If we try to take the qualitative power, we get a redundancy. We may as well say "the ability to do violence" and mean precisely what we meant to say if we tried to use "the power to do violence" to mean "the ability to cause an effect that constitutes violence." We're talking in meaningless circles when we try to inflate what it means to be capable of violence, and then we muddy the waters when we attempt to introduce additional baggage to the word "power" when we previously did not add that baggage in our definitions.

I believe that I can apply this same logic to violence. We are not always violent to other living organisms. We can be violent to nonliving objects, and we in fact include harm against nonliving objects in our everyday use of violence. We can do violence to a table, perhaps by taking an axe to it or using our fists to try to break it apart. Does that mean that the table has some innate ability that we are overshadowing with our own abilities? Of course not, we don't take that nonliving objects have abilities. Furthermore, quantitative power forces us to prove that at least some of our abilities overshadows *at least one* of the table's. If the table has no ability, how can we say that we have power over it? So quantitative power is not a requirement to do violence.

Taking the broadest quantitative definition I proposed-- whose abilities are being overshadowed in order for our swimmer to have the power to swim? In most cases, there are none. So quantitative power is not viable to use as a condition to swim. With that out of the way, we're left with only "the ability to swim" as the condition for swimming.

To make my point clearer-- we often say that one has the ability to swim, but not the power to swim. Why is that? The reason, I think, is clear. Ability is not power. They are necessarily different concepts, and therefore should be treated as so. The mere ability to swim is qualitative. We make no additional judgements whether or not one can swim in relation to others. But when we say "the power to swim," we must necessarily think of why we need a narrower understanding of ability. Swimming does cause an effect-- it propels your body forward when submerged in liquids and without ground to step on. But then the literal qualitative definition of power becomes a redundancy; we can say "the ability to swim" just fine and mean precisely the same thing. But if we consider the additional connotations of power, "the power to swim" becomes a vastly different statement.

So then even this, the broadest quantifiable definition of power, fails in at least one case, and therefore cannot be considered the end-all condition for any act of violence. We can say that it fulfills a conditional definition of violence, if we intend on expanding or redefining violence to take on a couple of new connotations. But the matter of the fact is that violence in its most general understanding is merely harm done with intention. Intentional harm may require agency, but that agency does not require quantifiable power. And, as I have already stated before, the literal definition of qualitative power ("the ability to cause an effect") is trivial when used as a condition for violence. We can say equally "the ability" and "the power" to do harm, but each take on different connotations that change what it means to do violence.

I believe we both have discussed situations in which this is the exact opposite. If we take a snake to necessarily be the predator and a mouse to be the prey, then the snake ought to have abilities that overshadows the mouse's. For example, the snake's ability to slither may outpace the mouse's ability to run; and the snake's ability to constrict may stop the mouse's ability to claw at it. By this definition of power, the snake clearly has the power to hurt, kill, and eat the mouse (therefore doing violence). However, the mouse can still fight back, despite the disadvantages. In the cases where the mouse does kill the snake, can we say that the mouse had more power than the snake? The answer, I think, is no, since the mouse may still die of its wounds soon after. We cannot retroactively say that the mouse had greater power either, since we have already established that the snake must have more power than the mouse in order for it to be capable of preying on the mouse.

For now let's ignore all the potential problems and take power to be "an ability that can be expressed over the abilities of others," since it is at least theoretically quantifiable. This is still a narrower term than "ability," and again restricts the idea of violence arbitrarily. I'm going to work from here on assuming that "the ability to live" is not a valid ability, as that is a generalization that encompasses a variety of other abilities (the ability to breath, eat, move, and so on). So when we take violence to require this kind of power, we must then show that in every instance of violence, at least one of the attacker's abilities overshadows enough of the victim's to enable the attacker to do violence. If the victim has enough abilities to overshadow the attacker's, however, the attacker cannot have "the power to do violence" to the victim.

When you attempt to abstract power to mere ability, you get a contradiction. Mere ability is not quantifiable at all, and therefore cannot be placed in a dynamic nature. Proficiency may be quantifiable, but we're not dealing with proficiency, so that definition of ability is irrelevant to us. So when we seek to understand power in terms of a power dynamic, as I believe you are, we cannot be working with the idea that power is simply ability. Power must necessarily be more than just ability. If we instead define power to be "an ability that can be expressed over the abilities of others," then we get a quantifiable definition that we can use in a similar manner to the above definition of "the ability of one species to consistently eat the other species." Even this might be too broad to work with-- what abilities are we taking into account? How narrowly do we define what an ability is, and how many abilities must be oppressed before we determine that one thing has more power than another?

