Power Cannot But Be Corrupt
Lord Acton was not quite right. Power does not just tend to corrupt as he said. Power is corrupt by its very nature. Stated another way, only those who have a fair degree of corruption in their personal value system hanker after power. Traits that aid political success—ambition, dominance, low agreeableness, comfort with conflict, and skill at impression management—overlap with what psychologists sometimes measure as higher Machiavellianism or narcissism. This thought occurred to me again and again as I was rereading Ken Follett’s novel The Pillars of the Earth last week as I waited for Amazon to deliver Nicola Griffith’s Hild . Hild arrived yesterday just as the 915 th page of Follet’s saga kept me hooked. “Perhaps the savages will always be in control,” Philip said gloomily. That was one of the lines. It was followed by: “ Perhaps greed will always outweigh wisdom in the councils of the mighty; perhaps fear will always overcome compassion in the mind of a man with a sword i...
