🔺The Hierarchy of Power🔺
Understanding Systems of Control
As a trauma survivor and ex-vangelical (former Christian), I am finely tuned to psychological manipulation and abuses of power.
My body has been re-experiencing the impacts of powerlessness since nationalism has dominated our socio-political landscape, largely since 2016.
Simultaneously, I have been growing more & more disillusioned & burdened with social media. Once again, my body experiencing the impacts of powerlessness to the whims of social media.
I was unconscious to the relationship between these dichotomies of power (nationalism & social media) and my own body’s experience of powerlessness until I intentionally integrated my own sense of personal power. I’ll be posting more on the correlation between nationalism & social media next week - in the meantime, we’re going to focus on power because it is the root of both.
My own aversion to power & experiencing myself as power-FULL unmistakably arises from abuses of power, of power being used over me for control & violation. Power became a trigger, just as elements of a traumatic experience become coded as a trigger to keep us safe from re-experiencing trauma in the future, experiences of power dynamics shut my brain-body system off. A trauma response designed to keep me safe also kept me unconscious about the power dynamics I was relating to.
In order to relate to my own sense of personal power, I first had to step outside the social realms of power of domination and control.
CW: the rest of the post mentions the cycle of abuse & dynamics found in abusive relationships
The Hierarchy of Power is how the systems distance themselves from their control. By creating self-sustaining sub-systems of internalized standards, their control is cloaked behind perceived autonomy & the illusion of choice - having multitudes of choice in things that don’t matter, like dozens of peanut butter types and not enough choice in the things that do matter, like who you can marry. Here are some cohesive elements that sew the Hierarchy of Power together:
Mirrors the cycle of abuse in creating the problem, projecting blame, taking credit for the solution & changing only enough to once again pull the wool over our eyes
Requires externalization of our authority by sowing self-doubt through the exchange of critical thinking with spoon-fed fear-mongering
Extends from the most intimate family unit to the most global experiences of governance to mirror the same control tactics at all levels of existence
Externalization & disembodiment go hand in hand, visible at every level from unconscious consumerism to quell inner experiences (retail therapy) to capitalist expectations of a 40-hour work week. If we are out of our bodies, we cannot revolt.
The cycle of abuse is again seen in the Hierarchy of Power through the internalization of social standards. Abusers are inherently lazy, always looking for a more efficient way to wield power & control. Abusers internalize their critical narrative, along with their standards, into their victims psyche so they don’t even have to do the abusing - their victim begins to police themselves. The victim has already berated themselves for the burned toast before the abuser even knows because it is through the internalization of the abusers’ script that psychic control is wielded.
Social expectations are the first (or final) step of the Hierarchy of Power - establishing and maintaining control through internalized standards of acceptability so innocuously. The systems of power understand our psyche more than we do ourselves. Being policed from a distanced authority can inspire rebellion (which the system has again calibrated for) - but being questioned by your primary attachment is existential annihilation. Having families police each other to fit within social mores of acceptability is 1984 shit and acts as a safeguard if the other methods of control fail.
We see the power of social expectations in action for every artist who was told “what can you do with art”, for every queer kid who was bullied to never step outside the closet, for the free spirit whose told to settle down & find a real job, for the child put on a diet before their body has even entered puberty.
Capitalist surveillance is the way our time & energy are monitored, controlled & ultimately harvested. We give 8 hours of the best times of the day 5 days of a 7 day week away. We have, at best, 5 hours at the end of our day to complete chores, personal care, maintain relationships and care for dependents before doing it all over again. The cult of employment promises us relaxation and rest in retirement (when we will have the most health & mobility impacts) and has spoon-fed us an ideology that we must earn rest (and basic dignity like food and shelter). Capitalism is the ultimate pyramid scheme, built upon exploitation and empty promises. Capitalism individualizes system issues so we feel guilty for not being a morning person without addressing the systemic impacts of time scarcity, overwork, lack of autonomy and chronic nervous system dysregulation rampant in a disembodied individualistic culture. We are relegated to binary boxes of performing or non-compliant with vague threats against resistors of the system. After all, capitalism is ableism in disguise. Both capitalism and dogmatic religion offer a lofty end goal (eternity | freedom 55) without much evidence to support their promised salvation. Both boast well-oiled internal accountability - shame disguised as connection because unconscious company loves unconscious company.
We see the power of capitalist surveillance in our initial inquiry of “what do you do” when we meet a new person. What we are really asking is “how much respect should I give you”, even unconsciously.
