Finding Horizontal Power in a Vertical Power World

Things have gotten pretty crazy in the world lately.

What, with the new war going on, (?!?!) along with a few other minor challenges caused by the pandemic, the economy, and accelerating climate change. Just a few things going on these days, right?

It's natural to want power in a topsy-turvy world. But the question is, what kind of power do you really want? Vertical? Or horizontal?

Let's explore the concepts.

What is Vertical Power?

The modern world has been built on the premise of vertical power. I feel like that's part of the reason it's so topsy-turvy. is that power and means have a certain weight to them. Much of this weight is concentrated at the top of the societal structure.

We don't seem to have been maintaining a good load of ballast to even things out lately. And you sure can feel it.

I also see there is a natural hierarchy to things in the modern world.

Typically, you start at the bottom and climb your way up as you go. This logic is so second nature to ambitious people, that it might not seem like it's even worthy of definition.

But I disagree. Things didn't used to be this way. For much of history, small groups of hunter-gatherers worked together in egalitarian cultures where there were no official leaders. Leadership was a shared responsibility, not a corner office with big perks. It focused on keeping the group as a whole safe, happy, and ideally thriving.

And through most of human evolution, the respective center of gravity has been located somewhere near our pelvises. We focused on finding what we needed to eat, learning how to walk upright, and making and raising babies.

With the advent of written language, this weight began to migrate up - both in our bodies and in our culture. Nowadays, we tend to keep our energy in our heads.

Vertical power has, by its nature, bottlenecks, competition, and high cliffs from which to fall. These are built-in features of the system. Vertical power is not bad, per se. But it needs to be balanced out by something else if we want to keep the system from toppling.

I know that a lot of you are willing to put in the blood, sweat, and tears to work to make the world a better place. The question then becomes, what's the best way to do this? What is most productive and effective?

And there is an urgency to this work like there has never been before.

Because so far as I can tell. we have stepped into a turning point in history.

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We might not all be able to go out and pull people to safety from Ukraine. Or help craft legislation that might help us move into the next era of the global economy. Or make sure everyone gets equal representation and equitable pay in the corporate world.

We can join with others to work on these larger goals. And, in my humble opinion, we should! But these large-scale improvements are long slow processes that require scads of people to participate and engage.

Society isn't as agile as the individuals that create it.

How can we as individuals help to bring significant positive change in this world? Especially when we might have the best of intentions and at the same time are often stretched thin across multiple projects, people, and tasks every single day.

The answer, my friends, is to claim the horizontal power of partnership and to start using it for good in a vertical power world.

What is Horizontal Power?

Horizontal power is the power of partnership.

It's the power of giving, networking, mentoring, and volunteering our services for the assistance of others. We're not all going to put on a spandex spider suit and go zipping around the high-rises, but Spidey's philosophy of with great power comes great responsibility really does resonate when we're talking about horizontal power.

Horizontal power is really just another name for Partnerism, the concept famously espoused by the prescient Dr. Riane Eisler in her work over the last 4 decades.

Partnerism: A socio-economic system that values and rewards caring for one another, nature, and our collective future.

What does horizontal power look like to the average person? The one who might not be on the world stage, up there pulling the tiger's tail?

It looks a lot like LinkedIn if I'm being honest. And it relies on power that is built WITH one another. Not OVER. This is the power of paying something forward. It's the art of learning how to both give and receive. And while profit may follow in the wake of the application of horizontal power, it is never the motivation for the work.

I've met so many amazing people through this platform. Over the last 3 years, this platform has really bloomed. Good job, y'all! I'll tag some of my inspirations in the comments.

These amazing people come from all over the world. They're working together in small informal groups and containers.

And their work involves a kind of lowering of our center of gravity down out of our heads, and back into our hearts. People who are learning to combine the earthy wisdom of the body with the innovative solutions at speed that come from our heads. DEI specialists, soil scientists, nature lovers, and advocates of healthy living. Educators, artists, and coaches are infiltrating our vertical power world and using their powers for good.

We're going to need to learn to value all kinds of smarts if we plan on collectively getting to the next phase of life. The days when cutthroat competition was critical to success are beginning to fade. Now the soft skills of collaborating, championing inclusiveness, and high-quality communication are beginning to matter. They're beginning to be valued.

Hopefully, we can begin making our way there with some major improvements in our societal infrastructure along the way.

So here's the homework for today's edition. I'll frame it as the question, per the format of this newsletter.

Closing Question

What can you do to cultivate horizontal power in your world today? How can you incorporate valuing and caring into the professional or personal work you do?

Thanks for reading! I look forward to your insights.

Cover Photo by Diego Jimenez on Unsplash