The Origins of Power-Over
The Shift Within: How We End Oppression and Divisiveness to Create Liberation and Indivisibility for All
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The Origins of Power-Over
After having the major epiphany in 2017 that I referenced in an earlier post, and pulling over in my car to draw the concentric circles diagram below, I spent a significant amount of time researching and reading in an effort to validate my assumptions. Based on what I learned I concluded that the dominant human-made social systems that make up the social norms, beliefs, and behaviors that dominate most modern-day human societies evolved and emerged from the system of power-over.
I wanted to learn and understand as much as possible about how we got here as a society. I wanted to understand how we got to a lived reality where some people had an overabundance of resources that afforded them lives of luxury, influence, and comfort while so many other people lived in abject poverty. I wanted to understand as much as possible about why there is so much conflict, violence, and division among people as a result of our differences. So I sought out the latest evidence-based research from anthropology, sociology, archaeology, evolutionary biology, cosmology, evolutionary psychology, and other scientific fields of study in an effort to validate what I was beginning to understand intuitively.
Like everything in the observable universe, social systems including systems of power have evolved since our species, homo sapiens, appeared on earth approximately 300 thousand years ago. Power in society is dynamic and complex. It has different meanings depending on context and it has been the driving force behind the evolution of human-made social systems. There’s power-to, power-with, and power-over.
Power-to is used when discussing individual agency, choices, abilities, strengths, and weaknesses.
Power-with is used when discussing how individuals use their energy and influence to collaborate with others.
Power-over is used to discuss when individuals use their energy and influence to control others.
The latest anthropological research suggests that many prehistoric human societies were relatively egalitarian (power-with), while others were more hierarchical and stratified (power-over). In some cases, these groups switched between egalitarianism and hierarchy seasonally based on environmental demands. Egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies typically had very little social hierarchy or inequality. These societies were based on cooperation and sharing, with resources distributed more or less equally among members of the group. There was also often a strong emphasis on consensus decision-making, with no single person or group having disproportionate power or authority.
During the agricultural revolution, approximately 10-12 thousand years ago, power-over social systems took root, became more common, and rapidly expanded. They became more common and rapidly expanded due to more humans now having the ability to live sedentarily and produce & store food through farming. Prior to the agricultural revolution, most humans lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers. This new sedentary lifestyle caused the human population to grow exponentially and created a need for the development of new governing systems which led to the emergence of bands and tribes. Over time as the human population continued to boom, societies grew from bands and tribes to larger chiefdoms and states. This growth also led to power consolidation where control over land and food became a tool for the emergence of rulers and an elite class of people who would begin to wield authoritative power over commoners in a variety of ways. This also led to the evolution and emergence of hierarchies sanctioned by rulers and kings based on how they distributed roles and responsibilities within their territories and kingdoms.
In the next post I’m going to share how this emergence of power-over social systems caused oppression and divisiveness to take root in human societies.
Thanks for reading. I hope you’ll join me for my next post!
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Thanks for making this important point about the different kinds of power. They're so important to understand.