posted January 08, 2004 02:05 PM            

The conflicts brewing today are only superficially questions of who will take power. Underneath is a deeper struggle: to change the nature of the power in which our society is rooted. The root question is, How do we define the world? For it is an old magical secret that the way we define reality shapes reality. Name a thing and you invoke it. If we call the world nonliving, we will surely kill her. But when we name the world alive, we begin to bring her back to life.

Reality, of course, shapes and defines us. Only when we know how we have been shaped by the structures of power in which we live can we become shapers. A psychology of liberation can become our athame, our Witch’s knife, the tool of magic that corresponds with the East, the element air: mind, clarity, vision. It is the knowledge and insight we need to carve out our own freedom.

Witches have a saying: “Where there’s fear, there’s power.” It also works backward: “Where there’s power, there’s fear.” We are afraid to look at power because one of the deepest prohibitions is that against seeing how power operates. Psychoanalyst Alice Miller, in her analysis of what she calls “poisonous pedagogy,” shows “the overriding importance of our early conditioning to be obedient and dependent and to suppress our feelings.” “The more or less conscious goal of adults in rearing infants is to make sure they will never find out later in life that they were trained not become aware of how they were manipulated.” We are afraid of the pain of seeing how deeply we have been shaped by systems of control.

Those systems and that power are built of the earth’s charred bones and cemented with her stripped flesh. In this chapter, I will explore three types of power: power-over, power-from-within, and power-with. Power-over is linked to domination and control; power-from-within is linked to the mysteries that awaken our deepest abilities and potential. Power-with is social power, the influence we wield among equals.

Power-over comes from the consciousness I have termed estrangement: the view of the world as made up of atomized, nonliving parts, mechanistically interacting, valued not for what they inherently are but only in relation to some outside standard. It is the consciousness modeled on the God who stands outside of the world, outside nature, who must be appeased, placed, feared and above all, obeyed. For, as we will see in chapter 2, power-over is ultimately born of war and the structures, social and intrapsychic, necessary to sustain mass, organized warfare. Having reshaped culture in a martial image, the institutions and ideologies of power-over perpetuate war so that it becomes a chronic human condition.

We live embedded in systems of power-over and are indoctrinated into them, often from birth. In its clearest form, power-over is the power of the prison guard, of the gun, power that is ultimately backed by force. Power-over enables one individual or group to make the decisions that affect others, and to enforce control.

Violence and control can take many forms. Power-over shapes every institution of our society. This power is wielded in the workplace, in the schools, in the courts, in the doctor’s office It may rule with weapons that are physical or by controlling the resources we need to live: money, food medical care; or by controlling more subtle resources: information, approval, love. We are so accustomed to power-over, so steeped in its language and its implicit threats, that we often become aware of its functioning only when we see its extreme manifestations. For we have been shaped in its institutions, so that the insides of our minds resemble the battlefield and the jail. In the Livermore action described in the opening of this chapter, we were relying on a different principle of power, one that I call power-from-within, or empowerment. The root of the word power means to be able. We were acting as if we were able to protect our friend. Our strength came not from weapons, but from our willingness to act.

Power-from-within is also akin to something deeper. It arises from our sense of connection, our bonding with other human bings, and with the environment.

Although power-over rules the systems we live in, power-from-within sustains our lives. We can feel that power in acts of creation and connection, in planting, building, writing, cleaning, healing, soothing, playing, singing, making love. We can feel it in acting toghter with others to oppose control.

A third aspect of power was also present in the jail at Camp Parks. We could call it power-with, or influence: the power of a strong individual in a group of equals, the power not to command, but ot suggest and be listened to, to begin something and see it happen. The source of power-with is the willingness of others to listen to our ideas. We could call that willingness respect, not for a role, but for each unique person. We joined in the chanting begun by one woman in the jail because we respected her inspiration. Her idea felt right to us. She had no authority to command, but acted as a channel to focus and direct the will of the group.

In the dominant culture, power-with has become confused with power-over. When we attempt to create new structures that do not depend upon hierarchy for cohesion, we need to recognize power-with, so that we can work with it, share and spread, and also beware of it. For like the Witch’s knife, the athame, power-with is double-bladed. It can be the seedbed of empowerment, but it can also spawn oppression. No group can function without such power, but within a group influence can too easily become authority.

posted January 09, 2004 12:30 PM            

Power-over, power-from-within, and power-with are each rooted in a mode of consciousness and a worldview that can be identified. Each speaks in its own language and is supported by its own mythologies. Each depends upon distinct motivations.

The consciousness that underlies power-over sees the world as an object, made up of many separate, isolated parts that have no intrinsic life, awareness, or value. Consciousness is fragmented, disconnected. In The Spiral Dance I compared it to seeing by flashlight with a narrow beam that illuminates on separate object at a time, but cannot reveal the fabric of space in which they interconnect. Relationships between objects are described by rules. We believe that we can, in the end, find rules to describe all things and their relationships, to predict what they will do, and allow us to control them.

