More than a decade ago, I published a book in Russian titled As a Power with a Power: The Politics of Interpersonal Relations.
It was not a book about grand strategy or formal authority. It was about where power most persistently lives – in everyday interactions: in offices and families, in negotiations and silences,
in status cues, symbols, routines, and unspoken rules.
The book grew out of lived experience and an attempt to understand power more honestly – its mechanics, its seductions, its limits, and its ordinary, often invisible forms.
Today, I find myself thinking about power in a slightly different register – in relation to thought.
Confucius and Machiavelli both sought political office. Both wanted to operate inside power. Yet their lasting influence came not from the positions they held, but from the ideas they were compelled to articulate when power remained out of reach.
Power attracts, even reflective minds. It offers immediacy, visibility, and a sense of significance here and now.
And yet: power makes a person significant in life, thought – even after.
#power #thought
Alisher Faizullaev 