Is it bad to seek power?

Question

I'm a 17-year-old high school student interested in human nature. I've always been a curious kid by nature, so unfortunately, I ask a lot of questions, especially when something goes against my current morals and beliefs. Today, I seek answers for why humans are the way they are and why there's so much hate in this world. My question surfaced from a poem I read in class titled "Ozymandias". It's about an arrogant king who once ruled the lands of what is now a barren desert. Due to the effects of time, his power, and everyone who was damaged by it, now lie in the forgotten parts of history.

Ozymandias Poem

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I'm a curious kid by nature, so unfortunately, I ask a lot of questions, especially when something goes against my current morals and beliefs, and the subject of power has always been fascinating to me. Humans tend to gain an evil sense of pride when they become powerful and I want to know why. You don't even have to answer my question if I'm being honest, I just seek different perspectives on the word "power". What is power? Why can power be dangerous? When has power ever been good? I'm troubled, but I'm eager to soak up other people's perspectives on this topic. Thanks for reading.

Answer 1

Depends on how you define power. For a start you could distinguish between power in the sense of energy or broader the ability to express and self-actualize yourself, the "freedom to" (do what you want to do).

While on the other hand you could also define power as "authority". As the ability to command, yourself, your environment or others to your will. Which has certain overlaps with the first definition I gave, but while the pure self-expression could (up to a certain point) be done independent (positively or negatively) of other people, especially the part where it's about commanding other people you run into the concept of power as a zero-sum game.

That is in order for one to have power, someone else needs to be powerless. Because a command only really works if it has some sort of authority, read the inability, illegality or risk of the recipient to not obey.

So in order to have that sort of power over other people (for its/your own sake), harm and disenfranchisement are almost baked into the concept. As your ability to act according to your will entails that someone else who is commanded to your will is no longer able to follow their own path.

On the other hand you can also have examples where power is pooled mutually. Like a group of people could decide to organize a festive event and to that end someone is granted the power to compile a list of what is needed and give out tasks to people to provide for that. In that case the person compiling the list and giving out tasks has power, they are allowed to command other people to their will, but at the same time their power is limited because their authority ultimately rests upon the consent of the powerless. That is people want that festive event to succeed and are ok with doing the tasks. While if the organizer gets mad with power they could just cancel the event, pick someone else for the job or otherwise take back that power.

So the scope of power (ability) of the organizer is essentially that of being able to decide over idk 2h of spare time of the participants, which can easily reach the domain of "superhuman", in the sense that a single human being would not be able to perform these tasks in the same time frame because they'd not be able to idk fit 32 hours in one 8 hour work day and even less likely in a 4 our spare time slot. But their power (authority) to tell other people what to do is pretty limited, it's more of an advice than a command. So their ability to use that power as they see fit is limited by whether other people agree that it fits.

So in consequence power can range from self-improvement and self-expression on one end to subjugation, exploitation and treating people as instruments in your plan. Edit: Nietzsche might be an interesting read in that regard, who, faced with the decline of the monopoly of morality of the church ("god is dead (and we killed him)"), decried their "good" vs "evil" dichotomy as a slave morality born out of the resentment against a master which rejects as evil what is the master's (power, agency, ...) and affirms as good what is the slave's (harm-/powerlessness/utility as a tool). Thus, despite the superficial resistance, just reproducing their own conditions with the ultimate goal (according to Nietzsche) of taming the master thus achieving slavedom without a master. Which Nietzsche vigorously rejects. He instead argues that to be free, the slave would need to reject slave morality and take on the master morality. That is the kind of morality defined by the individual itself, not based on good and evil but on what they themselves see as "good" and "bad" with regards to their own will and achieving the goals of their own volition. Which is at the same time promoting liberation, self-expression, self-actualization, self-empowerment, but also leaves the door wide open for subjugation, exploitation, all kinds of chauvinism and at least from the themes attracted a wide fan base of the most vile criminals proclaiming themselves as master race and whatnot.

