Power never corrupts. The depravity is already there.
Power reveals the truth. Power provides
depravity means for manifestation.
Osho.

Does anyone speak English here?

Everyone knows that most bosses use the services of translators.
Although, in our opinion, it would be more correct to own at least English, so as not to rely on translators who, not knowing the specifics of the subject of discussion, can make mistakes.

Another thing is when there is a full-time translator who is well acquainted with the activities of the company and specific phraseology.

Yes, and it is probably more convenient when someone takes on part of the burden in negotiations with foreign partners. It's like a business driver.
However, this comparison is incorrect and does not reflect the essence of the phenomenon.

Here's how it can be. Business negotiations with a beginner translator...

So why, after all, the vast majority of bosses use the services of translators, exposing themselves to the risk of translation errors or information leakage, and do not negotiate themselves.

Who is my boss?

What did the greats say about power?

"There is no human soul that can withstand the temptation of power."
Plato

"The power of one person over another destroys, first of all, the one who rules."
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

"Power subtly robs us of all our natural virtues."
Edmund Burke

“Power and popularity is a kind of tumor that, growing, kills the feelings of its victim ..”
"Friend in Power, Friend Lost"
Henry Brooks Adams.

"Many are able to withstand the blows of fate, but if you really want to test a person's character, give him power."
Abraham Lincoln

"Power is the true venom of a scorpion, slowly killing the one who crushes it with his weapon."
From the book "Ajdar Ulduz". seid

Images from the film “The Great Dictator“

Psychology professor Dacher Keltner at the University of Berkeley, in a 20-year study, found that people in power behave like victims of a brain injury: they lost the ability to perceive the other person's point of view, to see the world "foreign eyes", were sharper and unjustifiably risked.

Neuroscientist Sukhwinder Obi from McMaster University, after comparing transcranial magnetic stimulation of the heads of powerful and ordinary people, found that the "burden of power" really disrupts the process of creating mirror neurons - "mirroring". The “mirroring” itself is manifested externally by a person’s ability to empathize - people invested with power cease to reflect other people’s experiences.

How to get power?

Dacher Keltner in his book The Paradox of Power. How to gain and lose influence" writes that the retention of power is due to empathy: "Lincoln's philosophical genius had a practical basis - an understanding of those around him. His solid power was based on attention to the feelings of other people.

If, like Lincoln, we are sensitive to the emotions of those with whom we socially interact, it contributes to the common good.

Showing empathy also creates a shared understanding of how others feel, which is a form of power and enables people to respond to the emotions of others with greater calmness and flexibility.

Empathy, which strengthens cooperation, helps people maintain power. In studies supporting this hypothesis, the measure of empathy was how well a person recognizes certain feelings from facial expressions.

Five-year-olds with a high level of empathy by the age of eight have a more extensive network of close friends, and have a high status in this network. Teenagers who are high in empathy have more friends, are more trusted, and do better in school. College students who are able to discern the feelings of others perform better in school, are less prone to depression and anxiety, and are more satisfied with their lives.

Young professionals with a high level of empathy are satisfied with their work: they skillfully negotiate, trying to ensure the benefit of both parties. Skills that help to benefit others increase our power. According to the leaders of organizations, employees with a high level of empathy achieve better results. They hold leadership positions and share power with colleagues. Employees of teams in which the leader has a high level of empathy work more efficiently, are more inclined to innovate, are satisfied with their work, and are less prone to stress and illness.

How to lose power?

Power shifts the focus from others to ourselves, and we lose the ability to correctly understand other people's emotions, which is the basis of respect from other people, the first cornerstone of empathy. We lose valuable information about how others feel - this information is very important for joint actions at work, for trust in personal relationships, for close connection with friends, for constructive interaction with children.

