You may not like hearing this, but if you value equality and consensual relationships, and would personally prefer interacting with other people as mutual and free agents rather than exploiting or coercing them by having power over them if you had that choice, that means you *would not benefit* by having power over them.
That’s what benefit means – to have it better than would be the case otherwise. So if having power over others does not appeal to you as preferable to egalitarian relationships, you’re saying power over others would not improve your life, would not make it better. It would not benefit you.
And if that’s the case you can’t righteously assume that anyone in power necessarily benefits from that situation. You can’t assert that they would not also prefer equal and fair consensual social relationships if they could choose, not unless you can show that at the individual level they had the opportunity to make such choices and chose to oppress, chose to occupy positions of power.
I’d like to point out also that if you believe it to be true that power intrinsically is of benefit to those who do have power over others, that it is inherently desirable, then you’re saying that you would oppress if given the opportunity, since that, once again is what “to benefit” means – that it would be in your personal best interests, that it would bring you happiness, joy, satisfaction, pleasure, and so forth to have power over others. If there is a valid reason why you would not, that implies that it would actually be to your benefit to not do so. Whether it be conscience or a sense of justice and fairness, or a pleasure from interacting as equals and being trusted and being able to trust, or a wish to be in God’s good graces, or whatever, these reasons count as benefits when making such a choice.
Power is real. Inequality is real. Oppression is quite real, and struggles against it are noble and good and courageous and should be admired and lauded. What is not real is the notion that because you're rising up against oppression, you get to identify some culprits, evil people who can be blamed, perpetrators who can properly be thought of as unfairly getting away with oppressing. Power isn’t what we’ve been led to think it is. It defines the powerful as well as the disempowered. It isn’t a substance that one can possess and wield however one chooses. Most power is specifically the power to obtain this or attain that precise thing. Very seldom does a position of power give a person the power to dismantle the structures of authority that establish that power. Many people in social power were born to it, and far more were given a vastly unequal start within a system where people compete for it. Most of the social structures that specifically oppress categories of people – racism, patriarchy, colonialism, class stratification, etc – are solidly in place and individuals defined in a position without their participatory consent, the male white English-speaking wealthy western-nation able-bodied lucky privileged folks as much as the others.
Don't get me wrong -- many people in positions of structured power over others delight in it, revel in it, get a major part of their sense of worth from being able to feel like they're better than someone else. I'm very much exposed to that phenomenon, having endured bullying from fifth grade boys, assaults from fraternity boys in wealthy Long Island suburbs, and abuse of authority at the hands of police officers and psychiatric ward staff. Certainly they believed that having power over other people was a desirable commodity! But in all such cases it seemed like they were compensating for feelings of gross inadequacy. We're familiar with the trope of poor marginalized whites in the south making up for their sense of inferiority by abusing blacks so they can be better than someone, at least.
But that doesn’t make them right. And to go forth with the attitude that oppressors have it better in life than the rest of us do? It's the mindset of a child who thinks the misbehaving children are having a better time in life until and unless the teacher catches them at it and takes their pleasure away from them. It is not the mindset that creates a revolution. It's the mindset that creates a rotation. A rotation of the people in power. It's an old old story, people rising up against their oppressors so they can take the oppressor's comfy seats and make the former oppressors groven, put them up against the wall, show them what it feels like ...and guess what? After a very short time it's not just the former oppressors who seem to deserve the bottoms of our uprising's jackboots. And it's "meet the new boss, same as the old boss".
And dammit, you're better than that.
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And yes, my book is supposed to come out this month from Sunstone Press, but I *still* have no concrete news to report yet. Stay tuned!
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