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Thomas Blenkinsop
Lower Sixth
South Town

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The Intoxicant

What is more precious than gold, rarer than spice, sweeter than persimmon, bloodier than battle, deadlier than a viper and worth any sacrifice? Power; all too often, power corrupts, damning people to the blackest paths. For power is a goal; sometimes as a means to an end, a stop on the journey – sometimes power is the journey.

It is the intoxicating ability to do as you wish; power in and of itself means that alone. It is therefore unsurprising that power is constantly sought; if one believes Nietzsche, all is simple power politics, each step striving for usurpation or consolidation. Why is it that power, however, goes to our heads so easily? While it is very understandable to wish to control your own affairs, very quickly that becomes the desire to control all of your surroundings, then others, then the world, or at least your own little chunk of it. Why does power exhibit this peculiarly corrupting effect on humanity, and what does that say about our morality as a species?

For a start, humanity frequently fears losing what it owns. It has been remarked that one becomes more conservative as one makes money; power is often seen as a way of insurance. Conversely, when one has nothing left to lose, power may be seen as the way of changing that. We ask for power over our bodies or speech; when a man asks for freedom he is essentially asking for power. In the name of freedom and power, men have done truly evil things to one another; driven by fear of losing their freedom/power, hatred of those who they believe to hold more, or greed and avarice. All of these are hardly virtuous; is the pursuit of power therefore always evil? Such is a question of philosophy.

Ambition, the desire for power, is not necessarily evil. The drive for more is not necessarily a bad thing; neither is it intrinsically good. The reasons for this: despite the idea of power for power’s sake, it is notable that this phenomenon is only really observable when sufficient power is already obtained for the present purposes of whoever it is: very rare is the family man working as a clerk who desires power for its own; far more common is the king. Ambition for a cause is far more common, and as such, power then becomes a tool to further that cause. Does one blame the gun for how it is used? At times, it seems, yes; the decentralisation of power has often been a key idea, to protect others’ power over themselves. The paths to power turn within themselves again and again; it becomes harder and harder to tell what is ambition for a cause and what is simple power-lust.

Does your power corrupt?

5 March 2010

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