We Ignore Power at Our Peril
We need to own it, or it owns us
Dear Ones,
I am really ready for Autumn.
Aren’t you?
I feel like a kid, anticipating all of the leaf piles I want to jump in… and imagining all the red-orange-yellow hikes I want to go on. 🍁
So I’m wishing all of my fellow Northern Hemisphere dwellers a lovely Autumn Equinox on Sunday. How will you mark it?
Hit “reply” and let me know your plans!
With Love,
Cecelia 💗
PS:
Remember I told you that I was launching one of my new offerings this week? HERE IT IS! The Wisdom Circle for Philanthropy is now available to any and all mid- to later-career fundraisers who are looking for support and guidance and community.
I’m SO happy to extend this opportunity to you, to your colleagues and friends, and to all of my beloved comrades in this work.
Check it out! And please share it with anyone who you think will benefit.
The virtual “doors” will be open until early October, and the first Circle gathering will be 10/10.
PPS:
As a newsy reminder from last week, I’m now offering group subscriptions to For the Love of Humanity — which allows teams to sign up for the full value here… with a discount. People told me that they really want to bring their teams into the discussion here, and I hope this helps that happen.
PPPS:
As our final newsy reminder from last week, Save the Date for our first Community Coaching gathering for paid subscribers of For the Love of Humanity!
We’ll be gathering NEXT Wednesday, September 25th, 2:30-4PM via Zoom. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I want to be sure it doesn’t get lost in the shuffle.
Consider becoming a paid subscriber before then, so you can join us!
If that is something you’d love to do but it’s financially difficult for you, no worries. I’ll be happy to comp your subscription. No questions asked.
Community is what we’re about here, and that’s what we’re prioritizing.
Just ask!
You’re meeting somebody for coffee at a neighborhood cafe.
How much do you hustle to get there on time… or even early?
That depends on who you’re meeting, probably.
Right?
Say you’re meeting a close friend. You’re likely fairly relaxed and not too worried about what time you actually arrive.
Say you’re meeting someone who needs something from you. You are doing them a favor by meeting with them and spending the time with them. You are likely to be even more relaxed… because what would it matter if they had to wait a bit? You are going out of your way to be there for them at all, right?
Now, say you have requested the meeting of someone else, and you are the one who needs something. Say you are meeting a wealthy person who you’d like to ask to support the organization you work for. If you were running late in this scenario… how stressed would you be? I’m guessing pretty stressed. Yes?
These different scenarios demonstrate interpersonal power dynamics.
Who holds power. Who doesn’t.
Who has more. Who has less.
Who bends over backward for who…
Who carries the stress of a situation…
Who doesn’t carry as much stress — if any.
Make sense?
OK.
Now, you get to share your own input on these dynamics.
Don’t answer how you think you should answer. Answer with what you think is actually most likely in a typical scenario in our society….
So.
What do you think?
Can you see the power dynamics at play in these scenarios?
On the one hand, I think they seem obvious…
… but on the other, I think these dynamics have a way of hiding.
We often don’t see them.
But yet we’re still affected by them.
Everywhere.
All the time.
Our Lessons on Power Start Early
We started out this life powerless.
Unlike most other mammals, when we humans are first born, we are completely dependent and helpless.
We cannot locomote without help.
We cannot eat without help.
We cannot eliminate our waste from eating without help.
We will waste away and die without love and care from others.
We are truly powerless.
Growing as a child is many things. And one of those things is navigating the process of starting to have power… and learning how to use it.
When we’re kids, we usually don’t really have power at home, given the way our dominant culture teaches parenting.
These norms are starting to change some, but the cultural zeitgeist we’re still emerging from is one where parents are generally authoritarian in the home, having total control and power and demanding fealty from their kids.
The more love there is, the less that power feels oppressive.
But with less, or no, or twisted love, the experience for kids within homes can rival the adult experience of living under a dictator.
I know that may be tough to hear.
And you may resist the idea.
But just think of a kid as no more than a tiny human…
… and then about how any human feels with so little power.
And kids respond to that oppression the way most healthy humans would. They resist. Sometimes the revolts get intense.
Most kids start to leave the home to spend time without their parents around three or four years old, for various forms of education and experience, and it is then that they begin to explore and experience power in other contexts.
They start to have some autonomy to experiment on their own.
Depending on what the home environment is like, kids may have some aggression to work out in these out-of-home contexts, where they can have more power.
For instance, kids that become bullies are clinging to power, trying to monopolize it. They become experts at stripping others of their own power through intimidation.
They’re learning about power as they do that, and those they bully are learning about power too. SO much learning is happening.
The power games become more and more complex and nuanced, the older kids get. Middle school and high school are veritable Game of Thrones-level battles for dominance and sovereignty. Heck, most high schools literally crown kings and queens — either for Homecoming or Prom, or both, or for other reasons.
Some of the primary lessons learned by high school graduation — and the launch into some form of independent adulthood — are all about power.
Now, are these lessons consciously learned?
Not exactly.
Many/most are absorbed via a form of osmosis…
…in the subconscious realm.
But learned they are. They are learned well.
Our Culture Creates Hierarchies Linked to Power
We all started learning about the hierarchies as a kid, too… right?
I remember when, years ago now, my Little Brother, through Big Brothers Big Sisters, was in the car with us, looking out the back window at the world going by, as kids do.
