TO EXPLAIN WHERE I have arrived in my uanding of power and love and social ge, I have to explain how I started.
I grew up in Montreal and studied physibsp;at McGill Uy. In the summer of 1981, as I was finishing my undergraduate degree, I attended a meeting of the Pugwash ferenbsp;on Sbsp;and World Affairs in Banff, Alberta, where I heard a speebsp;about the crucial energy and enviroal challenges arising out of the increasing plexity and fullnessof people and ideas and thingsof the world. I decided to shift my studies from physibsp;to social sces, and I went on to do a graduate degree in eibsp;and publibsp;polibsp;at the Uy of California at Berkeley. After graduation, I worked at a variety of researbsp;institutions in North Ameribsp;Europe, and Asia, and then in the corporate planning department of Pacifibsp;Gas and Electribsp;pany in San Francisco.
My father had taught me the value of industriousnessof doing my job well, whatever that job wasand of selfdetermination and selfimprovement. His favorite story was of Henry David Thoreau, who had lived in the woods at Walden Pond and after two years had e out with his axe sharper than when he had gone in.
I was young and ambitious and keen to make my mark on the world.
GEIVE POWER
In 1988, when I was twentyseven years old, I moved from San Francisbsp;to London to take a job in the global strategy department of the energy pany Royal Dutbsp;Shell. What I loved most about w for Shell was the power. I enjoyed getting the diplomatibsp;memos: "The gover of C?te d'Ivoire has reiterated their request that we desist from referring to them as the Ivory Coast." I onbsp;got a mistaken phone call asking me where a 300 million payment for a fuel oil delivery should be deposited. I liked Shell's practibsp;role in providing the world with energy: the pany ied hundreds of millions of dollars a year in researbsp;and development, drilled for oil thousands of feet uer, and produbsp;fuels by heating oil sands and cooling natural gas. I reveled in being a small bsp;in this big and important mae.
I was at Shell at the height of capitalist fidenbsp;The Berlin Wall had just fallen, the I boom was starting, Franbsp;Fukuyama had published "The End of History," Tom Wolfe was writing about Manhattan financiers as "Masters of the Universe," and Margaret Thatcher was pronoung that "There Is No Alternative" to the AngloAmeribsp;free enterprise model. The dominant cultural meme was that in all sphereseibsp;political, social, legal, iional, intellectuala test among peting powers produbsp;the best oute.[11] From my offibsp;in a London skyscraper, it seemed to me that if everybody just did their job and pushed forward their partengaged in civilized, manly jostlingthe whole would grow and prosper.
My experienbsp;at Shell, and elsewhere in the world of business, was of an almost singleminded emphasis on the pragmatibsp;use of powerthe kind of power that a former physibsp;student could reize. It seemed to me that businesspeople uood power the same way Martin Luther King Jr. did: "Power properly uood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose."[12] Their as seemed to accord with Paul Tillich's explanation of power's geive root: "the drive of everything living to realize itself, with increasing iy and extensity." This drive bsp;be seen in the forbsp;of a growing seed: the forbsp;that "guerrilla gardeners" employ to turn vat urban lots into parks, when they surreptitiously plant seeds that break through the crete.
At Shell I could see how my own drive for selfrealization, along with that of my colleagues, produbsp;furiously petitive intellectual creativity and growth. The head of our department, Arie de Geus, wrote a book called The Living pany. This helped me also see how the pany's living drive for selfrealization, along with that of other panies, produbsp;furiously petitive ercial creativity and growth.[13]
In all of this I saw the geive aspebsp;of power: the universal drive to "get one's job done." Power expresses our purposefulness, wholeness, and agenbsp;Although power is the drive to realize one's self, the effebsp;of power goes beyond one's self. Power is how we make a differenbsp;in the world; it is the means by whibsp;new social realities are created. Without power, nothing new grows.
At Shell I was head of the strategy group that structed sariosplausible alternative storiesof socialpoliticalenviroal texts in whibsp;the pany might find itself. In 1991, Pieter le Roux, a professor at the leftwing Uy of the Western Cape in South Afribsp;tacted me because he wanted to use the Shell methodology to help a group of South Afribsp;opposition leaders develop a strategy for effeg the transition away from apartheid. Nelson Mandela had just been released from twentyseven years in prison, and the iations between the opposition and the white minority gover had started in ear. Le Roux's projebsp;sounded iing and worthwhile to me, and my Shell bosses were happy, after years of being vilified for not having divested from South Afribsp;for the opportunity to rebuild the pany's relationships with the opposition. So in September 1991, I traveled to Cape Town to facilitate the first workshop of what became known as the Mont Fleur Sario Exercise.[14]
What I found exhilarating in meeting these leadersfrom politibsp;parties, trade unions, unity anizations, uies, and panieswas their powerful purposefulness. Every one of them was itted to addressing, from their particular idologibsp;and institutional base, South Africa's tough challenges, and they had already realized that they could be successful only if they worked together. White businessman Johann Liebenberg later remembered, with surprise and pleasure, his versations with the blabsp;leaders who had hitherto been his adversaries: "This was new to me, especially how openminded they were. These were not people who simply said: 'Look, this is how it is going to be when we take over one day.' They were prepared to say: 'Hey, how would it be? Let's discuss it.'"[15] I felt excited to play a part in this important social ge process.
What I saw in these workshops, and through the window they provided me onto the dynamibsp;of South Africa's extraordinary transition, ged my uanding of what was possible in the world. I saw that a team of leaders from across a social system could, even in the most plex, flictual, and challenging of texts, exercise their power collectively to ge that system for the better. I was inspired by what I was learning about this geive power.
