Does Power Corrupt? Survey/Poll.

Do you believe that power corrupts? All types or some types? Money is power. Politics is power. Knowledge is power.

I was told not to vote once because power corrupts, and temptation is wrong. The person who suggested this is more or less a successful person.

a reply to: wayforward

Only corruptible people seek to rise to the top. You have to be really good at corruption to get there. So the top echelons of wealth and power are full of such people and they would never allow anyone around who isn't like them.

a reply to: wayforward

"Does Power Corrupt? Survey/Poll."

Absolutely.




In our corrupt political system, honest, sincere people last as long as a bottle of botox in Hollywood.

a reply to: wayforward

I believe power corrupts, which is why I believe that it must be decentralised, so that no one body, organisation or individual, has greater power to affect anyone's life but their own, than anyone else.

No leader, no government, just absolute distribution of democracy.

I'm not sure how you can even ask the question, when the evidence that it does is virtually everywhere.

originally posted by: Blazemore2000
I'm not sure how you can even ask the question, when the evidence that it does is virtually everywhere.

Power may simply bring out one's natural personality. Perhaps people behave badly, then get into power and continue to behave the way they wanted to all along.

originally posted by: intrptr
a reply to: wayforward

Only corruptible people seek to rise to the top. You have to be really good at corruption to get there. So the top echelons of wealth and power are full of such people and they would never allow anyone around who isn't like them.

I think this would be the most sensible alternative. It could be that power doesn't corrupt but rather corrupt people seek power. Or some mix of both options.

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.
Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse Dune, Missionaria Protectiva
US science fiction novelist (1920 - 1986)

a reply to: wayforward

Power does not corrupt, rather:

All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.

FRANK HERBERT, Chapterhouse: Dune

I will add a corollary:

Absolute power attracts the absolutely corruptible.

Furthermore:

Power tends to isolate those who hold too much of it. Eventually, they lose touch with reality ... and fall.

FRANK HERBERT, Dune Messiah

Sound like anyone we know of from news reports?

One uses power by grasping it lightly. To grasp too strongly is to be taken over by power, and thus to become its victim.

FRANK HERBERT, Children of Dune

Seems like our politicians could do with these bits of wisdom from an author of fiction. He was extremely astute and his writings carry lessons that we would be well served by paying heed:

Governments, if they endure, always tend increasingly toward aristocratic forms. No government in history has been known to evade this pattern. And as the aristocracy develops, governments tend more and more to act exclusively in the interests of the ruling class--whether that class be hereditary royalty, oligarchs of financial empires, or entrenched bureaucracy.

FRANK HERBERT, Children of Dune

And why does nothing ever get done about these issues? How is it that we are so easily led as a people?

In all major socializing forces you will find an underlying movement to gain and maintain power through the use of words. From witch doctor to priest to bureaucrat it is all the same. A governed populace must be conditioned to accept power-words as actual things, to confuse the symbolized system with the tangible universe. In the maintenance of such a power structure, certain symbols are kept out of reach of common understanding--symbols such as those dealing with economic manipulation or those which define the local interpretation of sanity. Symbol-secrecy of this form leads to the development of fragmented sub-languages, each being a signal that its users are accumulating some form of power.

FRANK HERBERT, Children of Dune

All above quotes from: Frank Herbert Quotes

Some others which are applicable:

“Bureaucracy destroys initiative. There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept. Who enjoys appearing inept?”

- Frank Herbert, Heretics of Dune

The above pretty much speaks for itself and can be applied to corporations as well as governments. I cannot tell you how many times I have come up with an idea while working for a large company only to have that idea shot down. Then months later someone higher up in the company issues changes and lo and behold, they are the very ideas that I had had prior but had been sat upon.

One last quote to leave you with:

“I don’t think it’s quite that simple. Some people never observe anything, Life just happens to them. They get by on little more than a kind of dumb persistence, and they resist with anger and resentment anything that might lift them out of that false serenity.”

- Frank Herbert, Heretics of Dune

Bread & circuses. As long as we have plenty of distraction and food, nothing will ever change in American society.

The above two quotes are from Good Reads.



a reply to: Sublimecraft

Looks like I'm not the only Herbert fan, lol...

a reply to: wayforward

Do you really need a poll for this?

Power only corrupts the corruptible.

I believe having power is good for helping others that will never have it, the "elite" need power for likeability over knowledge..not all of of them but some.

Power is just as good as bad, all depends on how you use the power you have.

a reply to: wayforward

The types of people that seek out such power generally lend themselves to be easily corrupted. Hell, even some church leaders a charity creators and the like, who are supposed to be in it for the right reasons, are corrupt from time to time.

But you can't generalize everyone in this way, but I do believe that, more often than not, if you seek out and win/earn a powerful seat in any organization, corruption will be a temptation around every corner, and it takes a very special type of person to resist it at every turn.