Andrew Yang Suggests Power May Affects Politicians' Brain Neurons (politico.com) 157
Today tech entrepreneur-turned-politician Andrew Yang candidly reflected on the pitfalls of power that he'd learned about during his 2020 run for president. "In national politics, it turns out, you're not as much the CEO as you are yourself the product... [E]veryone in my orbit started treating me like I might be a presidential contender. I was getting a crash course in how we treat the very powerful — and it was weird.
"But it was more than just a head rush. There are psychological consequences to being treated this way for months on end." The historian Henry Adams described power as "a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim's sympathies." This may sound like hyperbole, but it has been borne out by years of lab and field experiments. Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at UC Berkeley, has been studying the influence of power on individuals. He puts people in positions of power relative to each other in different settings. He has consistently found that power, over time, makes one more impulsive, more reckless and less able to see things from others' points of view. It also leads one to be rude, more likely to cheat on one's spouse, less attentive to other people, and less interested in the experiences of others. Does that sound familiar? It turns out that power actually gives you brain damage.
This even shows up in brain scans. Sukhvinder Obhi, a neuroscientist at McMaster University in Ontario, recently examined the brain patterns of the powerful and the not so powerful in a transcranial-magnetic-stimulation machine. He found that those with power are impaired in a specific neural process — mirroring — that leads to empathy... Perhaps most distressing is that in lab settings the powerful can't address this shortcoming even if told to try. Subjects in one study were told that their mirroring impulse was the issue and to make a conscious effort to relate to the experiences of others. They still couldn't do it. Effort and awareness made no difference in their abilities...
On the campaign trail, I could clearly see how politicians become susceptible to growing so out of touch. You spend time with dozens of people whose schedules and actions revolve around you. Everyone asks you what you think. You function on appearance; appearance becomes your role. Empathy becomes optional or even unhelpful. Leadership becomes the appearance of leadership.
The process through which we choose leaders neutralizes and reduces the capacities we want most in them. It's cumulative as well; the longer you are in it, the more extreme the effects are likely to be over time.
"But it was more than just a head rush. There are psychological consequences to being treated this way for months on end." The historian Henry Adams described power as "a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim's sympathies." This may sound like hyperbole, but it has been borne out by years of lab and field experiments. Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at UC Berkeley, has been studying the influence of power on individuals. He puts people in positions of power relative to each other in different settings. He has consistently found that power, over time, makes one more impulsive, more reckless and less able to see things from others' points of view. It also leads one to be rude, more likely to cheat on one's spouse, less attentive to other people, and less interested in the experiences of others. Does that sound familiar? It turns out that power actually gives you brain damage.
This even shows up in brain scans. Sukhvinder Obhi, a neuroscientist at McMaster University in Ontario, recently examined the brain patterns of the powerful and the not so powerful in a transcranial-magnetic-stimulation machine. He found that those with power are impaired in a specific neural process — mirroring — that leads to empathy... Perhaps most distressing is that in lab settings the powerful can't address this shortcoming even if told to try. Subjects in one study were told that their mirroring impulse was the issue and to make a conscious effort to relate to the experiences of others. They still couldn't do it. Effort and awareness made no difference in their abilities...
On the campaign trail, I could clearly see how politicians become susceptible to growing so out of touch. You spend time with dozens of people whose schedules and actions revolve around you. Everyone asks you what you think. You function on appearance; appearance becomes your role. Empathy becomes optional or even unhelpful. Leadership becomes the appearance of leadership.
The process through which we choose leaders neutralizes and reduces the capacities we want most in them. It's cumulative as well; the longer you are in it, the more extreme the effects are likely to be over time.
"Editor" David strikes again! (Score:3, Insightful)
The self-described "editor", EditorDavid fails to correct a misspelling in the article title. Does "Editor" David know what an editor does?
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The editors not only don't care, they enjoy flaunting their fecalization of what was once a great site.
Re: "Editor" David strikes again! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: "Editor" David strikes again! (Score:3)
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It isn't just power. I mean, you clearly have the same problem....
Re: "Editor" David strikes again! (Score:2)
Banality.
Responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
Responsibility and thus accountability are the counterweights to power.
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Yeah... call me when people don't think protest marches are slacktivism anymore, and start with the actual consequences.
