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What is the nature of power?
I don't really know. I'm asking because I want ideas and reading material. To add some meat to this request, here are some ideas and definitions I have encountered or pondered over:
All of these are relevant only between sovereign actors capable of acting and thinking themselves. Their power's a function of what benefit they offer other actors (either directly, or by mobilizing non-actors' into productive power.) I've read Kelsen, Grotius, de Vattel, Austin, Scott, Luttwak et al. and have built thriving and productive things. Yet I crave further understanding. Perhaps, I but yearn for a simpler, faded time, while today's structures impersonally placate the governed (placate, not wield, as (western) state(s') power's collapsed along with the social contract), or perhaps more accurate possessed both the governed and the governing ("they drank their own cool aide" and trying to understand this, my tools fail.
...does anyone understand how hyper cycles work (not just their contours like Gartner but e.g. how currents/egregores pick a specific avatar or specific areas of concern to battle over?
I think "power" is overbroad. When we talk about power in a grand society context, it's kind of like talking about money in an economic context! We can distill some principles from smaller examples, and even identify some broad rules, but at the end of the day, just like economics, we aren't exactly sure if the model is correct. There are a number of different schools of thought, many considered legitimate, and many contradictory. Unfortunately, the problem is of sufficient complexity that being entirely sure about it is hard, if not impossible. So in many ways, "macro power" has to have a similar treatment and caveats as economics.
If we're talking smaller groups of individuals interacting, or even one or at most two organizations, things are a lot more easy and fruitful to work through. Interpersonal power is probably distilled in a half dozen key aspects (one example) Even some trickier questions can still be answered and thought through productively, like: "you're the CEO of a midsize company, how do you wield your own power and where do you take no action?" A complicated question that involves both the mechanics of power, organizational behavior, and moral questions. It's answerable I think, with some good effort, and can yield some useful and intellectually interesting conclusions. But it seems you're wondering more about broader forces. To which I think the best we can do is to carefully and thoughtfully study history itself, rather than spend time explicitly philosophizing.
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The subject of power fascinates me too and over the years I have gotten some understanding of it. I think you are over complicating your understanding by looking at the complex power systems, it is much more simpler than that. The most basic and simple definition of power might as well be "ability to impose your will on other", whether it be through institutional authority, manipulation, persuasion, threats or money etc. This simple definition gets complicated by the fact that both "ability" and "will" changes on the context we are in. What that essentially means is power is extremely sensitive to change and does not remain static. Either you are gaining power or losing power, there's no maintaining power.
From what I understand, modern political institutions are like pipelines of power. They "regulate" the ebb and flow of power to be channelized in a bounded area, so as to prevent someone from exercising power in ways that are undesirable(what is and what is not desirable is another debate). But the power they have is "authority power" or sometimes "money power" too but that is subject to circumstance. In addition to having already institutional power, they also derive power from representatives, who have come to position of authority within the institute by virtue of people vesting their power in them. A politician would be a simple example, directly elected by people. People directly vest the power they derived from the institutes in form of votes to put the politician in a position to wield institutional authority. Another simple example would be a Hedge fund manager, who have been vested with power because they provide value by increasing their power.
A young journalist observing that the state is trying to build a bridge across a body of water was concerned. The bridge would have required piers so large as to disrupt tidal flows in the sound, among other problems. Having the will to prevent that, he wrote a detailed and scathing criticism of the project. His writing and passion was so powerful that even the Governor of the state agreed that it was a bad idea. Now that's pretty much how power should work in a democratic state, and how journalist can influence the Institutional power to do good. Then he saw the state's Assembly vote overwhelmingly to pass a preliminary measure for the bridge. Why? What happened? Apparently the governor wasn't the most powerful person in the state, it was lowly civil servant in Public Works Department who trumped the whole system upside down to have his way.
