I believe that any and every instance of power is an empowered process empowering others to participate in the “creordering” (creative re-ordering) of a given social organization — power is not a “thing” that a single, isolated individual or even group of individuals can “possess,”; it is a relational nexus or matrix of processes of being-becoming that influences and involves many diverse actors operating in concert over time and throughout space.
“Power” itself can never be increased or decreased, it can only be concentrated or dissipated throughout the network or system it is instantiated by, based on the “glocal” organizational and causal dynamics at play (“glocality” being the interdependence of and bi-directional influence between global and local levels). Power is not something that can be lost or gained, but only reconfigured along different patterns of organization and different axial directives or values. Power is not “something,” though of course it is not “nothing” either.
Not all instances of power fully rise to the level of its pure concept, which is to say not all forms of power live up to their name. This means that although all instances of power are always-already empowered processes empowering, hegemonic power is a form of power where only a few are empowered, at the expense of others’ disempowerment. Therefore, as a partial and inconsistent expression of the concept of power, hegemonic power fails to live up to its full potential (so it is no wonder that hegemonic power is always operating under the fear that it itself could be subject to disempowerment, a fear which it only displaces, and thus intensifies, by forcefully maintaining the same hegemonic order).
Alternatively, true or real power — the pure form of power that rises to the level of its concept — is always-already an empowering empowerment that is capable of realizing anything and everything except for its own negation as disempowerment. When true power takes power from hegemonic power, hegemonic power does not “lose” itself or “diminish” its power (for it never “attained” itself nor “increased” it), but rather hegemonic power itself is re-empowered differently, along the lines of true power. This is a difference that makes the difference between hegemonic power and the pure form of power, and why the latter is, in the final analysis, the only true or real form of power.
This is the open secret at the heart of true power: it cannot be found in any simply located time and place, yet it is undeniably present and operative, always-already realizing itself as empowered empowering power, whether this is recognized or not. The seeming ubiquity and dominance of hegemonic power is simply a temporary illusion, a momentary phase in the dialectical-dialogical self-realization of the true form of power. Re-empowering dis-empowering forms of power to reconstitute them as empowering powers is part and parcel of the very process of true power’s inevitable and inexorable unfolding.
If there is a “third” ultimate immanent transcendental principle in our system of Process Buddhism other than the two principles of Open/Emptiness and Inclusive-Transcendence, then it would be the Pure Form of Power, or simply Power. But perhaps another sense, there are still only two ultimate principles, and Power is simply the consummate embodiment of their indivisible unity. Whichever may be the case, Power is a foundational and critical concept in the system of Process Buddhism.
Holopoiesis 