People have been bred to be passive-thinking livestock. It's comfortable to not be a person, but merely a drone or limb of a swarm body that thinks for you. This very "news" is a "neural signal" from such a swarm head to the swarm body/drones.
The only ones holding them accountable are those who want to just be in their position and not be accountable. ;)
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That is a different issue. The system works but the system includes hard work by allmof us. Or at least a majority.
The good thing is we can't claim victimhood in this. All that is happening is squarely on us.
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Re:Responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
You're not going to be the Rockefeller or Bezos with that "freedom". Everybody like you thinks he will be the one with the biggest club. But in reality, they will just use their freedom to take your freedom! Everybody gangsta until the Amazon death squads come knocking at your door.
Anarcho-libertarianism naturally evolves into local governments. Because everybody who doesn't, will be fucked-up by the raiders and gangs and death squads.
It is not a solution. Please take your medication.
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Hierarchies of power are nothing new. Many species of animal have been forming such hierarchies since long before humans even existed. Whenever large numbers of individuals must cooperate in order to survive, there will be power hierarchies. There is no way to escape this. There is no solution that excludes this and actually works.
Corruption of the ones at the top of such hierarchies is also nothing new. To some extent, this is a practical necessity. In the case of humans, those with power will someti
Re:Responsibility (Score:4, Insightful)
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"There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nutcases want to be president".
- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
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Quote from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Restaurant at the End of the Universe):
The major problem — one of the major problems, for there are several — one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarise: it is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarise the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem.
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Freedom is a general concept, not a tangible action. Any idiot can say that any law, or regulation is an affront to Freedom, however that same idiot can make a point that an other laws is about preserving freedom.
Because the concepts of Freedom is vague and personal. If a rule stops you from doing something or allows someone to do something to you then it is a violation of freedom. However if a rule allows you do do something to someone else, or stops someone from doing something bad to you, then it is
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The concept of American Freedom was n
Oh dear god (Score:2)
Just MATH the fuck away already, please.
Sooooo... Fools? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Roman technology (Score:5, Informative)
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"Maybe it prolonged the empire a few decades?"
Not really. Triumphs were a thing of the republic and disappeared under the empire. Obviously, no one other than the emperor could possibly be awarded a triumph, and to deem the emperor worthy of a triumph would imply that there were times he wasn't worthy of triumph, which was unacceptable.
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All aides to politicians should operate in the office of auriga.
More likely other way around (Score:2, Insightful)
Power doesn't lead to a lack of empathy, rather sociopaths lacking empathy are far more likely to seek a position of power than "normal" people. While they're trying to climb the greasy pole they'll pretend to care but once there at the top they don't need to, at least not so much.
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Power doesn't lead to a lack of empathy, rather sociopaths lacking empathy are far more likely to seek a position of power than "normal" people.
True, but getting power gives them the same sort of reward that a heroine addict gets on a hit, so there's a feedback there which certainly affects and involves the brain. But this is pretty obvious stuff: what was anyone expecting it to affect? Their feet?
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Plenty of people get a legal high from various activities, eg runners high, but it doesn't turn them into sociopaths.
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I take it you've never tried to drive through a green light when a runner approaches a crosswalk.
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You clearly never tried heroin. Not know (or rather ... *knew*) anyone who did.
Imagine an orgasm. ... Times 100.
It's addictive on the first try for a reason.
So you may be a biiit exaggerating with your analogy there. ;)
Tried it, found it soul-crushing (Score:2)
I could see why people would be attracted to that.
Choose life or choose a life-blurring box where you feel nothing.
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That's a bingo! (Score:3)
Also, some are both bred for power while also having empathy ground-out of them. [theguardian.com]
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Power doesn't lead to a lack of empathy, rather sociopaths lacking empathy are far more likely to seek a position of power than "normal" people. While they're trying to climb the greasy pole they'll pretend to care but once there at the top they don't need to, at least not so much.
Let's not go with normal, since that's an ephemeral state. Let's just say folks who are not sociopaths.
Imagine the difficulty a remotely decent person would have making decisions on a daily basis that result in a certain number of people suffering or even perishing. Many thrust into leadership roles, military and civilian, have struggled with this throughout the ages... you either learn to compartmentalize, or the job destroys you.
