Power Level
I’m thinking about “power level” this morning and what the internet means when it points to it. It clearly refers to an intersubjectively observable thing, but I’m trying to figure out how particular it is.
Is one’s “power level” just one’s own self-actualization? Or does it involve virtues that are not evenly distributed or cultivated? Does culture affect the expression of an individual’s power level? Is it learned or trained in relational ways, not just personal ones?
My instinct is that “power level” sounds like a video game stat about magical energy because it really is that kind of thing — something each character has their own capacity for, determined by other stats and abilities and expressed in particular power moves.
The tricky thing is, this inquiry is not leading to an egalitarian place, and it makes me nervous.
I suspect “power level” is a spiritual quality, because its objectification is familiar to me from every spiritual scene I’ve been in, only couched in terms that are less forthcoming or self-aware about its video-game-like nature.
I think it’s what serial seekers are chasing.
Some seekers are chasing their own power level, and the pathologies around that are pretty obvious, but there is also an ennobling version about deepening one’s own capacities and becoming ever more alive-to-oneself. This clearly raises one’s power level.
But seekers also chase higher power levels in others, especially teachers. This is much more fraught, in my opinion. There are all kinds of ways one can be wrong about someone else’s power level (including it being high enough that they can deceive you with it).
But also, subordinating yourself to the power level of others caps your power level. To believe one can’t progress without dumping one’s teacher to find another with a higher power level is a low-power-level move. That doesn’t mean one should always just stay put, though.
The real limitation (surprising 0 people) is conceptual. The internet version (“power”) limits this in ways having to do with material resources and status. Spiritual scenes have their own concepts of power level with their own — usually at least as limiting — limitations.
Surprising even fewer than 0 people, I’d say the most helpful reframe is into the power that can actually be felt in the body. I use the words “qi” (Chinese) or “ruaḥ” (Hebrew) for this kind of “energy,” but it’s important to know that this also includes “spirit” or even “soul.”
But the point is not what you call it or how you conceive of it; it’s that it refers to something you can feel and act in or out of accordance with. “Power level” may describe some absolute or average capacity, but all that matters right now is how much of it is available.
Your true power level is the one you have with you.
It feels like there is infinitely more discourse on the power level effects of relationships and institutions, but there is a bottom line:
The most important power level skill is feeling what yours is RIGHT NOW.
After that, moving towards or away from power is your choice.
