Absolute Power Does Not ‘Corrupt Absolutely’
As the saying goes, “absolute power corrupts absolutely” and we all congratulate ourselves for knowing that. But what does “absolute power” mean?
The saying is too abstract and doesn’t provide a useful lesson. A man with a gun in some sense has “absolute power” over other people in the room, but that doesn’t seem to “corrupt absolutely.” Millions of Americans walk around with guns every day and yet somehow resist the urge to start murdering everybody.
Parables about people selling their souls to the Devil are interesting, but even less helpful than the “absolute power” catch phrase. The human soul is an abstract and the Devil is a conman. “Don’t sell your soul to the Devil” is useless advice because no one would ever want to do such a thing. We might as well say “don’t sell your heart because you’ll die.”
In Plato’s Republic, he brings up an old legend about a man, a humble shepherd, finds a ring that turns him invisible. This shepherd realizes that with his newfound invisibility can get away with anything, so of course he goes around stealing whatever he wants. That’s fun but not quite good enough. So, this invisible man invents an excuse to be invited to the royal palace, seduces the queen, murders the king, and seizes the throne.
Plato intended his Lord of the Rings prequel as another “power corrupts” story, just in case there was one human being left on Earth who hadn’t heard this warning ten billion times already. Plato posits that a man can avoid being corrupted by power only by choosing to not use it. That’s, for lack of a better word, kind of a dumb thing to say.
However, Plato accidentally taught an important lesson. The protagonist gained “absolute power” and misused it for a while, but eventually realized he was being childish. The ring was extremely powerful and he needed to do something great with that power. He used it to become king, and honestly, he was probably pretty good at it. His children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren were probably all good kings too.
Stories are all about relationships between characters, and who’s the other major character in Plato’s story? The queen of course. We can pretty safely assume she was a smart and educated person. A queen isn’t made of the same stuff as a teenager who swoons over every bad boy biker she meets. There was no logical reason for her to side with the ring thief unless she deduced he would be a good husband and ruler. Not only that, he would have to be a better husband and ruler than his predecessor.
Plato meant to prove that only corrupt people want power then sabotaged his own argument. The fictional man could already have all the money and sex he wanted. Money was a means to an end. The man only cared about the ring and gold because they helped him do interesting things. If he was motivated by greed alone, it made no sense for him to take a huge amount of risk to become king. He wanted to do great things, so we can infer that he went on to become a fair king who didn’t just loot everything he could.
I’ll go a step further and say that the previous king was a cruel tyrant that everyone hated. It’s too bad that Plato put no real thought into his throwaway morality tale because it’s brilliant. Plato’s ring thief must have known from the beginning that the king was a nasty person and nobody liked him, not even his own wife. What happens after this miserable and unpleasant person inexplicably dies and is replaced by another man who looks nothing like him? It should be obvious. The queen invents a stupid story for what happened, and everyone knows her story is stupid, but they go along with it anyway.
After Plato’s thief seized the throne, his ring became worthless. There was absolutely nothing else it could do for him. He probably locked it in a safe, or even better, destroyed the ring so no one could ever use it against him.
The real lesson of Plato’s ring is absolute power doesn’t corrupt, that’s total nonsense. A man started out as a boring nobody who probably couldn’t even read. Then he gained power and used that power to start a great dynasty which probably lasted hundreds of years. He killed the previous king in the process, but he didn’t kill for its own sake. Violence was a means to an end. The same can be said for almost every civilization throughout history. People killed for a reason. They didn’t go around massacring their neighbors because they felt like it.
Ian Kummer
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This might be the most disingenuous reading of that old morality tale…. that, or you have some really rose tinted glasses. Old morality didn’t have all the nuances of today, where we desperately try to find reasons for evil either to virtue-show how “deep” and insightful we are, or to press some political point on how evil people are evil because of society and they shouldn’t be punished.
Add all the BS you want but, lacking more elements, i’ll take that old story at face value: the shepard got power and immediately used it to his own ends even if it meant damaging others. As he realized the depth of his power, in a way as it “grew”, his desires grew too: he moved from mere possessions to power and prestige. Being able to steal so much he could have most was not enough: he had to become the king – by murdering the previous one, a pretty evil crime in Plato’s time as in ours.
