Power Versus Force Novels & Stories

There’s a neat everyday trick I use to explain force versus power when people ask me — and it always gets a lightbulb moment. Force is simply a push or a pull. If you shove a grocery cart, the force is how hard you push. Power is about how quickly that pushing turns into work done: shove the cart slowly across the aisle or sprint with it into the parking lot and you’re delivering very different amounts of power. In physics-speak, power is work over time. In real life that means two people can apply the same force but one finishes the task much faster and therefore has higher power output.

A few concrete scenes I often bring up: imagine lifting a 10 kg bag from the floor to a table 0.5 meters high. The force required to hold the bag is roughly the same either way, but if I haul it up in a second, I’ve used much more power than if I lift it gently over five seconds. Or think about a stalled car: a tiny toddler might push with notable force yet barely budge the vehicle because they can’t sustain speed or leverage — an adult pulling steadily can produce more effective work per second and thus more practical power. Another one I like: hitting a nail with a hammer. The force of the blow matters, but a skilled carpenter delivering rapid, repeated blows is creating a higher power throughput, so the nail goes in faster.

I geek out over vehicles for this topic. Torque is essentially rotational force of an engine and is what helps you start moving from a stop or haul heavy loads. Horsepower (or watts) is the rate at which that engine can do work — how fast you can accelerate or sustain speed. That’s why a truck with huge torque may feel powerful from rest but a sports car with high horsepower flies past it on the highway. I’ve seen this personally on long rides: my legs can produce a lot of force when climbing steep pitches at low cadence, but when I stand and sprint to catch a group, I’m producing a lot more power because I’m doing the work much faster. Try this at home: lift a dumbbell slowly and then lift the same weight quickly (safely!) — same force needed at any instant, but your body’s power output is much higher in the quick lift. It’s a tiny experiment that makes the abstract difference stick in your head, and I always walk away feeling a little more like I understand how my tools and muscles really work.

Titles matter when we're talking specifics, and I think a lot of folks accidentally ask about 'power vs force' expecting a fantasy novel. The actual book is David R. Hawkins' 'Power vs. Force'. It's non-fiction, a consciousness mapping system.

Hawkins' main thrust is that 'force' is divisive, drains energy, and relies on confrontation—think coercion, anger, fear. 'Power', in his framework, is calm, persuasive, and comes from higher states like reason, love, and enlightenment. He uses muscle testing (kinesiology) to claim we can empirically rank concepts and attitudes on a 'scale of consciousness'.

Frankly, the methodology is the biggest dividing line for readers. You either find the kinesiology premise fascinating as a model for understanding motivation, or you dismiss the whole thing as pseudoscience. I read it more for the philosophical distinction, which is useful even if you ignore the testing part.

The difference that stuck with me is how force always creates a counter-force, a resistance. Power, supposedly, just aligns and attracts without that struggle. It’s an interesting lens for analyzing historical figures or even personal conflicts, even if the book's scientific claims feel a bit wobbly.

That book really threw me for a loop the first time I picked it up. The central idea, as I understand it, is that Dr. Hawkins proposes a 'map of consciousness' which is a calibrated scale from 1 to 1000. Everything—human emotions, historical figures, even cultural concepts—has a measurable vibrational frequency on this scale. He calls the lower levels, below 200, 'force.' That's where you find shame, guilt, apathy, all that draining stuff. It's characterized by conflict and consuming energy.

Everything above 200 is 'power,' which is aligned with truth and actually gives energy, like courage, acceptance, and love at the very top. The argument is that 'power' in his definition is quiet and truthful, while 'force' is noisy and divisive but ultimately weaker. I found the most practical part was the idea of using muscle testing, or kinesiology, to supposedly calibrate the level of anything. Whether you buy into that method or not, the framework for categorizing attitudes is pretty thought-provoking.

It definitely made me reconsider how I react to stressful situations, framing my anger as a lower-energy 'force' I'm getting sucked into rather than a productive response.