This entry explores soft power as a generative framework for understanding relational influence, non-coercive design, and ethical presence. Originally coined in political science, the term is reinterpreted here through the Buddhist lens of dependent origination, as articulated by Daisaku Ikeda, to mean power rooted in mutuality, interdependence, and imaginative identification.
Soft power in this context is not about persuasion for strategic gain, but about the cultural and emotional infrastructures that shape our values, actions, and attention without force. It is the kind of power exercised by caregivers, educators, designers of relational tools — and by systems that orient us toward care rather than control.
This concept is useful when asking:
- What kind of power am I designing for, practicing, or reproducing?
- What are the hidden mechanisms of influence in my relationships or tools?
- How do I recognize ethical presence that works through invitation rather than enforcement?
Connected ideas:
- Interdependence / dependent origination
- Narrative as infrastructure
- Attention as ethical practice
- Nonviolent design
- Emotional infrastructure
Useful in my work when:
- Designing Companion Machines that shape without dominating
- Writing about caregiving, civic power, and inner transformation
- Mapping invisible labor and soft systems of support
- Interrogating assumptions about autonomy, efficiency, or performance
Readings and references:
- Daisaku Ikeda, The Age of “Soft Power”
- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction
- bell hooks, All About Love
- adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy
- Sara Hendren, What Can a Body Do?
Readings
The Age of ‘Soft Power’ by Daisaku Ikeda (2001)