Introduction: Power and Love: A theory and practice of social change:
A Critical Analysis:
1. Beyond war and peace
By our own innate ways, two are the most common ways of trying to address the toughest social challenges: The two methods that we resort to is either an aggressive war or a submissive peace. But it must be remembered that neither of these ways works.
These extreme ways are extremely common, on all scales of contemporary life. It must be noted that we can neither be too pushy nor be completely submissive as natural as the things can happen. There are many exceptions to these generalizations about the prevalence of these two extreme ways. The fact is that to address our toughest social challenges, we need a way that is neither war nor peace, but collective creation.
The solution is aptly provided below
A character in Rent, Jonathan Larson’s Broadway musical stats about struggling artists and musicians in New York City,
“The opposite of war isn’t peace, it’s creation!”
2. The two fundamental drives:
To co-create new social realities, we have to work with two distinct fundamental forces that are in tension: power and love. Power can be defined as “the drive of everything living to realise itself, with increasing intensity and extensity.” So, power in this sense is the drive to achieve one’s purpose, to get one’s job done, to grow. While love is defined as “the drive towards the unity of the separated.”
So, love in this sense is the drive to reconnect and make whole that which has become or appears fragmented. So, these are the two ways of looking at power and love, rather than the more common ideas of oppressive power and romantic love.
3. Our full world:
We cannot address our tough challenges only through driving towards self-realization or only through driving towards unity. We need to do both. The historical example of the centuries of a conflicting encounter between the British settlers and the Australian aboriginals are the best in this case, and finally, in 1992, the dispute was settled by the Australian High court and, prompted the modern-day settlers to work out a new way of living together with the Aboriginal people.
The society we live in is increasingly full of diverse, strong, competing voices and ideas and cultures. This fullness is the fundamental reason why, to address our toughest social challenges, we need to employ not only power but also love.
If we want to get unstuck, we need to acknowledge our interdependence, cooperate, and feel our way forward. We need therefore to employ not only our power but also our love.
4. Power and love: The two pitfalls:
Power and love are difficult to work with because each of them has two sides, but it is not impossible to get aligned. Power has a generative side and a degenerative side, and — less obviously — love also has a generative side and a degenerative side. The example of a family set up can be taken into account here.
Father, embodying masculine power, goes out to work, to do his job. This is the generative side of his power is that he can create something valuable in the world. The mother, by contrast, embodying feminine love, stays at home to raise the children. the generative side of her love is that she gives life, literally to her child and -figuratively to her whole family.
Love is what makes power generative instead of degenerative. Power is what makes love generative instead of degenerative. Power and love are therefore exactly complementary. For each to achieve its full potential, it needs the other.
Power without love produces a scorched-earth war that destroys everything we hold dear. Love without power produces lifeless peace that leaves us stuck in place. Both of these are terrible outcomes.
The final verdict:
Power and love stand at right angles and delineate the space of social change. If we want to get unstuck and to move around this space — if we want to address our toughest challenges — we must understand and work with both of these drives. Rather than a choice to be made one way or another, power and love constitute a permanent dilemma that must be reconciled continuously and creatively. If we are to succeed in co-creating new social realities, we cannot choose between power and love. We must choose both.
