If we move outside of our human world, what occurs in the cosmos? An asteroid, hurtling through space toward another, collides with it. The body with the greater mass and greater speed will be damaged in the impact, but it will exert more of an 'influence' on the other body. The very large and dense bodies, the stars, hold the smaller bodies, planets and their moons, in their gravitational pull. Effectively, looking at the cosmos we can guess at a motive, but ultimately it looks like a whole lot of cause and effect. With the cosmos being inanimate and incapable of perception, we cannot say there are any power relations at all, but just an unfolding of various movements and collisions and such.
Now have I just wasted a hundred words or so of article space, or has this helped to put things into some kind of perspective? Are we any different from naturally occurring bodies, bashing into each other with no real discernible motive? I think so. Yet before we get onto humanity, lets bring it closer to home; the animal kingdom. Some people may turn to the wild world of animals as some kind of indicator of our own power-situation. There is a lot of killing and chasing and worry outside the walls of civilization. Predators use whatever means they have at their disposal (i.e. their bodies and hunting skills) to catch prey, so that they may devour that prey and sustain their own bodies at the slain creatures expense. The prey on the other hand is going to do everything it can to escape. If we may generalize, it is a constant battle for survival, where hunger is an ever-present threat.
So, power in relation to human beings; what is it!
Power in the human sphere is more complex than the clashing of forces, or the 'violent/benevolent' survival cycle of nature. There are two great categories of power we must take into consideration in regards to humanity. These are materials/technology and identity.
Firstly, how powerful a group of humans are depends on how materially rich they are. With a greater potential to move matter, to disrupt matter and to enrich matter, a group of humans can maintain itself to a better degree than another group of humans, and can use its material superiority to destroy any perceived threats to it. Yet perhaps more fundamental to this material power is the notion of identity; namely, group identity. Without the ability to cooperate with, or bully, fellow humans in the same group, power quite simply cannot reach the magnitude it now occupies; group identity is the only way societies can form and function on such a huge scale. The identity people gain from belonging to a group, be it a nation, or a culture, or a religion, or anything, is the means used to win that persons loyalty and ensure they will act according to how the ruler-ship decides. These groups are held together, above all else, by a common language. Language therefore, is the prerequisite to a developed identity, and thus to power.
The actual human body
Language and technology determines how we react to biology. For instance, woman's lot has for most of human history been decided for her, either by the raw facts of her being the reproducer of human kind, or male dominance reducing her role in society to that of a second-class citizen. It is only recently, with more (but by no means total) recognition of woman's potential, and the material means to ensure reproduction is not too much of a burden, that women can move toward liberation from patriarchal servitude and be allowed to flourish on the world stage as man's equal. Thus, we cannot attribute group-identity to biology alone, but must look at the whole situation to determine how much power a group-identity is capable of obtaining.
We are not, however, completely free from biology, nor are we completely removed from the bounds of nature. Our bodies for the most part of our time on earth were geared toward a life of scant survival. Now we live in an age of abundance, yet our bodies have not had time to catch up. We have an instinctual, infinite hunger for everything that ever has been or ever will be, and nothing can satiate us. This biological lust for everything lurks within us all.
The individual
Whether I like it or not, I belong to the group 'human'. We could dance around all day searching for a definition of the word, but generally speaking we can recognise a human being from a stone, a camel or a lamp-post (or a lamp-post shaped like a camel). In addition to human, I belong to the group male, olive-skinned, attractive/cute, English-speaking, 'P' political group, 'Q' religious group, 'R' economic class, belonging to 'X' family, and so forth. All of these factors play on my abilities to function in society. We could potentially view all human beings as individuals, with their own source of power and their own unique possibilities, but how often do we see a person and how often do we see the metaphorical masks they wear, or are forced upon them?
That is not to say that individual power does not play some role. There are always geniuses emerging who defy all of the rules. For the rest of us individuals, we do have personal power structures and we can be strong or weak, we can make good or bad decisions. Like all highly evolved mammals, we have a sense of self and we can reflect and decide on what to do. Yet ultimately our success or failure is not entirely in our own hands; our power to act is hampered or aided by our belonging to this group or that group. This means that the ultimate choices we can make as individuals to exert our power on the world, require us first to find a similar group and forge an identity within it: A thinking individual within a mutually friendly group.
Those of great individual strength wish to make everyone fight on their terms; 'I'm a powerful individual, why can't you be too?'. In reality, the power of the individual is propped up by a collective identity, whether they care to acknowledge it or not. Just as a fish does not see water, the privileged does not see his privilege; he cannot see that much of his power comes from outside of himself.
An opinionated answer
So, what is power in relation to humanity? Power is economic, social, sexual, physical, personal. Power is the ability to project ones interests out of the mind and onto the world, to make people and matter move. But it is not just an unfolding random force, nor a drive for pure survival, it is couched in our sentient ability to use language and build group identities and create machines of abundance and destruction. Our use of power depends on great projects; goals and dreams and plans and visions - everyone who uses power does so for an end they think is worthwhile. The infinite lust for power may be informed by our biological drives, but how we react to and deal with this biology is determined by us.
Looking at the world today, the ultimate form of power manifests itself in dominant forces getting other people outside of their immediate interest group to destroy themselves for the dominators benefit. Nowhere has this been more historically demonstrated than in woman, who for most of history has failed to recognise herself. Sadly, we have not yet found a way to prevent this almost universally occurring form of self-destructive behaviour. We certainly won't find it through moralizing, or meekness: No individual, or group has ever surrendered its power willingly. It is only through fighting that power can be taken and shared amongst all power groups, such that they may shape the world around them into a mutually agreeable place.
Selim 'Selim' Talat
