I have just finished reading an article in Open Culture which was about ‘The Story of Fascism: Rick Steves’ Documentary Helps Us Learn from the Hard Lessons of the 20th Century‘ – more than anything it shows and reflects on how power corrupts.
I then watched the documentary which is located on YouTube ‘Rick Steves’ The Story of Fascism
Over the last few years, we in the UK have watched the antics of our Prime Minister (Boris Johnson) in conjunction with those of the President of the USA (Donald Trump) with often bewilderment.
On watching this video and reading the article it is all too obvious what they have both been up to. But they are not alone, what about in Russia with their President Vladimir Putin! We owe it to ourselves and to the future people of our countries to realise what is happening, and to take steps within the law to oust these power-grabbing socio-paths from controlling the country and also from looking after their cliques in terms of money and power (all too obvious in the various quangos that Boris Johnson has set up and in the contracts that various government departments seem to have handed out).
To quote Aristotle from his Politics, Book VI, part IV…
that no one should “be allowed to do just he pleases, for where absolute freedom is allowed, there is nothing to restrain the evil which is inherent in every man.”
But put more succinctly by Lord Acton in the 19th-century…
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
But, all is not lost, according to a new study power would seem to bring out the best in some people; Katherine A. DeCelles, a professor of management at the University of Toronto and her co-authors found that peoples sens of “moral identity” shaped their responses to feelings of power. What the study seems to have found is that power doesn’t corrupt; it heightens pre-existing ethical tendencies i.e. it was people’s sens of “moral identity” – the degree to which they thought it was important to their sense of self to be “caring,” “compassionate,” “fair,” “generous,” and so on that shaped their responses to feelings of power. (By Christopher Shea SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE)
But be what it may, a egotistical leader with a power complex will still be one that is not good for any country – or lat least that is what I think!!
Further Reading:
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