Though the subtle irony might be that the fascist homophobe who defines himself by what he hates is most likely better described as adhering to a slave morality, given how void their world would be without an enemy (so much that they often have to make one up). While the proud queer person who rejects traditional norms and makes up their own might be an example of master morality for it is them who defines good and bad and not by resentment but by what feels right/good.

Nietzsche at times seems to be laser focused on the power, will and freedom to consume everything and not be limited by anything, but often enough freedom is much smaller but nonetheless powerful.

The other problem with the will to dominate is that people still have their own will and that the more people you are commanding the more impossible it is to actually do that mutually, because beyond a certain point you can no longer know what they want and how they want it and thus can not really take that into account. You're no longer thinking in terms of people but in terms of statistics, which are subject to interpretation (where you only have your own perspective). So your dictators usually need a topic that everyone can agree upon and it must be a pressing issue so that their other problems don't take priority over that one. Which is usually only possible over a short period of time, after which people will abandon their consent and focus on their more prioritized problems.

Upon which you either have to accept failure or success if you managed or not managed to utilize that power as proclaimed or you need to uphold your authority against dissent. Which usually gets really ugly, where again harming and disenfranchising other people becomes a necessity to cling to power. And it's quite possible that in that dynamic power becomes it's own purpose.

So something like: In order to do A I need authority. In order to obtain authority I need to suppress dissent. But suppressing dissent causes more dissent so I'm occupied all day everyday with suppressing dissent and never actually get to do A, B or any other goal of my choice. Authority and the privileges that come with it have become the end goal.

So even if you start out as a benevolent dictator who only uses his power for the betterment of the people, if you actually use that power that already can put in question that very claim. So either you'd need to not be a dictator or not be benevolent. Also you'll likely run into problems of size where you don't know what it's best for them and even if you know they might not agree with that and thus reject it, leading to the weird position of doing someone harm to do someone good, where the ultimate judgment falls to the person whom you've done harm to...

Also that's the perspective of the powerful, it's also quite possible that you think of your exercise of power as "mutual", but the people on the receiving end of your advice have a very different perspective of it. Idk the king might not even outlaw dissent and bad news, but if good news lead to a joyful attitude that projects to the messenger being included in the joy and rewarded for it, while bad news result in a fit of rage and the messenger being the first to feel the result of that, then the king is likely only going to hear good news and affirmation from now on. Which can have horrible consequences because despite not being criticized and always being praised and affirmed, they might make horrible decisions and fall in popularity rapidly.

Which makes these relationships of higher ups and their employees kinda always iffy because it's questionable if a consent that is given is truly valid, if not giving consent would have negative consequences. So truly voluntary is not just the absence of explicit coercion, but also the ability to really make that decision freely, which is not necessarily the case if your job, your future, your existence, standard of living, family etc, depends on that.

So power, the realization of power and the ethical or unethical use of power is a vast topic with tons of different perspectives, so that it makes sense to narrow that question down.

Answer 2

It is bad to seek power as your main motivation, or to seek it by lying, cheating, killing, and censoring. Power is good only if it is in service to a good cause, and used ethically.

If you see a political movement that primarily uses the language and imagery of power, that movement is probably not on the right side of history. Nazis, Italian fascists, the USSR, the CCP - these are well known for state propaganda showing themselves first as strong, economically productive and militarily invincible, with cults of personality around their leaders, with little attention given to compassion or fairness. "Skulls on their helmets" is a pretty strong sign you're on the wrong side. Excess focus on authority and hierarchy is also a bad sign.

We can say that pursuit of power is by default harmful, because when an authority wishes first to preserve and increase their power, they tend to sacrifice all decent principles in service of that. They censor their political opponents, they break laws, they deny representation to the opposition, they cover up their crimes, they commit genocide, they engage in wars of conquest.

We can also see narcissistic personalities acting this way on a smaller scale, in private. Their own aggrandizement being the only goal, all ethical principles are ignored in service of that. Look for the liars. Truth is the first casualty of pursuit of power.

Power is only good to the extent it is subordinate to ethics and compassion.

