Power is a Broken Relationship

In my previous writing (before starting this blog), I sometimes used the phrase "power is a broken relationship". What I meant by that mainly was "when you have a broken relationship, one person affects the other without understanding what they're doing, or without the affected person being able to affect them back, and that is what it means to be powerful in a relationship".

If you argue with a brick wall, you can't win. The brick wall will never be persuaded. If you argue with someone who can't (or won't) understand what you're saying, you won't persuade that person of your point. You'll feel like your arguments are invalid, when really it's just that the other person can't (or won't) engage with them.

Advertisements have a lot of power. (Words and books do, too.) You can't convince an advertisement that it's wrong to manipulate you. And the advertiser is far from you, and can't really understand what they're doing to you.

People in positions of power are inherently irresponsible. They literally don't know what they're doing, and they can't know, because if they did, they would no longer be in positions of power. Certainly, this is so by the definition of "power" given in this post, and typically people who affect a lot of other people (a broader definition of power) don't understand what they're doing to the people they affect.

Two people can have power over each other. They can both affect each other without understanding what they're doing to each other. This is a broken relationship. Group dynamics create a kind of "group being" or "group spirit" which can affect individuals, but be unable to really understand them. This is also a broken relationship.

There's a certain amount of power and brokenness that we find tolerable, but perhaps it is ideal to minimize them.