STRAIGHT TALK
MARK BARNES: Power has value but no price; leaders who put it up for sale discover it is worthless
‘In the end, in the absence of respected leadership, a circumstance that naturally and inevitably follows a sale of power, there will be a fight to establish new power’
The most understood and least contested definition of power is to be found in the physical world. Power is the rate of doing work, a measure of energy consumed in a given time, measured in joules per second (just so you know.
In a different context, power is defined as the ability to exercise control over others, to persuade and influence people.
In nature, power (it seems to me) is just there — we use it, transform it and convert it into the manageable forms of energy that we need to drive the industrialised world. The power of influence and control, however, has many different sources — some conferred, some ordained or earned, by whatever means. Power thus created is not in abundance, it is precious and most often the preserve of the few. If it were not so, it would not be powerful. Political power, for instance, often ultimately vests in a single individual, in a defined political ecosystem, typically a sovereign state. In a democracy, power vests in the population, which, from time to time, elects a leader in whom such power is then manifest — usually for a limited period of time, usually subject to checks and balances. Other origins of power, such as royalty, are linked to a life and pass on from one generation to the next, typically forever. The basis of their sustainability is fragile, and I suspect they will disappea...
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