The second cornerstone of empathy is the ability to imitate. This property is innate in us - we laugh with everyone, relax when others take a relaxed posture, smile in response to a smile, blush with friends, or cry when someone is crying next to us. This instinct helps us understand how other people are feeling and thinking, because when we copy someone else's behavior, our consciousness can draw on the feelings we experience to more accurately assess the feelings and thoughts of others. By copying a friend's shamefaced pose, head down and shoulders hunched, we better understand what he's going through. But power weakens the ability to imitate.

And another path to empathy, also destroyed by power, is the ability to take the position of another person. This ability is the center of ancient ethical norms: to be in someone else's shoes, to look through someone else's eyes. Being able to move flexibly from one's own point of view to another's point of view also contributes to effective problem solving, innovation, productive negotiation, more complex legal justifications, and even more effective political discourse. Different points of view on the problem allow you to get new information, which helps to find more rational solutions. This foundation of empathy—seeing a situation from the perspective of others—is also destroyed by power.

Social class also influences the activity of the vagus nerve, the largest bundle of nerve fibers in the human body, which is involved in activities such as parenting. The vagus nerve connects the upper part of the spinal cord with various muscle groups and organs.

It controls the movement of the muscles of the throat and head, allowing a person to focus on the interlocutor and communicate with him through voice and facial expressions.
The vagus nerve also goes to the heart and lungs, providing deep breathing and slowing the heart so that the person can calm down and help those who are suffering or in need.

Activation of the vagus nerve promotes generosity, cooperation, and altruism—qualities necessary to gain and maintain power.

The damage from a lack of empathy and a weakening of the moral sense is significant. We are losing the enthusiasm that leads to the altruism and cooperation needed to maintain power. Those without power are more likely to find that the more powerful are oblivious to their needs (a source of stress that accompanies the state of helplessness, which we will explore in the next chapter).

This destructive influence of power drains perhaps the strongest and most reliable sources of happiness and meaning in life: empathy, compassion, gratitude and exaltation, as well as the altruistic actions they inspire. The feeling of power directs our attention to our own desires and interests, thereby acting to our detriment. And, in complete agreement with the aphorism of Lord Acton, this weakening of the moral sense becomes the cause of a series of open abuses of power.

This provides a neurobiological explanation for Keltner's "paradox of power": when we gain power, we lose the talents we need to achieve it.
says Dacher Keltner, which leads to a "deficit in empathy."

How does it work?

Empathy(from the Greek empatheia - empathy) - comprehension of the emotional state, penetration-feeling into the experiences of another person.

This happens especially vividly and fully in childhood, when the child is essentially not yet able to separate his own emotional state from the emotional state of another.

There are three stages (M. Hoffman) of the formation of empathic ability in children.

1. About 1 year old, the child is aware of his physical separation from other people, but the mental world is still thought of by him as something inseparable from the surrounding world. That is why a one-year-old child will call his mother for help to a crying peer, although the mother of another baby is right there.

2. From the age of 2-3, the child already understands that the emotional experiences of other people do not depend on his personal ones.

3. Later, empathy arises "not only for the feelings of another, but also for the life situation in which the person finds himself."

K. Rogers writes about empathy: “The empathic way of communicating with another person has several facets. It implies entering into the personal world of another and staying in it "at home". … This means a temporary life in another life, a delicate stay in it without evaluation and condemnation. This means capturing what the other is barely aware of. But at the same time, there are no attempts to open completely unconscious feelings, since they can be traumatic "...

To be in a state of empathy means to perceive the inner world of another accurately, with the preservation of emotional and semantic nuances.

As if you become this other, but without losing the feeling of “as if”. So, you feel the joy or pain of another, as he feels them, and you perceive their causes, as he perceives them. But the shade “as if” must necessarily remain: as if I am happy or upset.

Empathic understanding is considered as an interpersonal phenomenological form of knowledge. Within the framework of this approach, knowledge of another person, prediction of her behavior and understanding of the inner world of another person, as well as knowledge of oneself, are considered as necessary conditions for communication and interpersonal interaction.

Thus, the level of empathic ability of a person reflects the degree of interpersonal perception. A person, entering into empathic communication, including in the process of learning a foreign language, implements an information and communication function, as a result of which there is a relationship between behavior, accumulated experience and feelings of a communication participant.

