Power studies journal #1

Mar 12, 2026

This is hopefully the first of a regular frequency of journal entries / updates during the course of studies in power.

Power cuts across multiple dimensions and levels. There's a lot of power dynamics in nature, within species, across species. In humans (sociologically), there's individual power, there's collective power, there's power of nations -- all acted out in relation to other parties. Power dynamics dictate all sorts of interactions (and bullying and leverage and so on).

In my dictionary, this sociological power has always carried a negative connotation (but, obviously, that is not necessarily the case). Evil, so to speak. "Power corrupts." Patriarchy, casteism, racism, elitism, wealth-gap etc. are all driven by power structures emerging from privilege, power imbalances and the "misuse" of said privilege. And the resistance to and overcoming of such a power is by way of dismantling the power through collective action. The leftist ideal, so to speak.

When a bad-actor uses power (of privilege, economics, military-might etc.) to commit bad acts, we hear about it from the lens of "misusing/abusing" their power. When a good-actor does some good, the coverage of that doesn't look at it from the angle of power; rather, it's usually seen from the lens of responsibility or philanthropy or altruism.

I guess power can be studied from a utilitarian standpoint (this is what the Thiels and the Musks do and then leverage that knowledge to screw the world while completely believing that they're a force for good!). And it can be studied as an intellectual curiosity.

There's a lot going on here that I need to understand. Hypothesis that I implicitly seem to hold true - like power inherently corrupts at some point - need to be cross-referenced with existing literature (beyond Julius Caesar). That's just one example.

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For starters, I have a bunch of books I've long-listed (in no sort order). Who knows how much of it I would make through before something else comes up.

Interestingly, the book ordering kind of reflects the western-oriented structures of internet search, online data and general inclination of the world. When we talk of power, it's almost impossible to go without talking about Machiavelli's Prince. Not so much Kautilya's Arthashastra. (Sun Tzu is perhaps an exception, but the credit to that goes to western propaganda). Internet searches reflect this big time. Loads of recommendations like 'Discourses on Livy', 'Art of Worldly Wisdom', 'Power Broker', and none of the oriental books till I prodded.

There are some 'popsci' kinda books in the list (Robert Greene, notably). But the most interesting one is 'Rules for Radicals', a '71 book from a community activist.

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India's foreign minister, S. Jaishankar, writes (in his book, 'The India Way'):

The one society that has elevated dissimulation to the highest level of statecraft, as one of our foremost Sinologists pointed out, is China. Its virtues are repeatedly lauded in the Three Kingdoms epic, where many of the decisive encounters are won by trickery rather than by force. The 36 Stratagems in the Book of Qi are further proof of how deeply such approaches have percolated into popular Chinese thinking. 'Deceiving the heavens to cross the ocean' or' making a sound in the East to then strike West' are among its most well-known aphorisms. No less are 'decking trees with false blossoms' or the empty fort strategy. Unlike in India, there is neither guilt nor doubt in dissembling; in fact, it is glorified as an art. Some analysts have even suggested that China's extraordinary rise has drawn heavily on its cultural attributes.

Sun Tzu is sharp and incisive but looks like even he feels mellow compared to the kinds of 'Thick Face, Black Heart' (Li Zongwu, end of Qing dynasty). Anyway, the point is: the cultural happenstances of a system get encoded into literary works and then those go on to dictate (amplify, preach, sanction) all sorts of behavior into the cultural DNA of the descendants of that system. True of Sun Tzu, true of Machiavelli, perhaps true of Kautilya too.

I have notes from 'Acting with Power' that I need to revisit. And I started off with (the populist) '48 Laws of Power' to get a broader sense of what's out there. It's not so much a serious study-book (and I may be wrong about that), but Greene has distilled a broad collection of prior work, I might just get a good look at the layout of the land and the bibliography helps.

In Power studies