https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=0kQh3S0JWQQ
So today what I was thinking about was rounding out this idea of power a little bit. I’m not going to talk about power directly. I’m going to mention it. We have a video on power here that we can watch if we so choose. In that video I mentioned a couple of components. Those components are influence and control. And it’s influence and control that we can fuse for power. And so what I’d like to do is go over what I mean by influence, what I mean by control. How are these related to power in the way people are using power? And how are they related to power in reality? And what’s the difference? So when we’re talking about influence, that is a force that you exert on people, maybe merely by your presence. But you can direct it, right? So you can mention certain words to people that has an influence on them. You can comment on the words that you use. You can direct it to people that you use. You can direct it to people that you use. That has an influence on them. You can comment on their videos. That has an influence on them. You can bring up certain topics in certain frames. That has an influence on people. So influence is important, but it’s also omnipresent. Like lots of things are influencing lots of other things because we live in a very connected world. And there’s nothing wrong with influence. It happens. Sometimes you can direct it. That’s great. Sometimes you can’t direct it. What are you going to do? So it’s a limited force, right? And we have it whether we’re aware of it or not. And sometimes it manifests in ways we cannot directly understand. And so one way this might happen is, you know, people will say stuff like this. Well, every time I’m around my mother, I get uptight. Oh, your mother has influence over you, does she? Right. Or every time I’m around George, he always makes me angry. Right. So, oh, yeah, he has influence. And you don’t know what. Like the influence of these people could be in their tone. It could be in their use of language, physically how they use their language. And you hear this from the other side sometimes. Like, wow, every time I’m around my daughter or my son, I’m always tense. It’s like, oh, really? I don’t know why. And I’ve actually heard both sides of that, by the way. It’s fascinating. One side’s doing the influencing, you know, almost unconsciously. Right. And the other side’s responding to it almost unconsciously in many cases. Sometimes completely unconscious. You can watch this play out sometimes. And they don’t even understand what they’re doing to some degree. So influence, we can sometimes understand, but often not. Because the world is huge and there’s so many influences. There’s not just tone and word usage. There’s also body language. There’s also our framing. So a lot of times when we talk to, say, a parent, the framing that we use to talk about the same things we talk about with our friends is totally different framing. Because our relationship to our parents is unique to them. Right. And, you know, to some extent to everybody else. But, you know, we tend to have a common framing for friends. That’s why friends is a group. And we’re our best friend. Why do we call it our best friend? Our best friend gets our best information, our secret information. Right. And we also count on them to help us with that information. It’s different from our parent relationship in most cases. So we have these buckets. We use these buckets in language all the time. We don’t we don’t really notice. But a lot of that talks about influence. Why is your family different from your friends, different from your best friend? Because they have different amounts of influence. Right. And you influence them differently, too. Right. You’ll exert more influence over your best friend in their best interest. I hope it’s their best interest. Right. At least as you see fit. And so that that’s different. And we know this. We talk this way. We actually talk this way. We don’t even realize we’re doing it. So that’s a little bit about influence. It’s a lot like gravitational force or or something along those lines. And then what about control? Control is something that we again, you know, somewhat exert by virtue of being around. Right. By virtue of existence, we have we’re exerting some control. And then how much control we take and use and recognize is a different story. And so one way of thinking about the difference between influence and control is influence is indirect and mostly subconscious. And control is direct and mostly conscious. So and I don’t mean you you always do it consciously. You can you can exert control totally subconsciously without ever realizing it. That happens again all the time. And it is different from influence because control is directed. OK. And it’s first order effect style directed. So control is the sort of thing where when your parents say, don’t do that and you don’t do that, that’s control. That’s not influence. Influence is when they say, well, have you thought about the consequences of doing that? That’s influence, not control. They’re hinting at something. You’re pointing at something. Second order effect. Right. They’ve removed themselves from direct consequence in their language. And they’re just telling you you to consider. And what are they doing when they say, well, you might not want to do that. Right. They’re encouraging you to take control so that they don’t have to exert control, as in the first case where they said, don’t do that. That’s them exerting control. And now we can get in the weeds pretty quickly. And people often do. But what control do they really have? Right. People like Mark do this all the time. What control does the police really have? What control does the government really have? If I’m going 80 down down the road and the speed them at 70, doesn’t seem like they have any control. Well, to some degree, they don’t. But, you know, the speed limit signs are influence. It’s a suggestion. Right. The signs not going to stop you. Doesn’t stop most of the people. They’re all doing 80 really. Or at least in the lane I drive in. So the real difference with control is it’s directable and it’s first order. And so it’s action reaction. Influence is hint. And something will happen. And