Thought of the Day - Drunk With Power

http://worldstreets.wordpress.com/

It isn't only the Dadour Group (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dadour-Group/1480813872146428) that is extremely concerned about the parlous state of democracy. As Eric Britton, Editor of the 'World Streets' website (sub-title: The Politics of Transport in Cities - http://worldstreets.wordpress.com/2014/10/25/op-ed-political-behaviour-is-largely-non-rational) writes:

"It is not easy to find a direct economic explanation of the behaviour of the people who now rule the world. The desire for pure power seems to be much more dominant than the desire for wealth. This has often been pointed out, but curiously enough the desire for power seems to be taken for granted as a natural instinct, equally prevalent in all ages, like the desire for food. Actually it is no more natural, in the sense of being biologically necessary, than drunkenness or gambling."

I guess, Eric, that's why we talk of people being 'drunk with power'.

He went on to say:

"And if it has reached new levels of lunacy in our own age, as I think it has, then the question becomes: What is the special quality in modern life that makes a major human motive out of the impulse to bully others? If we could answer that question - seldom asked, never followed up - there might occasionally be a bit of good news on the front page of your morning paper."

I'd add that the modern idiom of power is essentially self-defeating in a two-person game in which power changes periodically for reasons beyond the control of those 'in power'. If both players adopt the same approach, each change results in the new powerful overturning the decisions/actions of the previous one but going further in the opposite direction to make it more difficult for their own powerplays to be reversed in turn.

And the loser is - all of us.