The Power Process

Written by Rob

The power process is the process by which humans set goals, make effort towards those goals, and finally achieve them. For some, autonomy is a necessary component for its satisfaction. This process is rooted in the most primitive parts of our brain and is shared among mammals and even some birds and reptiles.[1] The repeated disruption of this process causes low-mood states commonly referred to as depression, defeatism, and helplessness. The technological system increasingly and necessarily encroaches on the sphere of action in which humans operate and reduces the number of avenues by which to satisfy the power process. Thus, the technological system is at odds with our wild nature.

The goal-directed behavior of humans has been studied in various scopes and contexts and they converge on the fact that we have an instinctual drive to set, seek, and achieve goals. One of the earliest motivational theories, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, posits that people have tiered needs with the physiological ones, such as food and water, at the base. The framework seeks to understand behavior in the context of our basal needs and desires.[2] Not surprisingly, many theories have been developed that explain motivation in a more abstract and professional context, essentially serving the needs of the system in terms of its organizational capabilities. Notably, McLellands’s Learned Needs theory categorizes humans as primarily being driven by needs of affiliation, power, and achievement.[3] Similarly, Self-determination theory regards autonomy, competence, and relatedness as psychological needs.[4] The entire field of organizational behavior seeks to study how humans can be utilized, in light of our biological drives, most efficiently in an organizational context. The ways in which we are scientifically exploited to tinker away and increase the efficiency of the system find their roots in the brain.

Goal-seeking behavior is largely mediated by a primitive structure of the brain called the mesolimbic dopaminergic pathway, colloquially known as the reward pathway. One way it can act is as a signaling method to indicate that something is desirable to not only attain but also to make efforts towards.[5] The field called affective neuroscience understands this pathway in terms of its ability to activate behavior that causes animals to search for a variety of stimuli, anything from “nuts to knowledge.”[1] The many different theories as to what the pathway does is underpinned by a shared agreement that it is the fundamental drive for expressing goal-seeking behavior.[5] It is in this context that we should consider that the technological system disrupts the power process, a process rooted in our biology.

Satisfaction of the power process is only achieved if the goals that are set require a significant amount of effort. Goals that are too easy or too hard do not bring about any meaningful satisfaction. Goals that are trivially attained do not induce the same action in the brain since much of the motivational forces of the reward pathway are anticipatory rather than consummatory. That is, the reward, while it initially spurs great stimulation of the reward pathway, loses prominence with respect to the cues that indicate the reward is simply imminent. The positive mood associated with goal-seeking is controlled more by the perceived rate of progress towards a goal than its attainment.[6] At the other end, we have goals that are basically impossible, which obviously block the power process by preventing goal attainment and actually cause low-mood states under frequent occurrence.

Disruption of the power process through the frequent non-attainment of goals causes humans to enter a low-mood state in which there is not only a subjective sense of “feeling bad”," there is also the avoidance of goal-directed behavior itself and the decrease of social behavior. This state can be understood as an adaptive response to a “hopeless” situation, the reasoning being that it is best for an animal to avoid expending unnecessary effort toward a goal that will not be achieved.[7] Depressive realism, the phenomenon in which depressed individuals make more accurate assessments than their non-depressed counterparts, has been interpreted as an adaptation through which a depressed person can reassess a situation that is adverse.[8] Notably, seasonal depression may have also played a similar role in reducing goal-directed behavior during “leaner times” around winter when resources were not as plentiful, a sort of psychological hibernation.[9] Additionally, depressive states are frequently observed in people fighting infections which has been termed “sickness behavior”.[10] Taken together, these manifestations of low-mood states suggest that they were once adaptive to our environment but are now frequently maladaptive in industrial society. Animal models of depression illuminate the causal links between goal disruption and low-mood states.