An important role is also played by the timbre of the voice, the speed of speech, intonation, posture and gestures, and the organization of interpersonal space. Undoubtedly, these abilities also significantly contribute to the formation of foreign language communicative competence, since the student gets the opportunity to “decode” and use non-verbal means of expression that are characteristic of representatives of the culture of the language being studied.

The feeling of empathy, no matter what individual form it takes, activates the same brain mechanisms in all people, scientists from the University of Colorado at Boulder have found.

The brain activity associated with feelings of compassion is not rooted in just one part of the brain, but is distributed across several areas. For example, compassionate care affects the evaluation and reward system—the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the medial orbitofrontal cortex. And empathy for grief coincides with copying mechanisms that help a person imitate or imagine the feelings or thoughts of others.

These zones worked surprisingly equally in all subjects, to the point where the researchers were able to predict feelings based on brain activity in a human that had never been scanned before - https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-06/cp-bir060117. php

A team of scientists from Georgetown University (USA) found that it is possible to awaken creativity by influencing the nerve cells of the brain with a constant microcurrent - https://hightech.fm/2016/04/15/creativity_found

Analyzing the possibilities of stimulating students' interest in reading, E.K. Marantzman speaks about the importance of developing empathy “at the text-reader level, when the text should become the subject of the student’s communication to such an extent that he undividedly believes in the reality of what is happening in the work, so that he himself can to some extent identify himself with his characters.”

The use of the method of conscious identification seems to be especially in demand in the methodology of teaching foreign languages.

Why doesn't my boss speak English?

It turns out that there is an answer to this question.

Professor Higgins of the 21st century, the famous linguist-polyglot, teacher-innovator M. Shestov says that learning a foreign language involves learning it in an empathic way.

It is necessary to “mirror” this, even if it is a fictional foreigner, to become, as it were, one. Well, if we read a literary text, then we should read it as the heroes of this work speak in reality, getting used to the role, like actors.

If our hypothetical boss has lost all ability to experience, to perceive the opinions of others, has ceased to put himself in the place of another person, has become harsh and rude to those around him and subordinates, then he will not see a foreign language as his own ...

Oh, by the way, Sukhwinder Obi and other scientists are sure that the changes in the brain that affect mirroring are not permanent. If a person leaves leadership positions, after some time the brain areas become the same.
Dacher Keltner believes that people leaders need to imagine (or remember) more often what it is like to be without power, and their brains can, at least temporarily, reconnect with reality.

Mirroring is a mild form of mimicry that occurs without our knowledge. When we observe someone's actions, the part of our brain responsible for such actions wakes up in response.

This can be called mediated experience. - Knowledge gives power.

But what is the point of knowing if power robs us of knowledge?

So, in order to be successful in his place, the boss needs to change!

Charlie Chaplin's speech from The Great Dictator

So, if the boss was able to learn a foreign language and does not use the services of translators, perhaps he is following the path of Abraham Lincoln himself!

And we ourselves, ascending the next step of our career or status "ladder", should never forget that we are just people, the same as everyone else around us, and constantly remember where we came from and how we started.

The one who is the reason for life,
can also be a great cause for death.

Kelly looked around and slung her bag over her shoulder. Bieber's car pulled out of the parking lot, leaving the blonde alone with her thoughts. In front of her was a large three-story building, quite familiar to a girl. When Kelly was in the orphanage, she had to go to school every day.
You couldn't just pretend to be a dying swan and stay home in a warm bed. There are no loving parents in the orphanage. who will always regret and forgive. There is only anger, pain and hatred. No one will take care of you, because you are nobody to them. Just an empty space.

School is probably the only place for Kelly when she could not be afraid of her roommates. The blonde was one of the attractive girls in the school, which is why, to some extent, her cohabitants, less beautiful, hated Johnson. Once Alice even ordered her friends to pour acid in the girl's face. Fortunately, one of her "friends" was not such a bitch and decided to warn Kelly, for which she paid with her life.