Answer 3

It's interesting to look at Fascism. The fasces, a bundle of sticks with an axe as a political symbol, goes back before the Ancient Greeks to the Phoenicians. Mussolini was consciously trying to ape post-Republic Imperial Rome in developing his ideology, and chose the fasces as a symbol of continuity. Umberto Eco's great essay Ur Fascism, also draws on the idea there is a kind of atavism involved. The essay is perhaps most famous for the line:

"Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak."

That is, it's not an ideology based on feeling secure, it requires fear, and threat.

Jonathan Haidt et al and their Moral Foundations Theory, have helped provide a research base to better understand this. They identify two moral principles that get a lot more traction on the rightwing of politics than the left: Sanctity/Degradation; Loyalty/Betrayal. They show that feeling under threat during crucial development years (11-25), such as growing up near an active border conflict, or experiencing a pandemic disease, seems to activate or sensitise people more to these moral dimensions throughout their lives. You could look at the Rally Around the Flag effect as an acknowledged phenomenon exhibiting this shift. The opposite condition, growing up in security and safety, can be related to greater tolerance of ambiguity, which is known to relate to academic success and innovation in problem solving. But in a condition of true existential threat, it might lead to indecision, too much internal debate and conflict, and inability to enforce 'red lines' that could have prevented conflict or escalation if they were plausible. Decisive leadership is required in war, which is often in conflict with democracy. See Alcibiades among the Ancient Greeks, limits on presidential power to start wars in the US focused by the Vietnam War, and the UK shift to parliamentary approval being needed for war after Iraq. There is a constantly evolving tension there, between a risk that martial law could be a coup and return to autocracy (ie kings), vs the need for decisive action, in a crisis.

I would pick out as contrast to Ozymandias, Yeats' great poem Sailing To Byzantium, where he contrasts the goals that make sense in youth to the hopes in old age of connecting to themes that will outlast the individual. A Greek proverb says:

“A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit.”

That is, we have been able to go beyond a society ordered by the biggest ape, or the biggest ape and their cabal in the case of chimpanzees, into truly prosperous lives, through people working for results they will not live to see. The Golden Bough got Aeneas alive into the afterlife, and that can be interpreted as his 'hidden destiny' to father the Trojan royal line despite being a minor noble. But Orpheus' songs got him there. So I think the Golden Bough Yeats is referring to is best understood as taking up a place of significance in the unfolding narrative, in a story that will outlive a person's "tattered coat upon a stick" and their nature of being a "dying animal".

The tool I would look to as most significant to this journey, is intersubjectivity, the ability to invite others into your perspective and to enter into theirs. We find it at the core of Indian and especially Buddhist metaphysics in the metaphor of Indra's Net. And in what is considered the most widespread moral principle the Golden Rule: treat others as you wish to be treated.

I'd go further to say it's the basis of communication (According to the major theories of concepts, where do meanings come from?), moral reasoning (Is the Categorical Imperative Simply Bad Math? :)), and that following Peter Singer's approach of expanding the circle of our moral concern we can identify increasing our capacity for it as the direction of moral progress (Studies exploring the rationale of gender equality).

This however has to be tempered by the dangers of free-riders which require the personal to come first and group second (Is the tyrannicide perpetrated by William Tell morally legitimate?). And the fact that personal capacity and autonomy are positive, but in tension with their ability to harm the group (If we had the ability to make humanity less war-like, should we?). For me this is what Nietzsche is talking about with the Will To Power, he had no interest in those seeking power for it's own sake, his concern was finding the direction of being more alive, of making lives worth living.

Frank Herbert the author of Dune said:

"Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible."

Being able to see that personal power and gratification are not enough, that all they leave is "Nothing beside remains Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck", is part of the innoculation against the desire for absolute power, part of the way we try to teach that a real connection to the transcendental, is to take up a place of value in humanities story, which means finding a way to contribute, to serve the unfolding of our capacities and the safe use of them.

A more detailed discussion of what that implies, here: What are some philosophical works that explore constructing meaning in life from an agnostic or atheist view?