Unconscious consumerism is the ultimate charlatan because it creates both the problem and the solution simultaneously - the door to door salesman who spills wine on the carpet and happens to be selling the formulaic solution. We have been taught that consumerism is a sign of progress. We have become a disposable culture that creates so much waste we have to ship it off into space. Consumerism primarily targets our dopamine receptors, creating a cycle of dopamine seeking, dopamine flooding and dopamine drought - which is just a fancy way of saying consumerism creates addiction. Upon the arrival of an inner experience, we are sold an easy answer with a return policy we rarely utilize. We shop instead of feeling. It creates this never-ending cycle of not-enough-ness and hoarding. We are sold scarcity (you need more) and that illusion of scarcity causes us to hold on (and buy more). Many of us are impacted by a feeling of not-enough-ness and this is mirrored in our consumeristic culture where we fill inner emptiness with the illusion of appearance. We create debt by buying things we don’t need with money we don’t have because the job we work is a pyramid scheme with us at the bottom.
We see the power of unconscious consumerism in the adage “keeping up with the Jones’”. Again, consumerism is a self-sustaining system of internalized standards keeping the clock ticking. Externalizing our choices in reaction to our dopamine receptors maintains an unconsciousness so the system can continue to maintain itself - how can we revolt if we are busy purging our skinny jeans for straight legged jeans? Consumerism is evidence of the control capability.
Consumerism offers easy answers to complex questions and is part of the snowball effect of externalizing our authority. Looking outside our Selves for both our desires and our release gets us into the habit of not thinking for our Selves.
I have more thoughts on how consumerism disconnects us from our desires as a system permeated in purity culture because when we are disconnected from our natural desires, we are easier to control but that’s for another day.
Certainly the pervasiveness of media obsession is new to our culture but media obsession on a whole is not a new enterprise. In next week’s post, I’ll correlate the rise of social media with the rise of nationalism as evidence of history repeating itself but today, I want to address the impacts of the information age specifically.
With the density of information available, there should be a correlative increase in our capacity for critical thinking but there isn’t. What we see instead is the Dunning-Krüeger effect in full display: people who know nothing think they know a lot because they are looking at a raindrop while people who know a lot think they know nothing because they are looking at a whole ocean. Rather than being MORE informed, we are more misinformed, bombarded with a cacophony of opinion & very little fact. The media operates from an illusion of intimacy, targeting our attachment needs in the same way that social expectations do. We have become dependent on the media for the illusion of intimacy - seeing milestones in friends lives without actually having to connect 1:1. This feeds into the imposter syndrome of the information age, experienced viscerally as a fear of being “found out”. We avoid in-person connection because we afraid of being truly seen so we hide within our carefully curated online personas (and also you know, a global pandemic hasn’t helped that either).
Media creates an illusion of certainty the same way each level of the hierarchy does: peddling easy answers for complex questions with a binary of us vs. them. Binaries are primordially useful in tactics of control because our existential attachment longing to belong - to have purpose and meaning - are easily persuaded by the false promises of certainty.
Polarization arising out of social media is not a surprise; it is the system working as it was ordained. Polarization is the net result of a binary designed with billions of dollars of personality & psychological manipulation research to control out of fear. More on that next week.
A superiority complex is an interactive projection, meaning we participate in it as much as we are fed it. From our end, we desperately want to be special and better (the need for acceptance runs deep in us all) so we own animals and plants and consider ourselves the top a food chain we drew. The root of superiority complex is perfectionism (which you can start unlearning here), an objectifying perspective that fails to see anyone (or thing) as alive. We pillage the earth for her oil because the earth is not seen as alive - she is a resource to be exploited. We exhaust ourselves working 40 hours a week because we are not seen as alive - we are resources to be exploited. The expression of a superiority complex again wields our attachment needs against us. When we experience trauma and the subsequent powerlessness, a void is created that requires compensation. Control is a form of re-enactment trauma and is expressed individually as advice or gossip from “knowing better”.
Superiority complex is infused in capitalism that feeds the ever intangible “success”. Middle class folk are resistant taxing the rich because they want to picture themselves there - the 1% protect this false belief by posting their morning routine and saying “anyone can do it” (without, of course, the context of generational wealth nor classist time scarcity). It is a superiority complex that underpins white supremacy, patriarchy and every other expression of systems of oppression - more on that next week.
At the end of it all, the top of the pyramid is profit & control - for what is more valuable in a capitalistic society than money itself but control of the consumers who maintain the system itself? It is control of the population, not profit itself (though it is a by-product of control) that the systems are orchestrated for. I have met enough abusive narcissists to witness the insatiable high that comes from controlling others. Billionaires do not hoard money because at that point, money is an abstract nonsensical concept - no, they hoard money because of the power. Power is the real currency.
We are interacting with power dynamics all the time, whether we are conscious of it or not. ShadoWork is becoming conscious of these power dynamics so we can make more authentic choices.
Next week, we’ll be focusing on social media & nationalism but for now - remember times when you felt powerful, when you’ve interacted with people who have embodied their power well.
You are a sovereign Being and deserve to be free.