1. "Macro" organism, not micro.
2. I disagree. A power dynamic absolutely requires our concept of "power" to be theoretically quantitative, otherwise we have no means of comparing and ranking every party involved in the dynamic. In the conventional sense of who hunts what, the "power dynamics" of predation is typically one-way (namely, predator > prey). In some cases it may be two-way, for example Organism A may be simultaneously the prey and predator of Organism B (this is usually the case for cannibalistic species). We clearly define power here as "the ability of one species to consistently eat the other species," which gives us a clear power dynamic since we can compare two organisms in a true/false manner. If A can eat B, then A has more power than B. If A and B can both eat each other, then A has the same power as B. If A does not eat B, no conclusion can be drawn. No exact numbers, but this comparison makes this idea of power theoretically quantifiable.

Virtually every macro-organism can be said to be capable of some form of violence, regardless of the perceived scale and the method of doing harm. Therefore power cannot be a factor in determining whether one can do violence. Ability can be said to be a factor, since the organism can become complete immobilized/disabled and thus lose any innate ability to do harm. Complete immobilization and death are two common ways to remove this ability, and neither require assertion of power, a power dynamic, or even a deliberate culprit.

This leads me back to my original premise-- the use of the terms "power" and "ability" are NOT interchangeable, even if we take power at its broadest definition. Power as a term is significantly heavier than ability, and thus use of it suggests a stronger, narrower view of violence. Mere ability, as the weaker/broader of the two terms, gives us significantly more latitude in determining whether something is capable of violence. Power creates a very specific stipulation since it includes very specific imagery insofar as physical, political, or authoritative prowess, and makes it so that we must refer to violence within a specific context in order to make your assertion viable. Violence in general does not require this specific imagery, and therefore has no need for power.

The rest of your examples don't seem to prove that a power dynamic is necessary to violence. On the other hand, you mostly prove that power dynamics can come about as a result of violence, whether implicitly or explicitly. A society for which violent punishments are given for breaking a law does not prove that these violent punishments necessitate power. On the other hand, it shows that violence can be used to maintain that power dynamic, however it came to exist. It also shows that a desire to maintain the power dynamic can lead to violent acts, but this is not directly evident.

If we begin to add more agents into this scenario with additional conflicting views (for example, Agent C might believe that there should be no forest, and Agent D might believe that the forest should encompass all of reality), we can begin to see the problem with viewing reality as something to be manifested. We would have to assert that each agent is equally likely to have their own visions of reality manifested, but we haven't reconciled what happens to the agents if their realities fail. Do they disappear? Does their version of reality remain existent in some form, ready to be manifested at any moment? I assert that we do not bring imagination into reality, we merely make attempts to mold reality into the closest form that we want to imagine. This is more consistent, I believe, as once one agent manages to mold reality closely to their own imagination, other agents have no choice but to accept and work around it.

But now for a moment, let us consider if Agents A and B react with violence. For the sake of the argument, assume Agent A has a lesser physical power than Agent B, and that both agents are otherwise equal in all other respects of power in the situation as it unfolds. If Agent A wins, whether by a miracle or not, we have a situation in which the violence resulted in Agent B forfeiting all of their power to Agent A, even if temporarily. And vice versa. But the real question is, did the violence happen specifically because of the difference in power between the two?

To your more specific scenarios: Your situation with the home in the woods takes on a very particularly solipsistic approach. I don’t believe that reality is individually manifested, but for now I’ll assume so. If Agent A manifests the reality that they should have a home in the woods, but Agent B manifests a reality where Agent A does not take residence in the woods, then what we have is an irreconcilable situation. Two conflicting realities cannot manifest at once, but we can take the idea of superposition into place. Until the reality is properly manifested via observation, both realities can happen. How each reality can happen is different. Agent A can be scared by Agent B and allows Agent B's reality to happen. Similarly, Agent B can back off, allowing Agent A's reality to happen. There is no emotional harm done, merely an instinctual reaction to an emotional response.

Violence, which requires merely the qualitative state of being able to cause some form of harm, does not require quantifiable ability. It therefore does not require the quantitative definitions of power. Taking the qualitative definition of power gives us a redundant tautology since it becomes interchangeable with the qualitative definition of ability. And even then I can assert that power has no place in the definition or causation of violence on the basis that we do not use power to mean merely being able to do something. The common uses of "power" grants it much more implications than mere "ability."