What I saw also ged my uanding of what was possible for me. I saw that I had a job to doa way of making a differenbsp;in the worldin supp subsp;teams. In 1993, I resigned from Shell and moved to South Afribsp;Sinbsp;then I have been doing this kind of work there and elsewhere.
DEGEIVE POWER
How do we e to notibsp;something that we are not notig? I was onbsp;w in my offibsp;and my sunglasses were in my shirt pocket. I went into a dark closet and leaned over to pibsp;up some supplies near the floor, when I heard a sound that I couldn't plabsp;As I went out, I unsciously filed away that anomalous eventthe unexplained soundand went babsp;to what I was doing. Later I saw that I had misplabsp;my sunglasses and began looking all around for them. Then I remembered the unexplained sound and realized it had been the sound of my sunglasses falling out of my pocket onto the closet floor.
During the first years after I left Shell and started w as a facilitator of social ge teams, I kept hearing sounds of a sed kind of power that I didn't know how to interpret. My first interpretation of what had happened at Mont Fleurthe interpretation that I was w fromwas that the team had decided that their power, their drive to realize themselves as individuals and as a nation, could more effectively be exercised w with rather than against one another. They had used four bird images to summarize their shared uanding of the different ways the future of the nation might unfold: an "Ostribsp;sario of white denial, a "Lame Dubsp;sario of an overstrained new blabsp;gover, an "Icarus" sario of the new gover flying too high too fast, and a "Flamingos" sario of rising slowly together. But when Pallo Jordan, one of the intellectual leaders of the Afribsp;National gress, heard these sarios presented at a party meeting, he thought they were ridiculously na?ve about the essentially violent dynamibsp;of power in the South Afribsp;text. "What is all this about dubsp;and flamingos?" he asked incredulously. "The only birds that matter here are hawks and sparrows!"
It is not surprising that Jordan and I had different perspectives on power. I came from a peaceful and uered background, and I had entered South Afribsp;for the first time in 1991, one year after the hopeful transitional iations had started and several years after the hopeless, violent clashes between the gover and the opposition in the 1970s and 1980s. Jordan is blabsp;whibsp;in apartheid South Afribsp;means he grew up as a sedclass person. He had spent decades in exile w for the Afribsp;National gress and had only just returned to the try to engage directly in these tough iations. Power looks different to people who have to struggle for it.
Now I realized what I had been hearing: power has two sides. The geive side of power is the powerto that Paul Tillibsp;refers to as the drive to selfrealization. The degeive, shadow side is poweroverthe stealing or suppression of the selfrealization of another. Tillibsp;reizes both sides: "Power actualizes itself through forbsp;and pulsion. But power is her the one nor the other. It is being, actualizing itself over nonbeing. It uses and abuses pulsion in order to overe this threat. It uses and abuses forbsp;in order to actualize itself. But it is her the one nor the other."[16] Powerover abuses forbsp;and pulsion to suppress or oppress or dominate another.
Like Pallo Jordan, my wife Dorothy is blabsp;and grew up in South Afribsp;and was involved for years in the antiapartheid struggle. When later we visited Guatemala together, she notibsp;something that I didn't. The position of abinal people there reminded her of blabsp;in South Afribsp;they were treated as if they were invisible. Not to see another person, or to see her or him as a nonperson, is the extreme maion of powerover.
The most on uanding of power is as powerover. When Stephen Lukes, a professor of politibsp;and sociology at New York Uy, wrote his classibsp;1974 book Power: A Radibsp;View, he equated power with domination. But thirty years later, in the sed edition, Lukes revised his view: "It was a mistake to define power by saying that 'A exercises power over B when A affebsp;B in a manner trary to B's is.' Power as domination is only one species of power."[17] Powerover is a subset of powerto.
Degeive powerover arises out of geive powerto. When I am exerg my powerto and I feel myself bumping up against you exerg yours, and if in this flibsp;I have the capacity to prevail over you, then I bsp;easily turn to exerg power over you. My drive to realize myself slips easily into valuing my selfrealization above yours, and then into believing arrogantly that I am more deserving of selfrealization, and then into advang my selfrealization even if it impedes yours.
Many whites in South Afribsp;valued their selfrealization above that of others, and they deployed an ideologyapartheidto justify their behavior. We bsp;see analogous dynamibsp;across rabsp;or ethnibsp;groups or classes or genders in every society. Thus, the seductively beautiful fabsp;of powerto morphs, as in a horror movie, into the viciously terrible fabsp;of powerover.
Onbsp;I had seen the two sides of power starkly in South Afribsp;I could reize them more easily elsewhere. After I left Shell, I sulted to several panies and business associations in Houston, Texas. I found the business culture of Houston unusual and fasating. The businesspeople there were unstrained in their enthusiasm for indepe, unregulated, entrepreneurial powerto. The do property developers I met owned private panies with names like "John Smith Is," whibsp;I uood to represent an unabashed celebration of the advang of an individual's own is and power.
These same businesspeople were also enthusiastibsp;in their support for voluntary philanthropy and civibsp;e. They were more aware than people I had met elsewhere of their role in the evolution of their social reality. Houston had grown from being the twentyfirst largest city in the United States in 1940 to fourth largest in 1990. It had bee what it was not by act, but as the result of the iional decisions made by people subsp;as themselves, and they felt a responsibility to tinue this publibsp;work. The ideology of Houston businesspeople promoted individual selfrealization in alig with collective selfrealization.
In this unity, the very epitome of powerto was Ken Lay, the founder and chairman of Enron, the 100 billion natural gas, electricity, and teleunications pany. Enron ha
第5章 The Two Sides of Power[1/2页]