Alice and her company simply suffocated the traitor with a pillow at night, which was again written off as an accident. Kelly couldn't stand such scenes. Waking up in the morning and seeing another corpse of a very young girl being carried out of your room. To some extent, she even felt guilty for the crippled fate of this person. But I probably wouldn't be able to do anything.
Although even in these walls, familiar to a blonde, there was a lot of cruelty and hatred. No one liked orphanage children, and even despite Kelly's beauty, everyone treated her with disgust. To be honest, the brown-eyed woman tried not to notice this, because she frankly did not care about their opinion.

But now that her life had changed dramatically with the advent of Justin, she was embarrassed by such a rush of attention from the rest of the students in the school. They, noticing Justin's expensive car, immediately began to whisper. But the shock was for them the appearance of Johnson, who got out of this car a couple of seconds ago.

Sarah, standing nearby, looked around the new school for her. Kelly did not particularly ask where the brunette had studied before. In principle, it was not interesting to her. Justin decided not to change Kelly's school to some cooler one, because here the girl is already used to the room, and to the teachers. In the end, she had only two months to study, after which she would be completely free from these gray walls.
The only thing Justin could do for a blonde was to give a lot of money for a relationship with a girl. Naturally, Miss Johnson had no idea of ​​this at all. Justin tried to provide the baby with everything necessary.

Power: blessing or temptation?

Power throughout the history of mankind has always been coveted. They strive for it, they sacrifice life and lives for it, for the sake of it they give up everything that can still be dear to a person: a good name, love, family, freedom, finally. We see how action after action of this performance unfolds, this struggle on huge, in the full sense of the word - worldwide - stage. We look at the spectacle that opens before us, sometimes with fear, sometimes with condemnation, sometimes with sympathy or even admiration ... And at the same time, we ourselves are far from being alien to some power ambitions - at work, at home, at home. But what is power from a Christian point of view: good or evil, blessing or severe temptation? Look for her or run away from her? To submit to it or to rebel against it?.. There are many questions, and the answers to them are extremely important. Clergy and laity discuss whether power is a blessing or a temptation on the pages of the journal Orthodoxy and Modernity. Gazette of the Saratov Metropolis.

Irina Bakaeva, journalist, Saratov:

Power is always a temptation. For the majority - sweet and criminal, and only for a few - defeated and deposed. “To dominate to your heart's content” essentially means to allow and bring flattery, envy, self-interest, cruelty, injustice and other ailments of the soul closer to oneself. Opening the gates to all evil - that's what it means! This is already a very rare case - when the authorities are perceived as creation, as service to compatriots, fellow countrymen, to the cause.

Good and evil pull the ruler in different directions. A crafty person does not resist temptation for long. But it is incredibly difficult for a conscientious person to bear the burden of power. So it was dozens, and hundreds, and thousands of years ago. King David is going through great mental anguish - we see this when reading his psalms: deliver the soul from the swordmine and from the dogs my lonely(Ps. 21, 21) - the soul of the king is lonely!

But as long as humanity exists, it cannot do without a throne. There will always be someone at the head: at the head of the state, at the head of the city, and even in a small team there is always a head. And the whole point is what the one who happened to be at the head will pray to God. And will he pray at all. King Solomon, for example, asked God for wisdom...

Alexander Shchipkov, publicist, editor-in-chief of the Internet portal "Religion
and Mass Media" (religare.ru), Moscow:

— Blessing or temptation? Both. I had to meet with people in positions of power. I mean those who are vested with very great power, those who can change the fate of millions, implement projects that affect the course of history, the worldview of society. These people are no longer faced with the question of material support - they have everything. They no longer need to seek fame - everyone already knows them and will always know them. For them, the moment has come when power is only power, and not a means of solving their own problems. We can say that these people are alone with their power. This is where it becomes clear that power is something mystical, it is a kind of subject that enters into a confrontation with a person. He wants to use his power, and the power wants to use him. Power tests a person: if he does not cope with it, it will tear him apart. How to make sure that it does not tear, mutilate, or maim, depriving the best that was in a person, which could bring real benefit to the country? People who are in the highest echelon of power are actually very strong people if they have reached this level without leaving the race along the way. But if one of them has a concept of humility, he must realize that it is impossible to cope with power by willpower. Humility is the only universal tool with which a person can properly use power. And humility means the recognition of one's imperfection and hope in God.

