The Country's Delimma - Power

Relational power is not unrealistic for national policy. Relational power does not mean the abdication of self-interest. Rather, it requires the recognition that our interests are inescapably intertwined with the interests of others. Economically, this is obvious. But an image of nationhood suggested by true relational power goes further than economics. It affirms that the richer the total economic, cultural, spiritual, and intellectual life of others, the richer our potential for aesthetic value relations. The greater their beauty, the greater our joint beauty can be. Thus relational power involves our openness to every dimension of the lives of other persons and nations.

If we take seriously Alfred Whitehead’s claim that the fundamental form of order and hence of value is aesthetic, and the accompanying principle of relatedness, it is obvious that unilateral power (the ability to affect without being affected) inherently inhibits the growth of value in human experience.

Relational power (the ability to be affected, to create oneself, and to affect others by having first been affected by them) is the essential foundation for the growth of such aesthetic value. The acceptance of beauty as the primary criterion of value, and of relational power as the means of producing such value, necessitates the development of new images of personhood and nationhood. We must reject those images arising from substance philosophies and shortsighted pragmatism which falsely elevate success in the pecking order to the supreme image of ideal personhood.

Bob Mesle