so you’re going to have to take control. So influence is hint. And something will happen. But it’s not necessarily directly connected to what you want. So that’s sort of the difference. And then you may say, you know, Mark, you promised us power or something to that effect. So power. And this literally just occurred to me today to frame it this way. Framing is always very difficult. Power is bigger than you. And you don’t have control of power. Ever. Right. So you’re. It’s your time. Right. Your attention and energy. And that’s your power. But you don’t fully control it. And because you don’t control it, power needs to be placed in a narrative. In a structure. Otherwise, it doesn’t work. And I think that’s the best way to think about it. So because you can’t have power. Because power has to be granted and imbued to you within a structure. Right. In order for it to be wielded properly. It’s a different beast. It’s not like influence. It’s not like control where there’s a direct relationship between. You know, the amount of influence you have, it’s contained within you. And the amount of control you have is contained within you. Right. Now, how well it works is a different story. And that there’s always a negotiation. Right. It’s always cooperation. If somebody, if your parents tell you don’t do that, you can still do it. Right. But you know there’s going to be consequences. Most likely. Sometimes there aren’t. That’s worse when people, you know, exert control. But then don’t go all the way with making sure the control is actually exerted properly. It’s the same with power. And the problem with power is that in the beginning it seems like it works. Because you confuse power, influence and control. So a lot of people use power to mean influence. Right. So they say something like, well, Amazon controls my life because they’re powerful. It’s like, oh, oh, no, they don’t. No, they don’t. Just don’t buy from them. You know, does the fact that Amazon exists have influence over your life? Yes. Are there markets that Amazon controls? Kind of. Right. They have some control over, well, they put a lot of booksellers out of business, for example. So in that way they had some control. Do they control you? No, no, no, they don’t. No, they don’t. And so any control that they have is not control over you. It’s influence over you. It’s not actual control. And do they absolutely block and prevent certain things? Sure, they do. Absolutely. Because things that have influence on the world can have a blocking component where because this is in the world, these things are gone from it. Right. Because the world is like that. Things pop up in order for space to be made. Not all the time, but sometimes old things have to go away. And that happens all the time. Sometimes those old things were perfectly good and needed to be preserved. That happens all the time. That’s not power. That’s not necessarily control. It might be influence. We should not say Amazon doesn’t have control. Again, they do. They put a lot of booksellers out of business, right? They exerted their control. Boom, crashed the book market basically by taking a loss, which should be illegal, and they also be in prison. Different topic. And as a result, that has an influence on how you operate in the world. Because they exerted control, what little control they had and took out a lot of booksellers, your options are limited. That’s not the same as them having power, control or influence over you. The fact that your options are limited due to their interference is not the same as them directly controlling you. It’s not the same as them having power over you. Those are second order effects from their control or their influence. It’s not the same thing. And it’s important because we don’t talk as though it’s the same thing. Interestingly, we seem to talk that way, but ultimately we don’t. And so that’s sort of the difference there between influence, control and power. Now, you need to understand when you’re influencing or being influenced versus when there’s a controlling agent, right? Or what control you’re exhibiting as an agent, because if you don’t take responsibility for your influence, you will hurt people in ways you don’t understand. And if you don’t take responsibility for looking for what is influencing you, you will be influenced by things against your will, basically. Because ignorance is not an excuse. Same goes for control. You need to take responsibility for the control that you have, because we all have a great deal of control. The most control you have, and maybe most is the wrong word. Maybe the best word is the most accurate and precise control that you have is control over yourself. It’s control over you. So if you feel out of control, that’s something you can get fixed for yourself. Can you be perfect at it? No. Is it flawless? No. Is it reliable? No, because you don’t have perfectly accurate and precise control over yourself. Jordan Peterson talks about this. Lots of people talk about this. You cannot just tell yourself to go to the gym, and then you’ll start going to the gym. Because you have a consciousness congress, Paul Van der Kley uses that a lot. And multiple agents within you that want different competing things, everything’s competing for time. Everything’s competing for attention. Everything’s competing for energy or maybe effort’s a better term. And so there’s multiple forces in your head doing this. That’s why you don’t have full control over yourself. But the thing you have the most control over is yourself. That means if you want to make the most effective change in the world, you need to change yourself. That will always be the most effective change that you can have. The most effective impact, the most impactful thing. The most reliable, not totally reliable, not completely reliable. It’s not precise. It’s not as precise and accurate as you’d like. But it’s as close as it’s going to get. It’s the best bet that you have. So if you get your last dollar and you’ve got to make a bet, that’s the bet to make every time. That’s the difference. Focus your control not on others, because others are unreliable. And they’re less reliable than you are to yourself. So what happens is I can exert control and maybe it works perfectly a few times. And I’m