Collective Power

​Many of you reading this blog will know that about 30 years ago my wife, Dr. Cedar Barstow, started doing ethics training with individuals and groups. Her friend Amina mentioned to her back then that ethics is really just the right use of power. A light bulb went on for Cedar, so she started referring to her ethics training programs as teaching “the right use of power.” I came into Cedar’s life 15 years ago, and based on my work in the nonprofit community, I persuaded her to incorporate her program, and in 2013 it became a 501(c)3 federally tax-exempt organization. Now The Right Use of Power Institute, or RUPI, it is headed by the 44-year-old Dr. Amanda Aguilera who has diversified it into an international effort with some 500-plus teachers trained to help individuals and groups use their power with greater wisdom and skill, or, in Cedar’s terms, “to stand in their power while staying in their hearts.” Programs are currently available in Spanish as well as English. You can learn more about RUPI’s work at www.rightuseofpower.org. There are also two books on the subject: C. Barstow’s Right Use of Power: The Heart of Ethics (2nd ed., 2015) and Barstow and Feldman, Living in the Power Zone: How Right Use of Power Can Transform Your Relationships (2013). Both are available from Amazon or at the RUPI website. Initially and in both books, four kinds of power are discussed: personal, role, collective, and status. In the last few years two additional types have been added: systemic and universal power. This week’s blog will deal with Collective Power...

When I think of collective power, two images come to mind. First, the power of unions. Clearly, individual employees have little they can do in battles with their big bosses. The union movement is based on the fact that a company’s labor force acting as one can make for a much fairer match-up. After all, a company will lose time and money if their employees collectively walk off the job. Moreover, hiring new workers will require expensive training to bring them up to speed. I also think of the Japanese saying that one stick is easily broken while many bound together are unbreakable. The other image is two teams engaged in a tug of war. (Would that this became the only kind of war on Planet Earth.) The 20th-century song “Stout-Hearted Men” can be considered a hymn to the strength of this sort of multi-person solidarity.

​Today, to be sure, beyond corporations and sports teams, we have the collective power of NGOs like the U.N., the Red Cross, the European Union, and even the G-7, described as “an informal grouping of advanced democracies that meets annually to coordinate global economic policy and address other transnational issues” (Council on Foreign Relations, www.cfr.org). On our journey from human-cruel to humankind, may more of what we do through acting in consort be helpful not harmful to our fellow global citizens. And may collective power become ever more fully used for the greater good of the greatest number. Amen.