Joe offers a simple emotional diagnostic for distinguishing power-seeking from empowerment: “If you are in blame for another person or shame for yourself, then you are disempowered and you are trying to accumulate power. If you are not in blame for others or shame for yourself, then that is empowered.”
This gives a clear, felt test rather than an intellectual one. The rebel who shoots someone feels like they’re acting from truth, but the blame and rage reveal disempowerment. The civil rights leader who acts from truth without blaming their oppressors is genuinely empowered. Both may take dramatic action, but the emotional signature underneath is entirely different.
The distinction matters because disempowered action — even when it creates real change — “usually doesn’t serve ourselves or humanity.” The change that comes from blame, shame, or guilt carries the poison of those emotions into whatever it creates. Empowered change, arising from truth without the overlay of blame or shame, creates something that serves everyone.
People living by principles never worry about someone’s power over them — they’re addressing reality directly. The absence of blame and shame is both the indicator and the result of genuine empowerment.
Related Concepts
- Shame is anger turned inward
- Shame creates the behaviors it punishes
- Blame is an unowned want
- An empowered apology is one of the most powerful tools for self-transformation