THIS is the obvious warning in that story or the old adage about absolute power – so obvious that only someone with an agenda would distorce it. Our behaviour, our morality, is kept under check in good part by the consequences of our actions. Remove the consequences – as in, give someone power – and he will be distorced proportionally to the power itself. Give him absolute power and pretty much no one will be able to remain uncorrupt. Those who did, we consider themselves the greatest leaders of our past (Washington is a good example) and if we actually dig deeper we find out that they, too, had their flaws and took advantage of their powers, but remaining relatively uncorrupted still makes them that much of a shining example. As for the last paragraph of this article…. we have something like 3-4 thousands of written history that proves you wrong. Dozens of conquerors razing cities to the ground just because they could proves you wrong. Hell, some of our modern, most einous crimes proves you wrong. Man, please tell me what you are smoking because it must be pretty good.
“This might be the most disingenuous reading of that old morality tale…. that, or you have some really rose tinted glasses. Old morality didn’t have all the nuances of today, where we desperately try to find reasons for evil either to virtue-show how “deep” and insightful we are, or to press some political point on how evil people are evil because of society and they shouldn’t be punished.”
Why do you think that? Were ancient people too “primitive” to understand nuance?
“Being able to steal so much he could have most was not enough: he had to become the king – by murdering the previous one, a pretty evil crime in Plato’s time as in ours.”
Is it, though? Did ANYONE outside he palace care that the old king was dead, replaced by a new one? Nope.
“Those who did, we consider themselves the greatest leaders of our past (Washington is a good example) and if we actually dig deeper we find out that they, too, had their flaws and took advantage of their powers, but remaining relatively uncorrupted still makes them that much of a shining example.”
What is the difference between the founding fathers and the new king in Plato’s story? That’s a serious question, because you haven’t provided any kind of explanation for why killing in one instance is okay, but NOT okay in a different instance.
“As for the last paragraph of this article…. we have something like 3-4 thousands of written history that proves you wrong. Dozens of conquerors razing cities to the ground just because they could proves you wrong.”
That’s not even remotely true. Who told you that?
This might be the most disingenuous reading of that old morality tale…. that, or you have some really rose tinted glasses. Old morality didn't have all the nuances of today, where we desperately try to find reasons for evil either to virtue-show how "deep" and insightful we are, or to press some political point on how evil people are evil because of society and they shouldn't be punished. Add all the BS you want but, lacking more elements, i'll take that old story at face value: the shepard got power and immediately used it to his own ends even if it meant damaging others. As he realized the depth of his power, in a way as it "grew", his desires grew too: he moved from mere possessions to power and prestige. Being able to steal so much he could have most was not enough: he had to become the king – by murdering the previous one, a pretty evil crime in Plato's time as in ours. THIS is the obvious warning in that story or the old adage about absolute power – so obvious that only someone with an agenda would distorce it. Our behaviour, our morality, is kept under check in good part by the consequences of our actions. Remove the consequences – as in, give someone power – and he will be distorced proportionally to the power itself. Give him absolute power and pretty much no one will be able to remain uncorrupt. Those who did, we consider themselves the greatest leaders of our past (Washington is a good example) and if we actually dig deeper we find out that they, too, had their flaws and took advantage of their powers, but remaining relatively uncorrupted still makes them that much of a shining example. As for the last paragraph of this article…. we have something like 3-4 thousands of written history that proves you wrong. Dozens of conquerors razing cities to the ground just because they could proves you wrong. Hell, some of our modern, most einous crimes proves you wrong. Man, please tell me what you are smoking because it must be pretty good.
"This might be the most disingenuous reading of that old morality tale…. that, or you have some really rose tinted glasses. Old morality didn’t have all the nuances of today, where we desperately try to find reasons for evil either to virtue-show how “deep” and insightful we are, or to press some political point on how evil people are evil because of society and they shouldn’t be punished." Why do you think that? Were ancient people too "primitive" to understand nuance? "Being able to steal so much he could have most was not enough: he had to become the king – by murdering the previous one, a pretty evil crime in Plato’s time as in ours." Is it, though? Did ANYONE outside he palace care that the old king was dead, replaced by a new one? Nope. "Those who did, we consider themselves the greatest leaders of our past (Washington is a good example) and if we actually dig deeper we find out that they, too, had their flaws and took advantage of their powers, but remaining relatively uncorrupted still makes them that much of a shining example." What is the difference between the founding fathers and the new king in Plato's story? That's a serious question, because you haven't provided any kind of explanation for why killing in one instance is okay, but NOT okay in a different instance. "As for the last paragraph of this article…. we have something like 3-4 thousands of written history that proves you wrong. Dozens of conquerors razing cities to the ground just because they could proves you wrong." That's not even remotely true. Who told you that?