Is power necessarily a source of domination and strife?

The mental model of competition produces what Michael Karlberg[1] describes so well as an “adversarial culture” or “culture of contest”. In this culture, the prevailing worldview is one of competition, in which individuals and institutions pursue their own interests, there are always winners and losers, and the strongest, most powerful or most influential person, institution or party "wins". Since the outcomes of such a system are rarely equitable, in order to address the injustices that inevitably arise, the culture of adversarialism is surrounded by a culture of protest. The objected injustice then becomes the center of another conflict, which in turn leads to additional protests, and so on.

Therefore, the competitive mental model is closely linked to another mental model regarding power. When speaking of power, people usually refer to control or dominance over someone within relationships of struggle and domination, of competition and conflict. According to this assumption, power is perceived as a scarce resource, so acquiring it requires entering into a power struggle with others who want it. This mental model is so deeply engrained in today’s society that the majority defines “politics” as a power struggle, which in turn leads them to doubt the possibility of a harmonious social order.

This model of power no longer meets the needs of humanity, if it ever did. Rather, it is a cause of division, conflict and discord, which tend to hamper progress towards our common goals. For example, in most modern democracies, the political scenario is divided into parties that compete for power by accruing a majority of votes. Those who prevail in this electoral contest form the governing regime and attempt to promote certain programs, while the rest make up the ‘opposi­tion’ and do everything they can to frustrate those efforts. The upshot is that some push the country in one direction while the others push it in another, which seriously impedes its progress.

This failure of the traditional mental model of power has prompted a search for alternative conceptual frameworks. Thus, Michael Karlberg distinguishes various types of power. All power is power to, which simply means the ability to achieve something. This is divided into two main categories: (1) power against, which is the ability to control or dominate others; and (2) power with, which is when people decide to do something together, working in cooperation to achieve a common goal. The dynamics of “power against” generate adversarial relations, while the dyna­mics of power with produce mutualistic relations.

In a culture of adversarialism, power against is utilized to control others in a relationship of domination–submission that benefits the most powerful. In mutualistic relations, however, power with is used to empower others, generate synergies and achieve positive change for the benefit of all. In the first case, the most powerful win and the rest lose. In the latter case, the results are always positive as they are based on agreements from which everyone wins and nobody loses. It is precisely power with that agents of sociocultural change should seek to promote.

As the Universal House of Justice has stated,

“In its traditional, competitive expression, power is as irrelevant to the needs of humanity's future as would be the technologies of railway locomotion to the task of lifting space satellites into orbits around the earth.”[2]

Notes:

[1]  Michael Karlberg: Beyond the Culture of Contest – From Adversarialism to Mutualism in an Age of Interdependence. Oxford: George Ronald Publisher, 2004.

[2]  Bahá'í International Community, Prosperity of Humankind, a statement presented to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Copenhagen, 1995.

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