Power means to me pretty much the same
thing as freedom.
Power is a thing that everybody wants the most that they can
possibly have of.
That is, skiing is power, sex appeal is power,
the
ability to make yourself heard by your Congressman is power.
Anything that comes out of you and goes out
into the world is power
and in addition to that,
the ability to be open, to appreciate, to receive love,
to respond to
others, to listen to music, to understand literature, all of that is
power.
By "power" I mean human faculties exercised to the largest possible
degree.
So in a way, in a large sense, by power I mean individual
intelligence.
Now when you reach out to another person through the energy
or
creativity that is in you and that other person responds, you are exercising
power.
When you make somebody else do something against their will,
to me
that is not power at all, that is force, and force to me is the negation
of power.
Charles Reich, Power And The Law