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Yes, this has been known for a long time.
Those who want to lead and be in power, don't want to listen to others, follow and obey.
And those who want to listen to others, don't want to lead and be in power.
Psychologically, they are opposite types of character.
Making "representative democracy" an oxymoron. And in practice, not democracy.
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Though in theory, gives you a quick and normalized path to 'revolution'. So you pick your government and even as they are not inclined to listen to you, if their leadership ends in bad outcomes, then a 'revolution' happens at the designated interval where everyone decides whether to keep going as-is or throw out the current leaders.
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The kind of adversarial politics you have in the US, and we have in the UK, is almost designed to ensure that nobody who is actually good at that kind of job will get to be in charge of anything.
Systems that produce coalition governments are so much better in so many ways.
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"Systems that produce coalition governments are so much better in so many ways."
Yeah right.
Italy.
I rest my case.
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Power doesn't lead to a lack of empathy, rather sociopaths lacking empathy are far more likely to seek a position of power than "normal" people. While they're trying to climb the greasy pole they'll pretend to care but once there at the top they don't need to, at least not so much.
Thank you. I've been saying this for years since a study that suggested extroverts, far from "feeling your pain", actually don't and, worse, do not care what you think about them. And the opposite, introverts, far from not understanding others, care way too much what others think about them.
Hence politicians, who have been described of being capable of making you feel they're your best friend, after only 5 minutes, can lie convincingly in ways "normal" people cannot, because they do not care what you thin
The Sith have it all figured out. (Score:2)
The part of your brain that makes you empathize is a shackle that evolution produced out of brutal necessity.
You see, if you have a tribe of 100 leaders each with a different plan, there is no coordination and so they all die immediately. But if you have a tribe with 1 leader and 99 people who will obey, then even mediocre plans will keep the tribe alive.
So, our hunter-gatherer ancestors needed a genetic mechanism that would naturally organize people into leaders and followers. And the part of the brain t
Not necessarily true (Score:5, Insightful)
Andrew Yang doesn't seem like a sociopath type of guy. I think he's trying to say the experience actually transformed him, and the science backs that experience up.
Additionally, speaking from personal experience, I lived for a year in Cairo, Egypt. I was earning an average American salary in a country whose average household income was a tenth of what I was earning. That money gave me a lot of power, something I was not used to experiencing. Everything I read in this article rings true; the way I treated the taxi drivers, the shop keepers, commoners...frankly, I was a jerk far more often than I should have been. I didn't feel for anybody. It took a fellow American at a travel agency to tell me off one day for how she witnessed me treating a taxi driver. That kind of power does indeed go to your head.
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That is very interesting. I presume you were not being nasty to the locals because you got some joy out of that, but it just happened, because you had more power than them. There is this stereotype of the arrogant Englishman abroad, ordering people about as if they were servants. They are just not aware that they are being horrible. Of course, if you are aware of the power relationship, and try to be nice to the locals, then you are just being patronising. Bloody complicated, this psychology business.
Being nasty to the locals (Score:4, Insightful)
I presume you were not being nasty to the locals because you got some joy out of that.
Actually, I'll never forget how it started. My first week in Cairo, I paid a taxi driver $5 for a 5-minute taxi ride. Driver asked for $4, I gave him a $1 tip, seemed more than fair. After telling a coworker about how cheap the taxis were, he said, "Five dollars?!? You should have only paid $1. That driver ripped you off. Don't ever let them take advantage of you."
And for the rest of my stay, I took advantage of them instead.
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Sounds to me you're trying to convince yourself that really you're a nice guy at heart. Doesn't sound like it to me - that situation simply gave your inner sociopath a chance to surface.
Being a nice guy (Score:2)
Sounds to me you're trying to convince yourself that really you're a nice guy at heart. Doesn't sound like it to me
I know you're trolling, but I'll take the bait. As you get older (which some of us ~100K UID Slashdot users are tending to do), you start to realize that nobody has a one-size-fits-all personality. We adjust ourselves to different people and places. Don't believe me? Travel to Egypt, earn a prince's salary, and watch what happens to you. Better yet, have a neutral observer watch what happe
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Don't ever let them take advantage of you.
