabit this planet.

The alternative offered in this book-The Other Side of Power-is based on the belief that it is possible to be powerful without abusing power; to be happy and alive and at the same time fair, considerate and cooperative. In this book I will offer practical ideas and guidelines to achieving that sort of power in the world.

 

[Brian]

 

http://www.claudesteiner.com/osp.htm

Thank you.

[Wu Ming Jen]

Alone together, crash landing, deafening silence, Parking in the driveway.

[gatito]

Alone together, crash landing, deafening silence, Parking in the driveway.

 

Another shining example of the Oxymoron.

 

I guess that's to be expected in Off Topic?