He was probably about eight at this point.
I heard his little voice say wistfully:
“I wanna live in a White neighborhood when I grow up.”
Even at that young age, he had clearly learned: the places that seemed the nicest, the most desirable, were the ones where all the White people lived.
People will say today that the hierarchies are falling. “We had a Black President!” Or “I see women leaders all around me at work!”
But how could the hierarchies really go anywhere, when we were all conditioned so effectively during our formative years?
That stuff is baked. in.
All of the Mean Girls-esque social statuses are well-learned by all the members of a school community. And I know many adults who still live within that same type of mental framework.
I bet you do too.
And let me be clear.
We humans don’t hierarchify just for the sake of hierarchy.
We hierarchify to apportion power.
And despite how you might want to point to progress… the long-standing hierarchies still prevail. So much so, I’m sure I’d get the same answers if I asked a bunch of people who were committed to honesty, one after the other:
—> What qualities send you to the top of the hierarchy in our prevailing culture?
Whiteness
Maleness
Wealth
Lots of education
What we’ve determined as physical attractiveness
Physical strength and prowess
Thinness
OK, then.
—> And which qualities might send you to the bottom?
Blackness
Femaleness
Lack of wealth
Lack of education
Physical features different than what we’ve collectively determined is attractive
A disability or physical weakness
Obesity
And remember: we’re apportioning power, here.
Just like we learned as kids.
So who gets the most power?
The closer you are to Whiteness, maleness, wealth, highly educated, conventional physical attractiveness, physical strength and prowess, and thinness, the more power you’ll hold in our society, as it is.
And conversely, the closer you are to Blackness, femaleness, lack of wealth, lack of education, unique physical features, a disability or physical weakness, or obesity, the less power you’ll hold.
Writing all of that out, there’s a part of me that goes, “Well, duh.”
I’ve lived in this society a long time already.
You have too.
We’ve learned the lessons.
We ALL know this is true.
Then, there’s another part of me that goes, “You can’t just come out and SAY all that! That’s too inflammatory! And mean!”
And then there’s a very grounded, wise part of me that responds, “You aren’t inventing this reality. You’re just pointing out what is reality. Like the child pointed out that the emperor was naked in The Emperor’s New Clothes. And the only way it can ever truly change is if you, and everyone else, fully acknowledge reality and consciously collaborate to change it, starting within.”
What Was Has Remained What Is
So who DID invent this reality?
I need to take a little detour before I answer that question.
Here’s the thing.
Because too many of us live in very unconscious ways, we just replicate what we’ve experienced without really looking critically at it.
Without conscious examination, appraisal, and a commitment to healing and growth, we will just keep doing what we’ve always seen done. We keep re-creating what we’ve experienced before. The past stretches into the present.
How many folks do you know who are actively committed to living consciously?
To closely examining themselves and the way they live?
To prioritizing healing and growth?
The vast majority of our fellow humans don’t do this... right?
SO.
The reality we live in now has been basically unchanged, passed from generation to generation. There may be slight tweaks. But the original foundation of our shared mental, emotional, spiritual, energetic home is still there, as the vast majority of us haven’t looked deeply enough to begin renovating it.
And now we get to answer the question above:
Who DID invent this reality?
All of the systems and realities we live within these days — and continuously recreate — were originally created by the only people who DID have power back when they were first begun: White, male, wealthy landowners.
These people already had all the power then.
So why would they EVER create a system or reality where they could stand to lose that power? Of course they wouldn’t!
And here’s the problem.
We’ve all soaked. in. this reality.
Generation… after generation.
This is… reality!… to us.
This reality is familiar.
This reality is all we’ve known.
This reality is something we’ve been learning well since before we could talk… or walk… or think for ourselves.
If we want to stop re-creating this reality, we’d need to do some deep, conscious inner work. Railing at the reality as a problem outside of ourselves will not change anything. Ask me how I know.
On the other hand, changing our own being will.
Own Power or It’ll Own You
Power is something that you have to consciously own — or power, as determined and created by other people, will own you.
We will be getting much more into this, over time. But for now, let me leave you with a few tidbits to get you pondering more on this topic:
Power Lies in Choice: As we started talking about in the paid subscriber community this week, you have power in your choices. We were reminded of this truth by Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, who said this: “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Power Lies in Connection: I know this from experience, and I’m betting you do too. Going it alone, living as an island, is quite limiting. There’s an inherent weakness in it. Which forces you to try to protect what power you think you do have, because others seem like threats to it. On the other hand, if you relax, and open up, and connect, and collaborate with others… you will experience the greatest power you’ve ever experienced.
Power Without Connection is Brittle: If you are clinging to power without being connected to the humans around you, you have a lot to lose. Others become outsiders who can take what you have away from you. Your power feels like it could crumble like dust — and it likely could, unless the conditions are just right. So you are forced into a reality where you need to tightly control conditions. You’re rigid. This is not true power. This power is an illusion, and it is destructive, but even despite its destructiveness... it is brittle.
Power Lies in Generosity: Another reflection we shared in the paid subscriber community this week was about the power in generosity. I’ll leave you today with the same poem we pondered earlier this week:
Even
After
All this time,
The Sun never says to the Earth,
"You owe me."
Look
What happens
With a love like that.
It lights the whole sky.
― Hafiz