WHAT DO WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT POWER?

Image credit: crazy motions 

In September, I wrote a post titled "In the age of growing polarization, the song 'Under Pressure' is a perfect anthem for empathy." It still remains a statement of my wholehearted belief. I am not going to talk about current politics here. You are probably getting enough of that through your daily media consumption. I just want to say that, no matter what is happening in the world, I still believe in the importance of connection. I believe that at the time when connection seems the most difficult thing to do, it is also the most important thing to do.

As a scholar, my challenge lies in providing well-researched arguments to support my beliefs. As a person who cares about what's going on in the world, I ask myself every day, Why is it exactly that we should struggle to connect, to understand each other, when it feels so hard to do?

My way to answer this question is through exploration of power. One could study connection or explain its importance in many different ways. Looking at connection through the idea of power might seem counterintuitive: What do these two things have in common? If you follow my work, you will see how I gradually develop my argument. Sometimes directions that my exploration is taking might seem too detached from my goal to explain why connection is essential no matter how hard it is to do. But trust me: this goal is always present in my mind and in my heart.

For example, here is a new page from the project POWER of meanings // MEANINGS of power. On this page, I explore the meaning of the word "power" in different languages. In other words, I asked myself this broad question: What do we talk about when we talk about power? To formulate an answer, I drew on my knowledge of five languages: Russian, English, Spanish, German, and French. All of them belong to the Indo-European family of languages, which means that they are related through a common language "ancestor" known as Proto-Indo-European. 

Clearly, based on just these few languages, I cannot make conclusions about the meaning of power in languages of all cultures. However, it is important to keep in mind that the Indo-European family of languages includes a great many very diverse languages. And a lot of crucial conversations about power in the modern world are happening in these languages. For instance, numerous scholarly conversations about power happen in English. (I also took a quick look into the meaning of power in Sanskrit.)

My admittedly superficial exploration of power in these languages yielded some interesting preliminary results, which I describe in more detail here. To sum it up:

• When we talk about power, we often talk about ability and influence.
• We actually talk about power and its aspects all the time, although we use many different words to talk about it (for example, modal verb "can" and its equivalents in other languages).
• Language allows us to talk about power as something bad (as in coercion and violence) but also as something good (and in energy and strength). 
• Language hints at an assumed connection between power and energy. (But what is this connection? I have some ideas and I will explore them in my future posts.)

By the way, if you speak languages that are outside of the Indo-European group, I would love to hear from you. Do the insights I listed above make sense in the context of your language?