The language of power-over is the language of law, of rules, of abstract generalized formulations enforced on the concrete realities of particular circumstances.

In the worldview of power-over, human beings have no inherent worth; value must be earned or granted. The formulation of Fall/Redemption oriented Christianity is that we are born in original sin and we can be saved only by grace. In the secular world, the worth we acquire is constantly rated against that of others, in school, in the workplace, by potential mates and lovers. We internalize a primal insecurity about our own right to be, which drives us to compete for the tokens of psuedo-valure.

Mechanistic science provides us with the technology of power-over. Technology gives us power entirely split from any questions of meaning or purpose. The nuclear bomb is perhaps the ultimate symbol of power-over and the ultimate irony, as nuclear physics has “proven” that the mechanistic model of the universe is overly simplistic.

Power-over motivates through fear. Its systems instill fear and then offer the hope of relief in return for compliance and obedience. We fear the force and violence of the system should we disobey, and we fear the loss of value, sustenance, comforts, and tokens of esteem.

In the jail story, our victory came when we ceased to act from fear. Systems of domination are not prepared to cope with fearlessness, because acts of courage and resistance break the expected patterns.

Power-from-within stems from a different consciousness- one that sees the world itself as a living being, made up of dynamic aspects, a world where one thing shape-shifts into another, where there are no solid separations and no simple causes and effects. In such a world, all things have inherent value, because all things are beings, aware in ways we can only imagine, interrelated in patterns too complex to ever be more than partially described. We do not have to earn value. Immanent value cannot be rated or compared. No one, nothing, can have more of it than another. Nor can we lose it. For we are, ourselves, the living body of the sacred. This is what Witches mean when we say, “Thou are Goddess,” and also what mavericks and heretics have always read into the biblical account of the creation of the world in the image of God.

Immanent value does not mean that everyone is innately good, or that nothing should ever be destroyed. What is valued is the whole pattern, which always includes death as well as birth. I pull snails off the iris leaves and crush them - they are out of pattern here. A hundred years ago they escaped from a Frenchman who brought them to California so he could continue to eat escargot. Now they ravage plants all up and down the West Coast. Yet I do not expect to completely kill them off. We will, at best, strike a balance, a new pattern. Nor will I put out poison, which disrupts the larger pattern still. I will be predator, not poisoner.

The language of power-from-within is magic, the art of changing consciousness, of shifting shapes and dimensions, of bending reality. Its science is a psychology far older than Freud, Jung, or Skinner. And its motivations are erotic in the broadest sense of the deep drives in us to experience and share pleasure, to connect, to create, to see our impact on others and on the world.

Power-with also embodies a particular consciousness, language, and set of motivations. It bridges the value systems of power-from-within and power-over. Power-with sees the world as a pattern of relationships, but its interest is in how that pattern can be shaped, molded, shifted. It values beings, forces and people according to how they affect others and according to a history based on experience. It can recognize inherent worth, but can also rate and compare, valuing some more highly than others.

The language of power-with is gossip. Gossip has a bad reputation as being either malicious or trivial. But in any real community, people become interested in each others’ relationships within the group, love affairs, quarrels, problems. The talking we do about each other provides us with valuable information; it makes us aware of whom we can trust and whom we distrust, of whom to treat carefully and whom to confront, of what we can realistically expect a group to do together.

Gossip maintains the social order in a close-knit society more effectively than law. Margery Wolf describes how she observed women’s informal groups working in rural Taiwan: “A young woman whose mother-in-law was treating her with a harshness that exceeded village standards for such behavior told her woes to a work group, and if the older members of the group felt the complaint was justified, the mother-in-law would be allowed to overhear them criticizing her, would know that she was being gossiped about, and would usually alter her behavior toward her daughter-in-law. Every woman valued her standing within the women’s circles because at some time in her life she might also need their support...In the Taiwanese village I knew best, some women were very skilled at forming and directing village opinion toward matters as apparently disparate as domestic conflicts and temple organization. The women who had the most influence on village affairs were those who worked through the women’s community.”

posted February 26, 2004 08:47 PM            

Boy it sure was a hit around here

s'okay, s'okay.. I'm a big girl I can take the rejection. *sigh* LOL

I'll admit.. taken as simply an exerpt, without the context of the rest of the book, lessens the impact of it somewhat.

posted February 26, 2004 09:21 PM              

Have you ever read "The Great Cosmic Mother"? Good stuff, along these lines.

I try to keep in mind these ideas when I am dealing with power structures and hierarchies. Changing my microcosm might help a shift in the whole.
You know, I would really like to go to a protest with you!! Too bad I no longer live out West.....well, I might be soon.

posted February 27, 2004 03:55 PM              

nice post....there is such strength and insight there....now i must find a copy of this book.

and the athame part....wow!

i'd like to address what seems to me the heart of of the treatise....

