[Psychology] Does Power Corrupt?

this is wrong, power doesnt corrupt. but will instead show their trueselves.

Exactly the same would be said if any kind of law or religion was abolished. Very few people are truely good, sad but true.
 
If power didn't corrupt, then a tremendous amount of human history and literature would stop making sense.

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Absolute power with good intentions corrupts with extreme prejudice. Absolute lack of consequences transforms people into obsessive monsters that eat raw fish, argue with themselves, and hate potatoes, precioussss.
 
Power, here in this city, seems to equal a carcar and a telephone. Then you can drive around in a private dreamworld with the power to ignore everything.
 
The power to force bad music, art, fashion, on an entire population, and get rich doing it.
 
Always. Always, always, always.

Money is an easy one to consider, of course. Money and political power. But there are lots of other types of power, and given the nature of the human psyche, they all corrupt. I have a theory for example that the "all power corrupts" principle has a lot to do with the difficulties between men and women. Men obviously have a stark physical strength advantage — and that is a distinct form of power. That power corrupts all men to a degree. The only question is how much an individual man is able to control that corruption and still make "good" choices. But the corruption is always there in the background (if not the foreground). Likewise, however we feel about it, women derive a certain degree of power over men due to men's attraction to them. That power also corrupts. Again, it comes down to how much a woman responds to and/or controls the effects of the corruption. But it's always there somewhere.

I have a story where all men are gone from Earth, and now it's run by women. But a lot of the same problems remain. Because many of the same sources of conflict still exist (scarce resources, long-standing cultural issues, who gets to hold power, etc.) And of course, if everyone who had power was a woman, the power would be working its corrupting way only on women. Under the influence of that corruption, they make a lot of the same choices that men would.

Barak Obama looked happy to be leaving office, and aside from just plain being tired, he was pretty explicit about the fact that he could feel the flattering influences of power creeping up on him. Still must have maintained quite a bit of humility in the face of the onslaught to offer that insight on his way out the door. If anyone should know it would be a President.
 
Cathbad said:
Well, I'd say the Corrupt go after power, and the Corruptible become corrupt once the have power.
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That's probably very true. But history is littered with examples of people who started off with the best of intentions, but later drifted into corrupt practices. You could say maybe there was something fundamentally flawed about them to begin with, but that seems semantic.
 
Corruption is just selfishness written large. It is important to look after self, but it is easy for that self preservation impulse to go too far and become destructive to others. When that happens the line has been crossed.
 
I believe there are several people in power that aren't corrupt, and have good intentions. Unfortunately, it is easy to think everyone rich and powerful is corrupt. Especially if we disagree with them.
 
Piousflea84 said:
If power didn't corrupt, then a tremendous amount of human history and literature would stop making sense.

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Absolute power with good intentions corrupts with extreme prejudice. Absolute lack of consequences transforms people into obsessive monsters that eat raw fish, argue with themselves, and hate potatoes, precioussss.
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This is why General George Washington's resignation of his commission as commander-in-chief of the continental army stunned the learned of Europe. They thought a man, a general no less, with that amount of power would cross the river Rubicon as did Cesare, but alas, he didn't. He stayed true to the system of laws and government he was fighting for and the contracts of his soldiers.

Also keep in mind that a "tremendous amount of human history and literature" was written by Europeans/Middle-Easteners atop the piles of dead bodies from criminal-like conquests, warrior kings and soldiers turned farmers and lords, and elites creating building a table of decadence whose legs weren't wood, but serfs and slaves kept in line by, yep you guessed it, more soldiers and criminal-like warrior kings. One way to think about it is that the people with the most humanity (kind and/or normal behavior) are denser than those with less humanity (violent and greedy behavior), so the worst of humanity floats to the top. That is why there is so much "absolute power corrupts absolutely" in history because it's just as one poster said above: the worst of men (mostly) were free to show their true selves.
 
Mike Donoghue said:
This is why General George Washington's resignation of his commission as commander-in-chief of the continental army stunned the learned of Europe. They thought a man, a general no less, with that amount of power would cross the river Rubicon as did Cesare, but alas, he didn't. He stayed true to the system of laws and government he was fighting for and the contracts of his soldiers.
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This is one of the examples that show that the saying power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely is a strong tendency, but not an absolute. I personally think that his refusing to run for a third term as President was at least as surprising as his resignation as General.

(Aside: Did you know that Washington was the richest American President ever, until Trump was elected?)
 
It is easy to muddle power, authority, and wealth. These are not synonyms. (also, ftr, wealth is not synonymous with money)

I'm suspicious of absolute statements. Power often corrupts--I'm fine with that. To assert that power always corrupts is an entirely different proposition.

All of us have power. A parent has power over their children. Are all parents corrupt? If great power corrupts greatly, how are we to explain good rulers (e.g., Louis IX of France)?

The analysis is sloppy. What do we mean by power? What are the signs of corruption? Does absolute power corrupt one in every aspect of one's life, or only in certain areas? Is the action instantaneous or does it take time?

And, in the end, such a statement tells us nothing. It's too facile. There's a ruler we condemn. Power corrupts; hah, we have explained him. But, no, we haven't. We've explained him away. And we lump all such rulers into one bucket, failing to see them as individuals.

This is especially bad for writers, whose job it is to see individuality. So, yeah, this little aphorism irks me.
 
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