Power or Influence?

By: Ahmed ELNAHAS – Montopoli, November 25^th 2013.

I think that now, more than ever, we need to have a much better understanding of “Power” in order to clearly identify who is to be qualified as the ‘powerful’, more precisely: The Potent. Because I fear that it has become equivocal the confused use of the term ‘power’ and its true measuring criterion: “Influence”, that is the capacity to weigh over other people’s decisions.

To simplify the scope of my quest, I invite you to answer the following easy questions:

·         Who’s more powerful: the Child or the Parents?

·         Who’s more powerful: the Class Bully or the School Headmaster?

·         Who’s more powerful: the Minister of Education and Scientific Research or the National Assembly Of the Universities’ Deans?

·         Who’s more powerful: the Reader or the Writer?

·         Who’s more powerful: the Voter or the Candidate?

·         Who’s more powerful: the Poet or the Soldier?

·         Who’s more powerful: the People or the President?

Now repeat the same exercise using ‘Influential’ instead of ‘Powerful’.. And once you’ve answered these simple interrogatives, which I’m certain wasn’t quite an easy exercise; you can measure the ratio Power/Influence anywhere and everywhere throughout your daily attendances and seeing, or just by observing and analysing all types of human, and none, relations.

To conclude: you, as I have, will realise how the inter-exchangeability of roles from Powerful/Influential to Submissive/Manipulated is a common factor in Human Relations, especially in Politics and Labour. That’s how we should all be as much vigilant and objective when we go to the Ballot Boxes to place our Vote, as when we chose our daily newspaper.

The moment we define the real relation between our need for a given product, its quality and its price; then we can be certain that our choices will have more than average chance to satisfy our expectations.

Pass On The Word.