Okay, so let's talk.

Power is in the eye of the powerless -- or less powerful, at the very most.

Power is a means for good or evil, but in either case it destroys the conduit who wields it. Example: Willie Stark.

-Your friendly neighborhood QP

True power cannot be given,it must be taken.

Reading this so far, it's hardly a discussion, lol it just looks like people adding their brief opinion.

Mine was not an opinion, it was fact.

Opinion or fact, it doesn't matter in relation to what I said.

lys is one hard power player. i bet he bullies everyone in his life. he plays mindgames and taunts everyone who offers their love and time. he's one of those people who won't call first, who won't initiate conversations, who'll drop out of your life if you're not willing to put yourself out there. tsk tsk. i think he's just scared.

Weakness can be a strength, and therefore power.

I guess you do not see the irony of this situation, it is not as if you have contributed anything or worth or even begun a "discussion" as you have implied should be done.


Agreed, power is a seperate entity from stength and weakness.

Anne Rice argued in her books that in SM, the submissive is the one that has the real power. I believe it.

Wow. It's been awhile since I read Exit to Eden. My wife tried to read the sleeping beauty series and she didn't like those, but I did enjoy Exit to Eden. The movie was a bit of the goofy side, with the film makers adding in the Dan Ackroyd and Rosie O'Donnell characters. Dana Delaney is one class act, especially in the China Beach series.

Power is not control. Control is mostly illusionary. People who think that they're in control are only deluding themselves, or maybe everyone around them.

I quickly tire of being around control freaks.

Cheers!

exit to eden.. ooooh. so hot.

anne rice is one twisted woman. i remember that passage when the guy rapes the other guy in a competition type thing.

i never got into anne rice. too darkly romantic and too aware of it. my brother though is crazy about her. he collects her novels which i find odd since i've never seen him read.

Well, that's true.

Power IS the abilty to manipulate and control. Your comment was left hanging. What,in your opinion,is power? Even in an SM situation,the submissive is allowing the dominant party to be aggressive with them. That is control and manipulation. In a society that is dominated by a dictator the people,by inaction,ALLOW the ruler to dominate them. However,the dictator,by fear and by keeping the people ignorant,CONTROLS their thinking and abilty to act. That is power. If the people rise up against him and seize CONTROL,then the POWER is transferred. But,no matter what the scenario power is control and manipulation.

In the SM situation, at least in one that is played by the rules, there is always a safe phrase that the submissive can utter that means: "You've gone too far, you need to stop right now". This phrase should be mutually agreed to in advance and it allows the two to carry something that doesn't go too far. The ability of the submissive to stop the action by using the safe phrase actually gives the submissive the power to control how much is inflicted on them. Because there is some degree of play acting involved, the safe phrase is NEVER "Stop" or somthing similar. Instead, it is generally some unusual phrase that would never be used within that context.

I've actually done some really minor SM with my wife: tied her hands or used handcuffs. It's never used to compell her to do something that she doesn't want to do and I believe that it allows a release, because it seems that I am overpowering her, that I am dominating her, but that is not really the case at all. She still retains control of the situation.

Her sister was really freaked out when she told her sister that we were doing this. There is something that happened to my wife and her sister when they were growing up that she has never been able to tell me, and she freely admits to me that she is holding something back. I don't push her, because I feel that she will tell me at the proper time. We both were pretty much fucked over emotionally by dominant parents while we were growing up.

As to the difference of Power and Control, the two are nearly the same, but there are subtle differences.

Control is about being in charge of a situation. The person that seizes control may do this to make sure that things are done right or they may seize control because they feel that no one has taken control and some direction is needed.

My manager is a very good manager, but he tends to be anal retentive about things that have high visibility. The mistake that many manager do is that they micro-manage. That is, they tell all of their subordinates everything to do.

The smarter managers learn to delegate the decision making process and responsibilities. The blame still moves upward in the hierarchy. This is really hard to do, because you have to rely on your subordinates to do the things that they are responsible for. My manager believes in coaching people. He allows them to decide on the every day things, but important things that affect other groups or the company will require that the subordinates inform the managers about the situation, in case that some management direction needs to happen.

In this situation, there is control from the top, but some of the power is distributed throughout the organization.

I believe that there have been some recent politicians that believed that barely winning some elections gave them the power and control to do so as they wished. Because the US does not have a dictatorship or a monarchy, it is always possible to undo what is done by the legislative branch or the executive branch of the government. When you take in that large view of distribution of power and control (checks and balances), and you take in the long view of time, then you see that true power and control requires great responsibility. If you want to effect great things, then you need to rally the people behind you and put something into place that will last a long time. I just don't see recent politicians getting this one simple fact of political life. They spend most of their time pandering to their key elective political bases instead of going after the broad masses.

Let me think about this some more, because there's more to say about this.

As always, trampoline, from space

I'll try to get back to this thread in a couple of days.

Perhaps that would be best. Because you still didn't really explain the difference in control and power.I know a little more about SM now. But,you really just touched on the distribution of control and how management works. It's still going back to the ability to control what goes on around you. Whether you feel the need to control all aspects of the situation or you distribute and delegate the ability to other people it's still about control.

Power vs. Control
I believe that the terms are mostly interchangeable, but I tend to use the word control to describe that which is more internal, more personal. I use power to describe something more external: power over other people.

Maybe its just me, but these are important subtle differences. Most of us don't seek power over other people, we seek control over our own destiny, self-determination.

