Power Cravings

It would seem, generally, that people tend to have 2 different cravings for power. First, there are those who crave control. These tend to be highly educated, successful, and driven, everything we generally associate with leadership. But I wonder if they are not so more because they wish to be leaders than because they wish to be successful. In other words, perhaps they are driven by power, rather than being driven by success. This presents a problem for those looking for a leader. How do you distinguish one who is seeking power from one who is successful?

It could be argued that it doesn't matter, for the reasons which a person becomes successful, whether it be for power or glory, are the very reasons that person will continue to act in the same manner once he's achieved it. But this is not truly the case, for power, once given, is often very difficult to take back. One who craves power, and thus achieves it, will especially be hard set in keeping it. He may be driven to act properly by controls over the power, but a power-driven megalomaniac has incentive to skirt these controls or destroy them. This is the way dictatorship emerges.

Thus is is truly vital that men seek out leaders who are not power-driven. This brings us to the second type of power craving: those who crave an authoritarian leader to look after them. This, I believe, is not a small minority. There are many who find themselves struggling to make ends meet, who either don't care enough to make themselves successful or are incapable of such. A vast majority of these types fall into the former category, though they would have you believe otherwise. People of this type do not want authority, they want to be taken care of. I hesitate to call it laziness, but it is a neediness not because they are incapable of providing for themselves, but because they enjoy being looked after. It makes them feel cared for and important. I would suspect it derives from an emotional disorder likely caused by poor or abusive parenting. The numbers in this category, I proffer, far exceed those in the first category.

Both of these types, unfortunately, typically crave authoritarian rule. One to be the authority, and the other to be cared for. Even counter-authoritarian ideology is often derived of those who would like to have power, but do not, and thus resent the power someone else holds over them. They are few who feel comfortable caring for themselves, but do not wish to have power over others. Americans, at least those whom I consider true Americans, constitute one of the few cultures which promote such balance. We fear power, because we know what it can lead to. We believe that Lord Acton was wise in his pronunciation that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely".

But we are waning, and power is becoming popularized again. The country is becoming dominated by those who wish to be cared for. I blame it on the corruption of the family, and kids now grow up to be dependents. It will likely take the experience of tyrannical rule to convince them otherwise. What can we possibly do to save ourselves from that fate?

Morality and Prosperity

I've been reading a very interesting book by one of my favorite scholars, F.A. Hayek, called The Fatal Conceit, so named to describe the illusion that men may completely control their future. The basic premise of the book is interestingly founded in the concept of morality, holding that progress, knowledge, intelligence, etc. are products of traditions of morality that evolved spontaneously (by spontaneous we mean uncontrolled, not sudden). The basic premise of socialism is the reversed causality, that intelligent people create morality, that we can progressively create a moral society with our knowledge and wisdom. I haven't yet read Hayek's argument for why this is wrong and that morality is spontaneously emergent, but it makes sense.

Anyway, the point of this post was to tie this knowledge into our modern society. Moral society emerged as a result of traditions passed on from generation to generation. Specifically, as I believe, a moral code was given mankind of divine origin, and the tradition was held onto by some, and disregarded by others who, instead, created their own moral traditions. But social characteristics such as honesty, charity, trust, and respect for our fellowman produce efficiencies in market transacting. If honesty is not a social virtue, traders would not be able to trade efficiently, and expensive protections would be necessary for all transactions. If there is little respect for fellowman and their property in society, expensive protections must emerge to guard each individual's livelihood from theft. Thus, moral societies excel because of the efficiencies it produces, while the immoral societies flounder. Survival of the fittest allowed the most moral of traditions to endure, while those immoral societies could not.

This brings us to today. The moral system that our founding fathers developed gave us produced such efficiencies as to lead us out of the enduring agricultural system which had us constant fighting for survival. Innovative developments moved us from a society where 90% of us were farmers in order to produce sufficient food for society, to where less than 5% are, and we have far more than any of us need. We do not fear weather, we do not build our own homes, and we are free from the shackles of producing our own sustenance to pursue other life-improving ideas that make everyone better off. We have the time and freedom to pursue knowledge and scientific discovery, which has accelerated our development further.

Yet it is a fragile system, dependent on the efficiencies of the moral traditions of our forefathers. If we begin to abandon those traditions, the costs of economics rises, the profits drop, the costs of food and energy increase because we simply do not trust each other. And it becomes a cycle. We do not trust others, which makes prices high and unaffordable, which creates additional incentives to be dishonest or steal, and so on.

We are in at a precarious point, were we still have trust in our protections, but are abandoning them little by little in the name of the greater good. We take from each other with government force to feed those who do not feed themselves, not by charity, but by theft. We are beginning to eschew the family, the foundation of traditions, for a more "enlightened" society. If the family becomes inconsequential in teaching morality, our youth will grow up with no traditions to hold onto, no moral code to live by, and our society will collapse.

If our society continues to abandon moral traditions that have created our wealth and knowledge, we will have no choice but to separate ourselves from them, and establish a new order by which we may reestablish moral traditions to live by. May it not come to that.