From the book "Kinds of power : a guide to its intelligent uses" by James Hillman. Copyright © 1995 by James Hillman. Published by Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc., 1540 Broadway, New York, NY 10036.
PART 2: Styles of Power
The Language of Power
Control
Office
Prestige
Exhibitionism
Ambition
Reputation
Influence
Resistance
Leadership
Concentration
Authority
Persuasion
Charisma
Rising
Decision
Fearsomeness
Tyranny
Veto
Purism
Subtle Power
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p. 109
Control
Perhaps the most common word today associated with power is "control." To be in control. To take control. Yet control derives from an idea that essentially limits power, in fact puts brakes to power like a control switch or the control panel that governs an installation so that it cannot over heat or short-circuit. Control is agency, yes, but of a restrictive kind: the word comes from 'contra rotullus,' against the roll.
Since the free flow of inertia follows the path of least resistance, the easy path downhill is controlled by restraints. The complaints to "get the government off our back" and that controlling the military means "fighting with one hand tied" express this hindering sense of control. Control governs more by veto than by leadership, more by checking and balancing a variety of forces than by charging forward like a point man in front of the pack.
When we look closely at what we want when we want to be in control, we find mainly 'preventive' desires. We want not to be bugged, not to be demeaned, not to be blocked and criticized. We want obstacles removed that compete, like other divisions in the company and other gang lords in the neighborhood. Control means preventing interference. It has a conservative effect. So we feel frustrated by people in control. They won't let us do it our way; they don't allow freedom; they restrain pleasure; they put all sorts of comptrollers and paperwork in the way. Why is it, after all, that so many restrictions and confining rules come down from the top issued by those in control? And why that fantasy: "If I were in control here, things wouldn't go on like this; I wouldn't let things slide; I'd put a stop to . . . "? Yet when we ourselves get into a position to "take control," we find that the freedom from restraint we fought for is restricted by the new restraints we ourselves have begun to impose. The idea of control controls the controllers; we are not in control of the power of control. Still, the fantasy of controlling the roll of the dice or the wheel of fortune runs deep. It offers power over fate itself.
That great analyst of power, Machiavelli, in his Renaissance classic 'The Prince,' conceived of power exactly in these terms of control versus Fortuna, the capricious Goddess of fate and luck. Machiavelli opposes the two, control and Fortuna, so that power becomes the ability to control the unpredictable interventions of Fortuna, those errors, vices, incompetencies and mess-ups that beset any enterprise. That person who can prevent, direct or inhibit these eventualities is, in Machiavelli's teachings, a person of power.
Control as a negative power that inhibits has come more and more to dominate organizations, both internally and externally. Internally, by means of meticulous accounting procedures. For instance, the postoperative-care nurse who has to account for wound dressings and not only dress wounds. More memos in triplicate, more requirements to "get back to me on this," more comparative bids, comparative expense items. Externally, by means of security technology---hidden cameras, urine testing, access control, document tracking and shredding, hierarchies and categories of secrecy, tight supervision of computer time, phone calls . . .
When a control freak takes charge, nothing must escape his or her attention---each purchasing order, each expense chit, each "away from the desk." The control freak does not have to manage everything alone to prove that he or she has power. It's not so much "do it my way" as it is "keep me informed." Control means knowing what's going on. Everything must be submitted for inspection. It's the submission that matters. Nothing kept hidden. No locked drawers or closed doors---the open office submits everyone to control.
A more subtle method of control uses loyalty. "Just trust me." "I have to be able to count on you." "You come through for me and I'll cover your back." By bonding loyally to other people, we are bound by them to be at their side and on their side in organizational struggles.
These examples of control---the need to know, to supervise, to check up, to use loyalty as a means---tell us two things. First, they reveal the fact that control weakens power because control constrains its varied expressions. The subterfuge of influence, the manipulations of prestige, the risk of leadership, the silence of resistance do not submit to control and are designed to circumvent it. But these kinds of power are disallowed. Instead of adventuring forward to explore and research unknown territory, control fights a rearguard action, keeping inventory of what has already happened. It likes complete reports. Control, for all its self-assured position of command, relies on a defensive vision, and the traits enumerated---enforced loyalty, exactitude, suspicion of the hidden, watchfulness---are paranoid traits.
So, second, what is the underlying anxiety raised by the idea of losing control? What is really hidden that the paranoia defends against yet never sees? What does "losing control" conjure up? Smashing a window, roaring, screaming, cursing out that bastard boss or that bitch? Bombing the place? A whole range of childish, melodramatic, sloppy, hysterical, crazy behaviors. To be out of control has come to mean wild---and helpless, and thus powerless.
"Out of control" could, however, mean something quite different when we look at these wild fantasies, for they show a vast store of energy let loose. Powerful indeed! Here we begin to uncover another of those mythical infrastructures that govern our feelings and our fears. The mythical figure whose ancient nicknames were "the loosener," "the unbound," "the roarer," and who represented the unstoppable flowing power of natural energy, rather like Freud's pleasure principle, was the God Dionysos. He was celebrated as a child; called God of wetness and drunkenness; ruled the theater and drama; took wild-animal form; and was associated with hysteria and madness.
Each of the regions of his rule threaten the tightness of control. Wild panther and bull, 'wet drunk,' theatrical bisexual, underworld mystery, vegetative instability, democratic populist, soft child and especially his epithet Lord of the Soul are hardly qualities that belong in the boardroom and the government office. Moreover, Dionysos, who led his followers out of the city and into the woodlands, was never politically correct.