I'm going to try to break up this into several posts and drill down on a number of subjects. This one is the first.

Control
Although control can mean control over one's self or control over other people, I generally use the word control to describe the control over one's self.

I have spent a fair amount of time around what I call control-freaks. What drives these people is not the desire to dominate other people, but the desire to have some form of self-determination over their own destiny. Sometimes our destinies are intertwined, and this control affects other people.

I believe that this is one of the great challenges of life. No one wants to live their life without any form of determination over how it goes. I think that we all feel that we should be able to make the decisions in our life and influence its outcome.

The problem is that there is so much that we have no control over. We cannot control the weather. We cannot control the basic aspects of nature. We cannot control things like earthquakes.

The control that we do have is in the decisions that we make. Some are big decisions: like which job offer we take, which city that we live in, which political party that we affiliate with, which religion we choose. Some are little decisions: like where do we go to eat tonight, what do we choose to eat tonight, which path do we take in going back and forth between work.

It is a combination of the big and little decisions that determine how our life ends up.

I tend to follow a political ideology that the individual generally is in a better position to make his or her own decisions, but to an extent. I believe that most people, when given choices, will make decent good decisions, but maybe not always wise decisions. There are others that believe that the common man should not be given as many choices, because the standard common man will make the wrong decision when given the opportunity.

I believe in certain limits--you cannot and should not kill your fellow man. No stealing. No cheating. The things that we have most laws for. I believe that government makes poor decisions when it wrestles choice away from the common person.

Power
Power, to me, always seems to involve other people or things. Generally when you have power over people, you need to establish how you get that power. In cavemen times, the strong over powered the weak and took control. At that point, it was purely who had the most power. When you had it, you probably were always worrying about losing it to someone who was more powerful than you.

In historical times, you have kings, emperors, dictators who have gained power pretty much the same way, but when it is purely a matter of power and seizing control, then you really don't have loyalty. Your loyalty comes from your ability to terrorize your subjects and to scare them into submission.

As long as you don't have rivals in your midsts or neighboring kingdoms, you might be able to get away with it for awhile.

In medieval times, you might have the benevolent ruler who gains the trust of his people and the loyalty of the royalty. This only comes when the ruler rules wisely. This establishes something that generally has a better chance of long-term survival. Loyal generals will not try to seize control from their kings and fight longer and harder to protect the kingdom.

In more civilized countries, power is granted when an election is won or someone in authority can grant the power (like appointing a judge). With this power, there is an element of authority. You do not seize power, you have to win over the minds and the hearts of the electorate.

There seems to be some perception amongst a subset of leaders that once you've been granted the power, you can choose to do as you please. This is a big mistake. This power actually is granted from the populace as a whole and can be taken away. There are, after all, checks and balances.

So, to me, you really cannot talk about power without talking about authority and about responsibility. Abuse the power, act irresponsibly, and you will be harshly judged.

Also, it is unwise to believe that just because you are President of the United States, that you have the singular most important power in the world and you have power over the world. A good President should continue to win over the constituates and to win over the people of the world. Ignore diplomacy at your peril.

Interesting Story About Control Freaks and Wisdom
I have been surprised that several people around me seem to want to be big into control. They want to be in control, to be the decision maker, to tell you exactly what to do. Any when you look at them, their life is a train wreck. I know someone who has married the same person three times (and divorced/separated from the same person three times). My dad was a charmer, a good salesman, and he was bipolar. We went to movies, but he didn't want to be around all of the crowds at the beginning of the movie, so we would enter the movie halfway through and stay until the next showing until we reached the part where we walked in.

I suppose there is some logic here, but I just don't get it.

He wanted to be in control of his disease. He would stay on his medicine long enough to get his parents to believe that he had things under control. He would then wean himself off of the medicines. He'd either go into a depression and withdraw from the world, or he would go into the manic state where he would just do bizarre things. Buy things like crazy. Get almost no sleep. At some point there would be a crash and maybe being rehospitalized. He never was in real control of himself and he eventually withdrew into himself. My kids never knew him as anything except their crazy grandfather. Sad.

It seems to me that some of these people seem to not recognize that there is a strong relationship with control and responsibility. If you take control, then you have to make wise decisions, otherwise, you're worse off than you were before.

Wisdom don't come easily. It has taken me a long time to realize that this is something that only comes with time and only comes to people who choose to learn from their mistakes. You won't get wisdom without making mistakes and you have to take those risks. Most of the time, your decisions don't have life and death consequences. The big thing to remember is that you need to assume the responsibilities for your actions and for your decisions.

When my wife and I started out, it was kinda like the old game show, "Let's Make a Deal". You would have these decision to make, which were like the doors on "Let's Make a Deal". You didn't know what's behind the door and you just had to choose.

Over a period of time, you would start to learn tricks of reading people and negotiating. You're no longer making decisions based on guesses, you have other things to draw on. We never knew how much power you have at a car dealership when you just stand up and threaten to leave. We've also gotten several car salesmen to lose their jobs when they poorly handled us as clients.

Taking responsibility for your mistakes. Learning from your mistakes. Learning when to take risks and to manage the risks. Gaining wisdom. It does seem that there are some perks with getting older, but I still wish I had the body and physique of someone half my age.

Oh, you still have to keep on learning. I'm learning quite a bit from you. Thanks.

So,what you are basically saying is control is power over one's self and power concerns things that you can't control. Therefore ,control would be disciplined power and power would be control without discipline. Interesting interpretation. I'll think about this.