Cooperation Is More Powerful Than Coercion Published May 5, 2026 This article was first published on Meditations in an Emergency. What is power? It is at its most essential the ability to influence an outcome on any or all scales, to protect one’s own interests at a minimum and to influence, even control others at a maximum. Violence is constantly misunderstood as power, and it certainly looks like power, and in some respects it is power, but a limited kind of power to harm and destroy.