like, aha, I can just tell this person what to do and they’ll do it and it’s done. But that’s not reliable and it’ll break down over time. And so once it gets reliable and consistent for a while, you start to get the idea that this is going to keep working. And then when it doesn’t work, it usually doesn’t work spectacularly. When things fail, they fail big. And you’re caught off guard. And once you get reliability and consistency, you tend to make predictions that that’s going to continue. And when it doesn’t continue, you put yourself in a bad situation, because usually you’re too reciprocally narrowed on being able to make good, precise, accurate predictions. And because the control is working. And then when it doesn’t work, you’ve left yourself with no options. This is a theme that you read about in military tactics. And it’s actually part of Blake 7, which is the best science fiction show ever created, by the way. I think it’s season four where they’re attacked by several ships at once. And basically the enemy is running too tight a pattern. So even though they have enough ships and they’re all in the right position, they just go straight, straight, which was the one condition. Well, surely they’re not going to go straight because they’ll see that that won’t work. But they go straight because that’s the one condition that was left out of the equation. And they make it. And skin of the teeth thing. Sure. Well, TV got to be. But that happens in real life all the time. So you don’t want to reciprocally narrow on control or even influence and make it a predictable, consistent, reliable thing outside of yourself. And so what you’ll notice about influence and your own self is that you can influence yourself. People do this all the time. Right. So what’s one way we influence ourselves? One way we influence ourselves is we pay for a gym membership because we can’t control ourselves enough to go to the gym reliably. But if we pay for it, now we’ve got this guilt thing and there’s a connection. Right. Because we’ve paid. We’ve paid out work effort. Right. Work to this place. And now we feel obligated because there’s been a transaction. There’s been a cooperation of participation there to go and fulfill our promise to ourself. Right. To work out. That’s a form of influence. We do this with with lots of things, too. So we’re constantly trying to influence ourselves and control ourselves. And that’s where to focus. Because, again, that’s where you have the most influence and most control is in you. The Stoics knew this. The Stoics act like this. And it’s it’s not as reliable or accurate as anybody would like, but it is reliable and accurate as you can get. And that’s better by definition. And always go for better. So hopefully this gives you a better idea over what’s going on with influence, control and power. And power is very much outside of you. Influence and control are not. They’re very much inside of you. And there are also things that are coming at you from the outside. But unlike power, they don’t they don’t necessarily exist within a structure. Structures have influence and control over you in certain cases. But power is unique because it has this property where it requires structure and it can’t be properly wielded by one or more people. Like power is just an imprecise, crazy thing that almost has a wheel of its own. If you if you if you want to think of it that way and and influence and control don’t have that property. Definitely not. They’re definitely sort of single agents. They’re tied to human agents. No doubt. And understanding this understanding these three concepts better and how they’re used. Watch how people use these terms. People use power to mean influence and control all the time, all the time. That they also say things like power corrupts. Well, we all have some power. We all have our our time, our attention and our energy that we that we can devote to things. And that’s that’s the three big components of power. Combine it with structure and leadership. Right. And now you’ve now you’re there. So making this clear, hopefully gives you a way to understand what people are talking about when they’re using power because they’re using it to mean three different things. And it will hopefully get you to understand what influence and control you have and can exert. Right. And what influence and control is being exerted over you. Maybe you don’t have to do anything about it. Right. Maybe just the awareness of it changes you significantly in a way to make your life better because there’s some forces of control and influence that we submit to voluntarily, whether we realize it or not. And in understanding that relationship where we’re submitting to our parents, right, or we’re submitting to the police or we’re submitting to the government in some form or we’re submitting to our the the annoying opinion of our best friend to maybe. Right. Who knows. Right. Or even when we’re submitting to someone who’s annoying and isn’t right. But you know what? Every once in a while they make a really funny joke and it’s all worth it. Right. These are submissions and we need to understand that we’re doing it all the time and how we’re doing it so that we feel better about the control that’s exerted on us because it’s not a one way relationship. It’s not just coming down from above and forcing you. It’s also something you’re participating in. And so you have some agency and agency is important. It’s important that you know you have agency and take control of your agency. Take responsibility for your agency. Relate to your agency and that will help you relate to the world better. Now I hope that was clear enough. I hope it helps. I think that if you think about these things this way over time it will unfold and help you to become better to relate to things better to relate to other people better to co-create with other people more easily and not be bitter or resentful because those are killers. And you know to the extent that that I can I’d like to influence you in understanding my level of appreciation for you watching this video because you’re giving me again what I think is the most valuable thing that you know components of the ultimate thing will say that that ultimate structure of power. Which are your time and attention.