Psychoanalyst Alice Miller, in her analysis of what she calls “poisonous pedagogy,” shows “the overriding importance of our early conditioning to be obedient and dependent and to suppress our feelings.” “The more or less conscious goal of adults in rearing infants is to make sure they will never find out later in life that they were trained not become aware of how they were manipulated.” We are afraid of the pain of seeing how deeply we have been shaped by systems of control.

i know you have a toddler, so perhaps you can help me here. i'm trying to guide my 18 month old babe into the wide world without this conditioning. we do (try to anyway...) attachment parenting. 'the continuum concept' had a major influence on me, although i haven't finished it. but i know he is still subject to this -- this 'power-over' conditioning. he is so strong willed and we struggle a lot with typical toddler things (such as diaper changes and car seats). and i allow him to dominate my life....my choice, yes.....i wouldn't have it any other way, but it does affect our quality of life sometimes. he is a high-spirited, high-needs baby, and i find it difficult to do basic maintenance things such as cook clean and sleep (we co-sleep and he still nurses....and he wakes up ready to face the day at 5 am...).

we manage, but I still feel we get locked in this power thing. and i would like to improve the quality of our life, both for our time together and my physical well-being.

this very moment, for example, is typical, as he tolerates very little of my activities, whether it's reading, cooking, online...etc. he is crying because i'm on the pc and not involved with him. if i sit in his playroom and watch him, or even tv, he is fine...but if i read or do any other work while sitting he can't stand it and cries until i stop. every day is a challenge to accomplish even basic things.

btw i have posted here before but had to re-sign up anonymously because of, you guessed it, power-control issues in other relationships. i say this especially because there were so many responses to people i wanted to make that either took a long time or never appeared for this very reason. so sorry about that!

and at this moment i am begging and pleading with him to have just a few minutes to finish this.....and now he's sad and frustrated and crying and i'm sad and frustrated and crying....

please help...how can i resolve this while maintaining our goals to overcoming this so negative conditioning?

ok, gotta go....

love, talaith

posted February 27, 2004 05:21 PM            

Now, I am the sort of person that absolutely must have time to read and do things just for me. It's how I recharge my batteries so as to be a better mom.

What it came down to was ultimately a battle of wills. I don't think it is power-over conditioning to teach him that he can't always have what he wants when he wants it. It's just simply the way of things. When he was a little baby I could tell that his cries stemmed from actual fear and true need. As he got older I noticed that it changed into something more akin to manipulation(not always, but at times). He figured out that crying = my full attention.

However, I got to the point where I desperately needed time to myself and he had to learn, one way or another, how to entertain himself. So..I pretty much just ignored him. Well not completely... I would periodically tell him in a calm voice that I understood he was upset but right now I'm busy doing some important work and then I would suggest things for him to do. Like read a book (well.. look at a book anyway ) or play with a particular toy. For a while he totally ignored my suggestions and continued to scream. Nevertheless I would continue to make them and look him in the eye and give him a sympathetic look and then I would just calmly go back to the computer or the book or the cooking or whatever and just let him scream. Eventually (like after a month or two) he got the picture. He came to realize that in those instances, crying did no good. I of course always made sure that he was fed and dry and that his crying was truly stemming from only the desire to monopolize my attention.

Now, this wasn't always easy. I had to struggle not to get upset myself by listening to him cry for extended amounts of time. At first it was regularly up to an hour of pure screaming with basically no breaks in it. It's the sort of thing that made me want to start screaming and banging my head into the wall or breaking down in tears myself but I was determined to remain calm and follow through with teaching him this lesson. It was sort of like weaning him off the round-the-clock mommy attention he was used to for his whole life. (Though the actual weaning was involuntary on my part due to an out of control infection of thrush when he was 9 months old.. I wanted to breastfeed longer and I applaud you for doing so)

It took what seemed like forever, but was probably only about a month for the worst of it.. after which the crying spells got shorter and shorter until he finally understood that there are just times when he needs to do things on his own without me right next to him every second. Right now he's bouncing on the couch and boppin his head to some jazz.

I think it's really good for him that he sees me reading so much. That was one of the hardest things too.. Trying to read a book when there is a toddler standing right in front of me screaming bloody murder. But I managed.. even if I had to read the same paragraph 8 times just to get it to sink in despite such a distraction. But now he will sit down with a book and look it over all by himself for a 15 minutes at a time and he's already well on the way to learning the alphabet. We will sit next to eachother, both of us with our books.

I suppose that it may sound like a harsh tactic to some but it's all I could think to do and having thought through the esoteric implications of it, it seems to be in line with what I believe to be best for his growth and understanding of how the world works. The crucial part is that it's balanced with plenty of attention from me at other times. So he understands that there is a time for us to play together and a time for him to play by himself while I do 'grown-up' stuff. It think that doing that at that time was crucial in our transition from co-sleeping to him in his own room which started when he turned two.
That was a smoother transition by far then just getting him to let me have some 'puter time. I could go on about how that worked for awhile but I think I'll stop here before I ramble on incessantly.