Suppose, however, we shift perspectives. Suppose we try to fathom the power in this configuration from within, rather than trying to keep it under control. What is the essence of Dionysian power? What is the ground of its attraction and endurance through centuries? Control over his power and fear of his excessive effects seem never to work either in the ancient world or in the contemporary psyche. In fact, attempts to control the uncontrollable only exacerbate the excess. Sexual harassment in the correctly ordered office exemplifies the exaggerated return of Dionysian vitality in situations of stressed mental despair.
The phrase in our common language that most simply captures the Dionysian mode is: "Go with the flow." Not merely adrift, floating, without compass or port---but flowing with the motions of the psyche. It is like dancing---the Dionysians are depicted usually dancing---where leading and following merge; it is a fusion of one's private consciousness with the field, where borders become imprecise. One develops a special sensitivity to underground reverberations, so that one's will is embraced by the group and represents the group. (Dionysos appears nearly always surrounded by his group, his 'thiasos'--revelers.) One embodies the consciousness of the group and is ruler (Lord) of its soul by feeling into all that goes on throughout the organization. It comes alive with its own vegetative growth and decay, pulses, seasons. Dionysos was identified with the sap in the vine, the tendrils of the plant, the nourishing milk---the creative juices that are the soul of any system. One cannot control Dionysos, but one can exercise control in a Dionysian fashion by not separating oneself from the unaccountable empowering force that generates all through an organization and is its true bottom line as a vital rhythm. After all, organizations, as the very word declares, are organic, just as corporations, from 'corpus,' are living bodies.
It seems rather evident, from an archetypal or mythical perspective, that our ideas about control and the fanatic force we bring to the effort of taking control, staying in control and not letting go of control both in ourselves and in organizations derive from an attempt to master Dionysos. Were we to learn more about his gifts and his ways, gain more insight into the mysteries of his cult and the value of his nature, we might try less for control and actually gain more power.
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p. 131
Ambition
The desire to hold office, to gain power in any form, often suffers condemnation, even if recruiters look for ambitious young graduates who want to climb the ladder. Ambition has been defined, snidely, as "reach exceeding grasp" and "aspiration beyond competence." Or as hubris (excess of pride), perhaps the worst of all Greek faults of character. Vaulting pride in one's own capacity; no need of the Gods; no need of the counsel of mentors---this is the ambition universally condemned in tragic literature and heroic epic. Cocaine, uppers and muscle-building steroids are the concrete examples in our world of ambitious hubris. They show that enhanced performance follows a truly mythical pattern---an extraordinary rise and a disastrous fall. The one single wisdom taught by all the classical stories is: remember the limits put on mortals by the immortals (as the Greeks called their divinities).
A traditional West African song advises:
Do not seek too much fame,
but do not seek obscurity.
Be proud.
But do not remind the world of your deeds.
Excel when you must,
but do not excel the world.
Many heroes are not yet born.
many have already died.
To be alive to hear this song is a victory.
This practical wisdom warns against trying for heaven---it leads only to hell. Keep to the limits of the actual world. Staying alive proudly is ambition enough.
However, when we search the word, "ambition" reveals some pleasing features. Ambit means circuit, circumference, compass. Ambition as full compass, all around, the whole hog. 'Ambire' in Rome designated the going-around of a candidate for office, canvassing for votes, which leads to the second meaning of soliciting, fawning, so that an ambitious person can be narrowly described as one seeking office. But more widely, the going-around fills out the ambit and paces out step by step (ambulation) the dimensions of one's personal kingdom, measuring one's size. Ambition takes one to the edges of one's limits, to the "verge" as the dictionary says.
The ambitious are said to have an "appetite" for power. Mighty figures in myth like the Norse giants and the Greek Titans, and the huge creatures in fairy tales and Disney cartoons, as well as the immense eater Gargantua in the French tale by Rabelais, all have humongous appetites. They want everything in the world. The common notion of appetite has become reduced to general drives like hunger and thirst, so that the word constellates fears of putting on weight and drinking too much. The basic idea of appetite, however, shows that the reach and aspiration of ambition are located in the word "appetite," which comes from 'petere,' the Latin translation of the Greek word 'orexis' (our anorexia: without appetite). Orexis means desire, yearning, craving; its root, 'oregein,' means to reach out with the hand, to stretch the fingers to grasp.
If we go deeper, we find something stranger still: 'petere,' and therefore appetite, is cognate (associated) with ptero, the Greek for the wing of a bird, and the structure of that wing is homologous with our human fingers. Etymology says we fly with the imagination in our hands by means of our making and doing (the first definition of power as agency). The appetite in ambition lifts us off the ground and carries us to that verge of the farthest possibility. Perhaps, then, the attempts to control the appetite by diet are scientistic, unimaginative means of reducing the wings of desire and the power of ambition to the properly correct proportions of the puritan corset. I am saying that appetite control is an unconscious substitute for the control of ambition. The fear of flying.
So ambition in the truest sense of the term calls for risk---going for it! No one can know beforehand how wide the perimeter, how far the ambition will carry until you've gone too far and are declared to be overambitious. It is this risking extremes that makes us condemn ambition in people and yet often praise it in a work of art or political program. An ambitious intention aspires; it sets itself high goals and takes the necessary risks. Circumstances, other people, the recalcitrance of things and the Goddess Fortuna set the limits on ambition. We pretend it is a fatal flaw in character, that one did not calculate right, could have foreseen what was coming. These cautions after the fact locate ambition wholly within a person as if it were a trait to be controlled, whereas the term that is crucial here is the vaulting nature of ambition to go to the verge. At the other side of the edge and beyond it is the wholly unforeseeable, and ambition seeks by its very nature to go too far. Self-limitation, by means of willpower and developed self-control as a braking restraint, misses the inner sense of ambition which must go beyond better judgment, risking the impossible. To exceed, risk excess. As William Blake the poet said, in his 'Proverbs from Hell': "You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough," and "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom."
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