How Much Power Do You Really Have?

People often complain that they feel powerless. There are, of course, many definitions of power, but when people complain of powerlessness they are most often using the word power as a substitute for control. They feel like they do not have any control over either their own lives or events happening in the wider world or both. The ability to control their own destiny has been taken from them and they are too unimportant to influence or change in any way events in the wider world or happening to the people they know. Whenever people say they feel powerless I feel compelled to disagree as I believe people have a lot more power than they think they do. Recently however, I have begun to question more deeply exactly what it is that makes me think that and if it is true.

To be clear, more power is not a universal good for all people. Many people would do terrible things if they had more power and I am glad those people are powerless or that their power is limited in scope. I intend to ignore that complication for this piece and instead focus on my particular reasons for believing that people have more power than they think they do. In order to understand those reasons we first need to look more deeply at two of the major ways people feel powerlessness in their own lives.

1. I am powerless to change or influence the course of events in the larger world around me (i.e. I do not have any control over them). I see many terrible things happening in faraway places and closer to home and I see them happening to strangers and people I know and care about. They seem to happen more frequently and there is nothing I can do to change it. I am only one person and have no power to make a difference to prevent or stop any of it.

2. I am powerless with respect to my own destiny (i.e. I do not have any control over what happens to me, and these things are almost always bad). I am swept up in the events of the world and have no real choice in the things that happen in my life. I am too weak or too poor, or too disadvantaged in some other way to fight against it. Alternatively, other people in the world are too evil and too strong or too advantaged in some other way for me to fight against.

The first idea of powerlessness is the one that had me questioning my contention that people have a lot more power than they think they do. If this is why a given person feels powerless it is hard to argue that they are not at least partly, and maybe even mostly, correct. You truly do not have any (direct) control over big issues like who the country goes to war with to give only one example. One can argue that you have some very limited control by your power to cast a vote in support or against a particular candidate for office who might be more inclined to go to war than another candidate. However, nobody knows for certain what will happen in the future and even a candidate that campaigns openly about going to war with such and such thing or country may not do so once they are elected and they are confronted with the realities of governing. If you want more direct control over questions like this, then you should run for high political office because that is almost the only way to get it. And sometimes, people who feel powerless do run for office for exactly this reason. In that case feeling powerless is a catalyst for a very good thing. As you move closer to your own circle of acquaintances, however, the people you know and interact with, this argument becomes less valid. You still do not have direct control over anyone, but you absolutely can at least influence them in many ways either through direct interactions with them or indirectly by example.

Influence by example is a greatly underrated form of control over other people. People do watch what the people in their circle do, they watch how they behave, and they partly shape their own beliefs about the world and how they should behave based on how they see everyone else they know, or even people they don’t know, behaving. I am using behavior in this sense to encompass virtually everything about how a person interacts with the world and the people in it. How they talk, how they speak, how they treat others, what they do, where they go, etc. Even if you think you are invisible, or you feel invisible, you are not. People do see you and even if it is only at a subconscious level they see how you behave. They combine those observations about how you and everyone else behaves together to inform and shape how they behave. In this sense you have at least some indirect influence over a fairly large number of people, even if you never leave the house, because how you behave online in written communications or on social media contributes in the same way as how you behave in “real” life. The only way you would not have any power over anyone else’s behavior would be if you never interacted with a single person, and if that were the case, you would have much bigger issues than feeling powerless.

Ultimately it is important to remember two things about controlling others. The first is that unless you are willing to use violence or other abhorrent means to force people to do things against their will, you cannot have any direct control over them. Sometimes this sucks but mostly it is a good thing because if you could, that would mean they could have direct control over you, and that would really suck. That would be an interesting idea for a story though, wouldn’t it? A world where people do have some level of direct control over every other person and every other person has some direct control over them. I can’t imagine what form that sort of control could take but I will be thinking about that now for sure. If you can think of it and write a story about it, make sure you credit me for the idea…LOL! It would also provide a very interesting angle for John Rawls’ famous veil of ignorance thought experiment in A Theory of Justice. Would it change anyone’s ideas with respect to the best form of government or how the most just society should be organized if they knew in advance that every other person in the society would have one form of direct control over them and they in turn would have one direct form of control over every other person?

The second thing to remember is that while you cannot have any direct control over others (without violence or other abhorrent means) you can have indirect control. This is what I am ultimately referring to when I tell people they have more power than they think they do. It is very easy to dismiss the power of indirect control as too small to make a real difference or to even totally forget that it exists. That is a mistake, and can lead to feelings of powerlessness. Influence by example, leading by example, is a very powerful form of control over others that is vastly underrated. Importantly, it goes in both directions. In other words, if one constantly says and genuinely believes they are powerless, the other people they interact with, will be influenced by that behaviour and belief and may become more likely to believe they themselves are also powerless. In that way feelings of powerlessness can quickly spread among a given set of people who interact with each other regularly. Once a majority of people start to believe they are powerless it becomes almost impossible for everyone to not feel that way. This is a psychological trick that dictators and despots have exploited for time immemorial. They thrive off of it, which is why it is so critical that one not believe it. And this is my other major reason for reminding people they are not as powerless as they think they are because I know if too many people begin to believe they are powerless the consequences for society as a whole can be catastrophic. Ultimately that is my message and I hope people take it to heart. No matter how powerless you may feel, you are not, and not only is it a negative for you to think that way about yourself, it is a negative for everyone else you interact with. When feelings of powerlessness strike focus on the power you have over yourself and your own behavior which, unless you are in prison or confined in some other way is essentially total, and use that power you do have to create a positive influence on others and the world. It may not feel like power in the traditional sense, and you may not see any tangible result now or ever, but there will be a positive result or at least not a negative one as would be the case if you continued to believe you were powerless.