The journalist, Robert Caro, then researched and wrote a book on how this civil servant, Robert Moses, acquired and wielded the power. His books, both the biography of Robert Moses and the cult classic biographical series of books on Lyndon B Johnson are masterclasses in the nature of power. I would highly recommend you to read that.
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Those bullet points are too abstract, too many inferences away from a useful definition of power. Power is the ability to change others, nature, or one's self, and also the ability to resist changes to one's self.
You might laugh and say I'm just repurposing the classic elementary-school-level framework for talking about literature ("man versus man/nature/self"), but it's a firm foundation for thinking about power and I doubt you'll find anything better.
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I know George R. R. Martin gets a lot of flack now as being Reddit trash for midwits, but I think his parable of the sellsword is a really excellent and pithy little exploration of the nature of power and political legitimacy. I will post a variation of it below:
That's why stratocracy (the army is the government) is the only sane form of government, I think.
We could fix the problem of democracy (ostensible rulers are people elected on basis of popularity) but bureaucracy/NGOs actually running things by instituting a cooperative/competitive meaningful state-wide MMO wargame simulating industrial warfare, and people who do really well in it can be voted in into representative positions..
E.g. you start playing as a kid riding in a virtual tank or sailing a boat, shooting other kids doing the same, obeying orders from someone older,. Or for girls, running an open pit mine, taking care of a cotton farm or clearing out ancient bunkers looking for valuable trash or keeping a small refinery or factory running. All these are fun computer games requiring thought.
As people get older they take on more responsible tasks in the game, leaders get voted in. Running a war is one of the hardest tasks out there, and although the stakes are low (how +-5% much tax you pay next year as adult), pocket money as kids, so I'd expect after someone has taken parts in dozens of virtual campaigns you're going to end up with some pretty smart people in the more complex parts of the game - unit command, industrial coordination, strategy, logistics etc..
This is called "capitalism", and that effect is why the most capitalist countries have been the most powerful ever since it was invented (pre-empire Romans, Dutch, English, Americans). The accumulation of capital is fundamentally the accumulation of power; when people pay you to do something they want, that is them casting their vote to a much larger degree than their actual vote in a ballot box is.
Because capitalism directly rewards people for serving others in the most advanced way they can, it is only natural that those who cannot or will not serve seek to destroy it (forced redistributionism and creating an artificial scarcity of resources are the two most popular ways); it also runs into a problem where automation can obsolete (and thus bankrupt) so many people at the same time that a socialist revolution occurs in lieu of civil war (US, 1934).
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This (reality based learning and selection through mmo) is a really fun idea. Has this been described further elsewhere I could I nerdsnipe you into more detail?
Banks, Iain M. 1988. The Player of Games.
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Power is a +8 racial bonus to listen checks
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Power is the ability to tell other people what to do and have them do it. Either because you’ll hurt them for not doing it, or because they want to follow you.
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This series is a pretty off-beat musing on Power and Tyranny.
They distinguish between two forms of power: Non-Tyrannical power which is rule for the common good, and Tyrannical power, which is rule for private gain. Tyrannical power requires using others for the use of the master's end. Non-Tyrannical power is used for the good of the one on whom it is wielded.
People give up power to masters because when they believe that this giving up of power contributes to their own good. In a non-Tyranny, people cooperate together to do more things than they could have accomplished individually, and this belief is justified. In a Tyranny, often there are true believers who think they are serving the common good, while they are really being exploited. Other times, in a Tyranny people give up power by seeking their own good to protect them from a sense of danger the Tyrant has caused.
One video goes into how Bureaucracy is a requirement for a Tyranny, because it is a means by which a Tyrant is able to enact their will on a wider scale.
The series is done by a couple of Catholics and occasionally they mention Church things, but I think the series is worth listening to even if that is off putting at first.
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Starting from “the ability to influence important things” we can see why poets in the past were powerful (consider Muhammad), singers, writers. Harari talks about stories as the primary driver of civilizational power (3:28).
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