Power Over, Power To, & Power With

Lone activist Ieshia Evans stands her ground while offering her hands for arrest, 9 July 2016.

THE SPECTACLE OF VIOLENCE, SOCIAL MEDIA, AND OUR RADICAL POWERLESSNESS

I had been in a trance for forty five minutes straight: Doomscrolling. Barely conscious. I slid downward, ever downward, through videos of improv comedy, corgi butts, nutritionist hot takes on ice cream, and then it hit me: actual footage of a warcrime. Something so atrocious, I don't even have words for it. And it wasn't the first time this had happened; images of the genocide in Gaza had punctuated my social media since October of 2023.

This time, however, the shock was deeper.

I felt so powerless. Not only powerless to stop my own tax dollars from funding the firebombing of this place halfway across the world--but powerless even to focus my attention where I wanted. I had never intended to scroll on instagram and see that. I keep daily tabs on geopolitics and try to have a constant, sober awareness of what is going (wrong) in the world. I need to see images like that. I need to know. But the platform had rendered me powerless beyond powerless--a passive victim of an eternal waterslide down into a spectacle of human torment.

I lost a whole hour that day and a lot of sleep over mindless "engagement" with Meta. All for what? It wasn't for me, it wasn't adding any real value to my life. It certainly wasn't helping the poor family I saw engulfed in Hell on Earth. It was lining a Meta investor's pockets, and nothing more.

Many of my clients feel similarly powerlessness. We feel that impotence alongside guilt, rage, and fear. But we are all vulnerable to the illusion of mistaking social media as a democratic platform where we can, somehow, reach toward some kind of power. The very little power we have--to speak out. But more often than not, we end up just feeding the trolls, upsetting ourselves and others, and withdrawing into passive doomscrolling. The ripples of our tiny protests on facebook and twitter get lost in the ocean of the culture war, and we are no more powerful than a mouse on a battlefield.

POWER OVER

We are accustomed to thinking of power, as Mao said, coming "from the barrel of a gun." Power is something that wears a suit and rides in a black limo; power carries a Glock, cuffs, baton, and mace. Power can evict a family into the streets of Chicago in January. Power is the (D) and (R) on a presidential ballot, when both candidates make you nauseous but you have to participate in the illusion of choice.

Power OVER is the power of coercive authority. We sometimes call it "command and control" power. Power Over is what shapes our lifespan, our cost of living, our schools, hospitals, workplaces, prisons, and foreign policy. It's what created this world we live in. And although we're made to believe we live in a democracy, most Americans feel down in their bone marrow that they are actually powerless--and they're sort of right.

In most ways, we are powerless: powerless to stop the endless wars of profit, powerless to stop the economy from its endless sinewave, powerless to stop crashing through new low after new low. We are powerless to stop one third of the country from desperately trying to murder, starve, deport, or incarcerate another third, while the middle third stands there calling for compromise.

Many Americans yearn for Power Over as the solution to their deep feeling of powerlessness.

As Paulo Friere says, "when education is not liberating, the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor."

We often think of this as a problem within toxic masculinity: from ancient warrior cultures to John Wayne to Andrew Tate, toxic masculinity has promised insecure boys that the solution to their negative feelings is Power Over women, queer people, and weaker boys. And it's not only men who get told this. "Girlpower" feminism is the one reason the Barbie Movie had so much resonance for people; if the solution to sexism is to become an extraordinary Girlboss™ and crush your inferiors underfoot, you have become the very monster you wanted to slay.

POWER TO

So. If we aren't X-Men, Jedi Knights, or Girlbosses who can crush the powers of evil, what are we? We're just people. We're Human, after all.

Power TO is where a great deal of social justice approaches choose to focus. We COULD gain power over--maybe through getting an education in medicine or law, maybe by gun ownership, or maybe by running for office. But the real power of life, the power that shaped every good experience we ever had, is the power To. The power to do.

A client struggling with alcohol addiction once asked me what the point is--when the world is so dark and awful, when politics is so dire, "what is the point of getting sober?"

"What's the point of getting sober?"

That question was like hearing someone clinging to the iron bars of a cell on death row ask me"what's the point of getting out of here?"

Power TO emphasizes the grand and truly infinite of scope of choices the oppressor can (rarely, maybe not never) take away from us. Our creative potential, our phenomenal ability to make meaning, our connections with each other, our capacity to grow. They can murder, incarcerate, traumatize and terrorize us, but we the people still create the world through our power to.

Power to is the same power that planted every tree you've ever enjoyed the shade of. The power my grandpa used to make a piece of furniture that's still with me twenty years after his death. The power my mother used to teach me knife skills I use every day in the kitchen. The power I use to try to help somebody heal. The power that wrote every book I've ever read. The power that makes life and beauty possible in even the darkest chapters of human atrocity.

POWER WITH

A final note, lest you think I'm a political nihilist and all we can do is stay in our lane and plant gardens and knit sweaters together. Power To can lead to something greater than Power Over.

Every revolutionary moment where people stand up to oppression happens because the Power To organize,

the power To connect,

the Power To DEMAND a moral or material change; that power to leads to a collective power.

Collective power, what we call Power With--that is the greatest power over.

*Gilens M, Page BI. Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens. Perspectives on Politics. 2014;12(3):564-581. doi:10.1017/S1537592714001595