Experiments on animals show us the mechanisms that induce depressive states. The most widely used animal model for depression is the "Learned Helplessness" model. It is induced by repeatedly exposing an animal to an uncontrollable and stressful event such as an electrical shock. The animals go on to develop deficiencies in attempts to escape any future stressful events, a reduction of motivated behavior. At first, they make vigorous attempts to escape the stimulus, but, as the situation clearly becomes hopeless, the animal withdraws activity in response to the stimulus.[11] Similarly, the Tail Suspension Test, measures the time it takes a rat to withhold activity after being suspended by nothing but its tail, and the Forced-swimming test follows in much the same vein only in an inescapable cylinder of water.[12] [13] These models work so well that it is through these experiments that anti-depressant drugs are developed.[14] Successful drugs are assessed on their ability to make an animal expend additional effort towards a certifiably impossible goal.

To summarize: we have an innate drive, based in our biology, to set, seek, and attain meaningful and challenging goals; the system incrementally and disruptively shrinks the number of these goals available to us; as humans inevitably try to seek those forbidden goals, they enter low-mood states; so, the system contradicts our fundamental and wild drives. Most people wouldn't say that we humans are captive animals even after the chains are pointed at. Perhaps the system has successfully pulled one over on them. Nonetheless, the kinds of ways we can satisfy the power process in industrial society are hollow substitutes for what we were built for. We yearn for meaningful struggles, not the complicated or drab artificial ones offered by industrial society. As Kaczynski said, "I don't necessarily accept a psychological theory just because some psychologists say it's true."[15] With a dose of common sense, we can intuit that we have drives to exercise our bodies and minds towards our physical, mental, and spiritual ends. But the system resists this because the system does not work for humans. It works for itself.

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NOTES:

[1] Panksepp, Jaak, and Lucy Biven. The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions. W.W. Norton, 2012.

[2] Maslow, A. H. “A theory of human motivation.” Psychological Review, vol. 50, no. 4, July 1943, pp. 370–396, https://doi.org/10.1037/h0054346.

[3] McClelland, David C. The Achieving Society., 1961, https://doi.org/10.1037/14359-000.

[4] Deci, Edward L., and Richard M. Ryan. “Self-determination theory: A Macrotheory of human motivation, development, and health.” Canadian Psychology / Psychologie Canadienne, vol. 49, no. 3, Aug. 2008, pp. 182–185, https://doi.org/10.1037/a0012801.

[5] Alcaro, Antonio, et al. “Behavioral functions of the mesolimbic dopaminergic system: An Affective Neuroethological Perspective.” Brain Research Reviews, vol. 56, no. 2, Dec. 2007, pp. 283–321, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brainresrev.2007.07.014.

[6] Carver, Charles S., and Michael F. Scheier. “Origins and functions of positive and negative affect: A control-process view.” Psychological Review, vol. 97, no. 1, Jan. 1990, pp. 19–35, https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295x.97.1.19.

[7] Nettle, Daniel. “An evolutionary model of low mood states.” Journal of Theoretical Biology, vol. 257, no. 1, Mar. 2009, pp. 100–103, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2008.10.033.

[8] Alloy LB, Abramson LY. Depressive realism: four theoretical perspectives. In: Cognitive processes in depression. New York: Guilford Press; 1988

[9] Davis, Caroline, and Robert D. Levitan. “Seasonality and seasonal affective disorder (SAD): An evolutionary viewpoint tied to energy conservation and reproductive cycles.” Journal of Affective Disorders, vol. 87, no. 1, July 2005, pp. 3–10, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2005.03.006.

[10] Hart, Benjamin L. “Biological basis of the behavior of Sick Animals.” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, vol. 12, no. 2, June 1988, pp. 123–137, https://doi.org/10.1016/s0149-7634(88)80004-6.

[11] Seligman, M E. “Learned helplessness.” Annual Review of Medicine, vol. 23, no. 1, Feb. 1972, pp. 407–412, https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.me.23.020172.002203.

[12] Steru, Lucien, et al. “The tail suspension test: A new method for screening antidepressants in mice.” Psychopharmacology, vol. 85, no. 3, Mar. 1985, pp. 367–370, https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00428203.

[13] Porsolt, R D et al. “Behavioral despair in mice: a primary screening test for antidepressants.” Archives internationales de pharmacodynamie et de therapievol. 229,2 (1977): 327-36.

[14] Nesse, R. Good Reasons for Bad Feelings. Penguin, 2019.

[15] Kaczynski, Theodore John. Technological Slavery. Fitch Madison Publishers, 2022.