Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
What incredible crock of shit.
Let’s define power, first. Power is the opposite of impotence. Power is to have options, to be able to choose what to do, instead of having your life pre-determined by demands of mere survival. Power is the ability to know, to be aware of the nature and the scope of the world, instead of living a life of ignorance and being limited by some village. Power is the ability to do what you want, the ability to express your wishes and your nature.
If someone seems to have become corrupt because of power, that’s most likely an illusion. He was corrupt to begin with, and power merely allowed him to make choices that showed his pre-existing corruption. If anything, poverty corrupts. It is my experience that the poor people have the worst character and nature; they are usually impolite, vicious, envious, spiteful and evil. They are quick to hate and slow to kindness. If you walk through a rich neighborhood, you can feel safe, but if you walk through a poor neighborhood, you are right to feel afraid for your safety, because poor people are more likely to be evil, they are the ones who will rob you, rape you or murder you. If power corrupts, how do you explain that? If anything, power improves people, because if you are powerful, you will feel worthy and important, and you will automatically see others as worthy and important. You will be more likely to be kind and considerate to others. Poor people usually think they are worthless, and they treat everybody as worthless.
There is a reason why rich people tend to keep to themselves: it’s because everybody else tries to take advantage of them, rob them, deceive them, treat them with dishonesty in order to incur some favour, or, more subtly, join powers against them in order to change society in such a way as to defraud the wealthy of their wealth. In a universal-suffrage democracy it is done by electing demagogues who promise to increase taxation of the rich, and give the money to the poor. The wealthy people instinctively understand such conspiracies against them and they will of course attempt to protect themselves in any way they can, and the logical way is to associate only with people of similar social status, who are not likely to treat them badly. If you don’t think poor people are that bad, try winning a lottery and see how the people around you will treat you. You are suddenly prey, you are worse than an animal, you are someone to be manipulated and defrauded, and your only options will be either to be a victim or to protect yourself and change the company you keep, and if you choose the latter, those who wanted to rob you will say that you “changed”, that wealth “corrupted you”. No, it didn’t corrupt you, it opened your eyes to the true nature and character of people, who are mostly predators and scum, and once you gain some wealth they will stop seeing you as a person, they will see you as resources, the same way a butcher sees a cow. He actually loves the cow, because he makes his entire living out of it. He doesn’t see his attitude as hating the cow. The cow, however, might disagree.
This, of course, doesn’t apply only to human society. In spiritual worlds, power to do things is directly correlated with someone’s spiritual value; the higher a being, the greater the power. I have seen the Gods, and they are both immensely powerful and immensely holy, to the point where I would be hard pressed to tell the difference between the two. This power is the degree of participation in God’s nature, the degree of possession of the qualities of brahman, which is sat-cit-ananda. It’s not merely the power to do things, it’s literally the strength of God’s light that makes one’s soul, the degree of “hardness” and sophistication of that light, and, as a result, the power over lesser beings whose light is dimmer and whose spiritual value is less. It is the power to know the truth and the authority to pass true judgement, that is of God. Essentially, it’s the difference between Jesus and some generic human. Not only that the true power doesn’t corrupt, the true power is purity and wisdom and knowledge and love and strength of character. True power is indeed true holiness, and if you know a person of holy character, rest assured that this person is powerful among the spiritual beings.
I often see conspiracy theorists who slander and malign the “elites”, and I wonder, are those people so stupid as to be unaware of the meaning of the word, or are they so envious and evil that they want nothing but destroy all who are better than they? Elites, by definition, are those who are better. It’s people who are two or three standard deviations better than the general population, the “one percent”. That “one percent” is portrayed as the essence of all that is evil in mankind, but if you take a closer look, it’s the people who employ others, who pay the most taxes, the artists, intellectuals, inventors, the people who make all the difference and create all that is good in this world. Poor people will use Facebook, Twitter and iPhone to malign the “one percent”, the very one percent that invented Facebook, Twitter and iPhone, that invented the Internet, that invented electricity, that invented radio, that invented satellites, that invented medicine and science and technology, that created their job so that they can have resources in order to live. The “elites” don’t conspire to enslave you or destroy you, as the conspiracy idiots dream in their sick brains. The elites have better things to do – they make sure that you have electricity, water, communications, they make sure that you can buy smartphones and computers, software and services, and the ones who make the things that are of most use to most people are the most powerful among the “elites”, and they get more power to do more good things, so that fuckwits of the lowest order could slander them and malign them out of jealousy and spite, while they are benefactors to millions of people.
While the “elites” dream of inventing and manufacturing even greater things for the greatest benefit to the world, the “99%” are busy dreaming of ways in which to rob the “1%”. Honestly, it seems that wealth and power indeed corrupt, but they corrupt the poor and the powerless, who become corrupted with their envy, jealousy, malice and spite towards the powerful, and it all reminds me so clearly of the feelings that I saw demonic souls projecting towards God. If anything, the poor people in their envy and malice mirror Satan’s hatred of God and his angels, and their ideas about possible improvements to the world are also quite similar. The devils also think that world would be a better place if God and his angels didn’t exist, and they mock saints and try to portray them in the most negative possible light. I think it’s the same feeling, the same spiritual emptiness that is wretched and wants to grind all that is good and worthy to dust and to shit on it before it dies in its own misery.
If power corrupts, what, then, is God?
