In terms of the psychological experience of it, and the subsequent stratified social structures that arise because of it, acquiring, holding, and losing power is much like ascending and descending a tree: it is usually pretty easy to acquire power if it is in reach, just as climbing a nice big tree is relatively easy enough, provided all the right branches are in reach, but when it comes to losing power, and descending the tree, things become much more difficult.
The subjective experience is telling enough. When you are gaining power, you are feeling nice about yourself. Others are saying nice things about you. You're getting these nice pats on the back while you're still on your way to the top. But coming down is not easy; the average person does every thing he or she can to avoid it in fact (however much power the average person can acquire): you are lamenting your shadow of your former self, others are asking themselves and you what happened, you are deprived of attention and reverence. You're talking about cascades of pleasure versus cascades of pain.
And so many of us behave accordingly. Concerning day-to-day experiences that many people have, one finds a possible rival approaching in perceived ability and attractiveness and we bristle; that competitive terror finds its expression and we struggle desperately to avoid becoming unseated.
The funny thing about power is that not only does it have to do with pleasure, autonomy, the ability to manipulate the environment and society in one's image, and what have you, but it also has a lot to do with fear. With fear we have this natural tendency to want to dominate the object we are afraid of. We want to control it and manipulate and guide the trajectory of its energy so that it is not a threat to us. Power allows one to do such things.
One of the central theories of one of my favorite political scientists, Corey Robin, is that one of the predominant animating drives of theoretical - and largely dispositional - conservatism is the pervasive fear of the ascendancy of the lower classes, and the subsequent loss of power. When one has status and important possessions and one identifies emotionally and ideologically with those things, one is loathe to give those things up, even if it means the suffering of others. You see many conservative theoreticians absolutely terrified of true democracy, which is somewhat amusing considering all of the bluster you hear about liberty and freedom coming from that camp these days. Even the founding fathers were terrified of democracy: they had status and wealth and of course they wanted the freedom to exercise those things free from the shackles of British control, but they wanted all that without ceding their power to workers, property-less individuals, and of course, slaves. The structure of the Constitution and our electoral system reflects that fear, but you won't read that in any mainstream history books.
Not coincidentally, people who are politically conservative have been found to have pronounced fear and disgust reflexes, a function of an overactive amygdala.
The problem with all of this can be seen in the stark concentration of power in today's modern world. With an increasingly dwindling number of individuals in possession of a measure of power that approaches absolute, and a growing mass of powerless that live in daily agony, it is not an exaggeration to declare that we are experiencing a global socioeconomic crisis, among countless other things.
But with an over-saturation in power comes an overwhelming sensation of vertigo: those with great power are surrounded by a surging sea of hostile populations. How to climb down? The problem with taking someone's power (or if one is heroic enough, surrendering power) is that his or her peers still possess it. That's where most of the pain comes from. One wishes to be comfortable with one's peers, in addition to being physically comfortable. How to remove everyone's power at once? Well of course a mass catastrophe that simply unseats everyone from power by force is always enough to do the trick, but is such an event necessary?
There is of course the collective will to share power. Another great paradox of human beings is that as desirable power is to all of us, having too much of it is a terrible and undesirable thing. What about voluntarily conceding power? If an entire ideology advocated a relinquishing and eventual sharing of power, would it not make it easier for the powerful to follow suit? It is not easy to get past the fear and make oneself vulnerable to the usurpation of one's rivals, but if everyone does it, there becomes a great mass of surplus power to share. Of course history has shown human beings incapable of such things. We aren't that exceptional either. It is how all life behaves in many contexts. But there still exists astonishing altruism in some quarters.
