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Power: The Inner Experience
by David McClelland
"Man has always been fascinated by power. He has reason to be for, as scholars are fond of reminding him, he belongs to a violent species. Look at his history: a long succession of wars with interludes of peace in localized times and places. His myths and his religion are saturated with concern for power.
The Judeo-Christian God is almighty. 'The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is full of majesty. The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars; yea the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon... the Lord will give strength unto His people.' 'All things were made by Him: without Him wasn't anything made that was made.' Jesus said to his followers 'He that believeth in Me, the works that I do shall he do also;and greater works than these shall he do ... ye shall receive power.'
In the ancient Chinese Book of Changes, the I Ching, there is likewise concern about power - the taming power of the small, the taming power of the great, the power of light, the power of the dark, the possession in great measure. In the central episode of the Hindu epic, the Bhagavad Gita, Arjuna faces a problem of exercising or not exercising power against his kindred. Should he fight or not? The advice given to him is that he must fight because it is his duty, but that he should so act as not to be attached to the outcome of his actions; he must feel neither success nor failure, nor joy nor sorrow, whatever the outcome of his actions. In religion man strives to understand forces greater than himself along with his own urges to attack and destroy or to defend himself against his fellow man.
The need for understanding the psychology of power is eveng reater today, when man's capacity for destroying himself and the universe has reached a new level of seriousness. The threat of nuclear destruction has not, somewhat surprisingly, evoked an adaptive response, even from thinking and sensitive people. At first it elicited horror and a number of Utopian schemes for controlling man's aggressive urges. Then, as little progress was made toward putting the schemes into effect, people began to adapt to the stress by forgetting it. Even a certain cynicism, mixed with despair, developed; older theories about man's innate aggressiveness were revived and gained wide currency. Particularly among the young, groups of people decided, as the Hindus had centuries ago, that to try and eliminate power and power schemes at the social level is hopeless. Rather, an individuals should renounce thoughts of power, cultivate his own soul, and live under enlightenment, free from power based commitment to change the world."
Excerpt from: Power: The Inner Experience, by David McClelland, 1995, Irvington Publishers, Inc.