Priest Nikolai Protasov, rector of the St. Nicholas Church in the village of Bazarny Karabulak, Saratov Region:

In order to try to answer this question, we need to turn to the Holy Scriptures. Here is one of the most famous texts where this topic is heard: Let every soul be submissive to the higher authorities,for there is no power except from God; the existing authorities are established by God(Rome. 13, 1).

No power is not from God This is what the Apostle Paul says in his Epistle.

Another thing is how a person manages the power received from God. Does he understand what the position of a powerful person requires from him, or simply uses this position to achieve selfish goals. Power and temptation and blessing at the same time, surprisingly, but true. And every person who receives power must be ready for this, otherwise the temptation will overcome the blessing.

Power is a kind of obedience for those in power, which the Lord gives. Obedience, because one must sacrifice oneself for the public good. If the one who obeys renounces part of his free will, then the one who obeys must direct all his will to the public good. Just as a young man who creates a family no longer belongs to himself, but gives himself entirely to the family, although he dominates it and even, to tell the truth, rules.

Dominance is not easy. This can be said by anyone who honestly fulfills his duty while in power. However, a good ruler (like a good father) cannot but rejoice at the well-being of his wards, and the fruits bestowed on him for worthy service to his people can be as great as the punishment for forgetting his subordinates and their cruel oppression; for abuse of power received from God. So, first of all, I ask you to make prayers, petitions, intercessions, thanksgiving for all people,for kings and for all those in authority, in order to lead us a quiet and serene life in all piety and purity, for this is good and pleasing to our Savior God(1 Tim. 2, 1-3).

Priest Alexy Zaslavsky, rector of Orthodox parishes
in with. Orkino, Ozerki and Yagodnaya Polyana, Petrovsky district, Saratov region:

— Power is first of all a duty, a duty. As for the blessing... What does the Lord bless, what does the Church bless for? For any business? No, only good and useful. When people come up to me and ask me to bless them, I always say: God will bless for everything that is good and useful. And then it’s up to a person: to think, to distinguish what is good in his deeds and what is not. So it is in power. The Russian Church has long blessed tsars to be fathers to their subjects. And if today the president asks for blessings from the Church, it means that he must understand what he is asking him for: not to use power, but to do good with the help of this power. And temptations - they are in any business and will be, they are sent to us as trials: the Lord thus tests us and tempers us.

Lilia Govorunova, biologist, parishioner of the Church of the Holy Royal Passion-Bearers at SSU, Saratov:

- The whole life of a person is an uninterrupted chain of various kinds of temptations, spiritual joys, sorrows - and for all his path a person will give, when the time comes, an answer to the Almighty. People who are endowed with power will be responsible not only for themselves, but also for the subordinates entrusted to them, for to whom much is given, more will be required. European civilization, the bearers of state power in Europe, hold on to laws: they contain everything for Westerners - protection, justice, and truth. We don't. Even Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin wrote that in Russia everything passes through a person: what a person is in his place, such will be justice. From here it went: the law is that the drawbar ... It is not the place that paints the person with us, but the person - the place. Therefore, when discussing the temptations of power, one must first of all look at who came to power, what kind of person is he, what drives him? Will he serve the people, the Fatherland, or will he eat the houses of widows (cf. Luke 20:47) to enrich himself?