There are two definitions of ability. The first use is in qualitative cases where we merely refer to whether one is able to do something. For example, every properly socialized child has the ability to learn a language. The second use refers to quantitative proficiency, which we measure usually by visible results. We can say that a doctor has a lesser ability if they issue more incorrect diagnoses than others. We can certainly try to refer to an ability dynamic, which takes the second definition. But we cannot create a dynamic for what is not at least theoretically quantifiable. The broadest definition of power takes the first definition of ability, i.e. the state of being able to perform an act. It is not quantitative unless you take the narrower definitions of power, all which take on very specific types (political, physical, authoritative, and so on).

You are most certainly not taking power at its broadest definition. You refer to a power dynamic, which a priori takes power to be more than being able to cause an effect. It requires that we be able to quantify the ability of two things capable of agency. Not only that, but we must be able to do this continuously for any agent that is a part of this power dynamic. Even if we can split this dynamic into separate scales and declare that some agents are more powerful than others in specific regards, the "dynamic" nature of this definition means that we can still rank every agent relative to each other in terms of every power we're considering. Even if we have someone who is an excellent orator and can wrestle with a large black bear, we can consider them lower on the power scale than a national politician by the emphasis we put on political power over physical and persuasive power.

We must be extremely careful that our use of the term does not imply more than it should. Words are more than just their definitions, and it would do us well to know when to use "ability" or "power." Violence requires ability, yes, but it does not require power. Power as a term is very specific, often referring to the ability of an actor to do something against someone. Ability as a term is not as specific, not requiring anything other than the actor and their own qualities. To illustrate the difference more clearly, we would never say you have the power of a plumber when we mean to say that you have the ability to do the job of one. The ability to do violence, then, is just that. The power to do violence is significantly heavier as a phrase and ought to be treated with care.

Can we say that violence relies on physical power? If we seek to understand only physical violence, of course. You would need the ability to physically act in order to be capable of physical harm, and that capability can lead you to do an act of harm. But emotional violence cannot rely on physical power, as emotional violence is done by other factors. Can emotional violence rely on political/authority/influential power? In many cases, yes, as we can see with the 1984-esque landscapes of NK and China. But does emotional violence rely on those forms of power? Absolutely not. Emotional violence can be done by someone whose every measure of power is less than yours, all that is required is knowledge of something that can be violated. That knowledge does not have to go deep-- some emotional violence has been based purely on social norms and not on personal information. Insult of a religion, for example, can constitute emotional violence to believers.

We need to clearly distinguish the kind of power we're referring to when we engage in an argument of terminology. Your attempt to assert that violence requires power is indefensible on political grounds, as those with lesser political power have historically found ways to violently topple those with greater political power. Similarly, those with "authority" power can be the target of violence (as demonstrated with the bully and the victim example). Influential power is similarly ineffective in totally protecting one from violence. So clearly, violence cannot rely on these kinds of power differences.

The broadest definition of power available to us can be found in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, which simply is "ability to act or produce an effect." When we use the term violence, we typically use it as an expression of agency. So the thing doing violence must have the ability to do harm. Using that broad definition of power is, as I already asserted, a trivial tautology. But that's not the definition of power you intend on operating with, is it?

By your definition of violence, in order to make something incapable of violence, we need to put them in a perpetual state of lesser power than everything else. But we can see that this is not a viable solution, as the thoroughly power-neutered Third Estate of monarchical France managed to overthrow the very power-endowed Second and First Estates. We can attempt to reconcile this by broadly defining power in terms of physical capability, but then we have a trivial tautology. Every mobile living organism by definition has the physical capability to harm. Although fruit flies and the like may not be able to harm larger organisms, they can harm each other in their mating competitions. Power becomes a redundant requirement.

I again disagree with the notion that violence requires power in the social sense. Violence has been performed by people who are in a position of lesser power. Take a situation in which a bully has been physically harassing a victim for some lengthy period of time, and the victim finally pops the bully in the jaw. There can be a number of reasons why the victim chose not to react in self defense earlier, whether it be concern for their own safety or risk of the school ruling in favor of the bully. In whichever the case is, the bully clearly held the more powerful position up until that point. That act of violence is not an expression of having more or able power. But that act of violence can result in power-- namely, if the bully begins to treat the victim with distance, we can argue that the popped jaw has granted the victim personal power over the bully.

In the playground sense, violence is "owning" people because the fear it generates makes people shut up. But that method of "owning" people is less conducive to any actual exchange of ideas than "owning" people via cleverer insults. We can demonstrate that physically violent reactions to perceived insults is an authoritarian reaction. The best evidence is playground behavior, where violent bullying is often used to create environments of subservience. Other evidence can be found in virtually every form of power where one person holds all. Dictatorships, absolute monarchies, and so on all bear the stain of violence against remarks of arbitrary value.