A Field Guide to Feelings

Power and Powerlessness

Image of the fallen statue of Lenin by Ferran Cornellà, Wikimedia

When someone exerts power over you, they’ve turned you into a thing. Taken to the extreme, power turns you into a literal thing, a corpse. A step or two short, power turns you into an abstraction, a number, or an instrument with no will or dignity of your own.

When you’re not a thing, you count. You’re human. Your life has meaning and consequence. When…