In Russia, public service has always been an obedience, a difficult, responsible service. The light of the Russian state, Saint Prince Alexander Nevsky, is the clearest example of service to the Motherland, an example of a great feat, obedience before God. “Our prince is without sin,” the Novgorodians said about him and were ready to go with him to the end. How many people in positions of power today can be said this way? Power in our country has become the most profitable business, so it’s hard to talk about power now, because we all see how our country is affected by the terrible disease of bribery, corruption… But I still want to remind you once again how many people there were in Russia who served the Fatherland and fulfilled the duty of obedience to the end. These are our great commanders - Suvorov, Kutuzov, great statesmen - Stolypin, for example, and many others. In their lives, power as obedience was brought to the end, even to mortal deeds.

I would especially like to say about the Golgotha ​​of our last sovereign, Nicholas II. Until now, it is not fully realized how much he was slandered, betrayed, and how great his feat before the country, before the Orthodox faith. Of course, it is very difficult to compare our current government with such people. But we must remember that those people who are now in power were born on our land, grew up here, studied in our schools, institutes ... These are our brothers - and our sin. And as you know, there is only one cure for sin - prayer. So, let us pray that to all those who are invested with power and with honor, not sparing their lives, bear this cross, the Lord would grant His grace-filled help. And with our prayers, let us pour coals of fire on the heads of cynics-bribery, so that the Lord would enlighten them, inspire them that power is given not for profit, not to satisfy ambitious ambitions, but to serve God and the Fatherland.

Evgeny Koval, journalist, deputy chief editor of the Moskovsky Komsomolets in Saratov newspaper:

- In a broad sense, power is the right of one person to decide for others. The possibility and often the need to execute and pardon.
With what measure of responsibility a judge, teacher, policeman, official, etc., relates to his legal superiority, that determines what is most important for this person in his power. That is, power is a tool that can both heal and cripple.

But why, in one case, this tool ends up in the hands of the head of a concentration camp, who burns hundreds of thousands of people in furnaces, in another, in the hands of a commander who sent thousands of soldiers to death in order to save millions of other compatriots, in a third, in the hands of a tsar who liberates the peasants?

Don't know. I cannot unequivocally say that there is power - exclusively God's favor or, conversely, the devil's temptation.

Sergey Sveshnikov, Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences, Lecturer at Kostroma State University:

- Before discussing this topic, we must first understand: where does power come from?

A person comes into this world naked - both physically, spiritually, and socially. Yes, and leaves it, taking nothing with him. From this it follows that power is a purely earthly phenomenon, invented by man. It is the people themselves who decide whom to give power and who not, whether it be elective or appointed power.

Living among other people, we all want power. We do not necessarily strive to run a country or a company, but we certainly try to achieve success in life: we need our children to obey us, that our colleagues work with us, and not against us, that our friends respect us ... Respect is power! If people respect you, then you can influence them constantly and for a long time, and such power, based on trust and respect, lives long after the death of the one who possessed it. This is the power of interacting with people, not power over people. Even so, power is a great temptation!

Given not by the Lord, but by a person equal to you, such power cannot be a blessing, for from whom then does this blessing come? “Power,” Jonathan Swift noted, “is the same temptation for a monarch as wine or women are for a young man, as a bribe is for a judge, money is for an old man and vanity is for a woman.” This temptation is not so easy to overcome. “There is no human soul,” Plato believed, “that will withstand the temptation of power.” In order to worthily pass this great temptation, one must master one's feelings on the basis of a spirit of humility.

The topic of power is familiar to me firsthand... For seven years I was the director of the largest school in Kostroma... This is also power! Believe me, she was a temptation for me! Yes, they offered me, I thought that I could handle it ... And, in general, I did it: our school (lyceum) was repeatedly among the best schools even at the level of Russia! But ... behind the outer side of the directorship, manifested in the representative mission, there were so many pitfalls that I was not able to adequately cope with all of them. And thank the Lord that He (not me, but He) moved me to another place in time. And God forbid that I open up at this place in full force and avoid new temptations that await us at every step ... I am convinced that power (any!) is a temptation.

The main thing to remember is that the only advantage a person with power has is that it allows him to do more good deeds!

Journal "Orthodoxy and Modernity", No. 22 (38), 2012