I appreciate people being enterprising. If it costs you virtually nothing, and benefits them greatly, surely that has increased the sum of human happiness. But maybe it is not a practice that should be encouraged, else a whole industry would grow up dedicated to fleecing the foolish rich tourists. I am to an extent a believer in trickle down economics, where the spending of the rich results in employment for the poor. It might need a bit of encouragement sometimes. Short of actual robbery, you understand.
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Are British, French, Italian, Spanish, or German citizens treated the same, better, or worse than American citizens in Egypt? Are they also rarely arrested for minor offenses?
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In a study planned to last 2 weeks they randomly assigned college students to be Prisoners and Guards. Everyone involved KNEW that their assignments were random. In less than 6 days they had to end the experiment because the guards were abusing the prisoners quite brutally. Neither the fact that their authority was the result of random chance, and not any form of merit, nor the fact that the study would end soon and
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Power doesn't lead to a lack of empathy.
The article/summary clearly states, that data from experiments show, it does lead. Random person, assigned power, goes into transformation regarding empathy. This happens for several reasons: his motives are no longer serving the need to be socially bound with others like him. He is now elsewhere, either loaded with more of responsibility, or just superior for any other reason. It also does affect how others are treating him - your attitude to celebrity well differs from that to the ordinary. I guess, this
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Power doesn't lead to a lack of empathy, rather sociopaths lacking empathy are far more likely to seek a position of power than "normal" people. While they're trying to climb the greasy pole they'll pretend to care but once there at the top they don't need to, at least not so much.
I wouldn't say medicine is a field that attracts sociopaths but if you know any doctors or nurses you may realize that the vast majority of them become quickly become hardened to having sympathy for most of their patients, who are often suffering and dying. They wouldn't be able to do their jobs effectively if they were constantly upset about the patients.
The brain has a remarkable ability to adapt to new situations to keep us healthy. Losing empathy as you gain power over other people's lives is a defense
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There's a big difference between ignoring your feelings and not having any to start with.
well then (Score:2)
I guess it's fortunate he's completely safe then?
CEOs are mostly sociopaths (Score:4, Insightful)
Their brains aren't normal from the get-go.
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Psychiatrists too, btw.
The first diagnosed care of psychopathy (aka sociopathy) was a psychiatrist when he was looking at pictures of his own brain.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Mod parent up ... also epigenetic inheritance (Score:2)
Mod parent up ... also epigenetic inheritance
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Romans (Score:2)
Interesting. In ancient Rome, at one time if a powerful figure was given a triumph, in the same chariot would be someone who would hurl insults at him during the ceremony.
Even then they knew power could change a person, but it did not work out too well for them. I wonder if anything can be done.
No shit! (Score:2)
Experiencing ANYTHING affects somebody's "brain neurons"!
That's what being a living neuron means!
We got a real genius over here! XD
Two Words (Score:5, Insightful)
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Term limits aren't enough. The problem is giving too much power to individuals. The role of president should not exist, that job should be broken down and the responsibilities held by different people.
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Switzerland has something like what you describe. They have a federal executive council made up of 7 members instead of a single person heading the executive branch. The system seems to have worked out well for the Swiss.
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Term Limits
Are already a feature of the executive branch in the US.
Applied to legislative branches not only do you lose experience, but you also lose people with the reputations strong enough that they can resist the news cycle.
The US system is broken for sure, but I don't think legislator term limits are a step towards fixing it.
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The problem with term limits for legislatures is that the people with experience will run the legislative chamber. If none of the legislators have much experience, then the experienced lobbyists will run the chamber. Not to say that no term limits offers any kind of guarantee that lobbyists won't run the chamber anyways, but it at least gives you a chance.
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For whom? Look at presidents. They are limited to two terms. But in terms of overall influence from the famil how many years of Bush have we had as president combined with how many years as Governors, Mayors, Congress Critters, etc.
You're never going to convince career politicians to legislate themselves out of their own career.
Our brains are plastic (Score:5, Insightful)
Politics may select for people with certain predispositions. Its also true that making macro decisions means you can't please everyone and not everything you do will be good for everyone. You'd be parlayed if you spent to much time feeling terrible about how everything you try to do at the macro level likely negatively impacts someones who isn't really a bad actor when you consider their situation.
You have to learn a certain amount of indifference. The larger the organization, the greater the layers on the org chart the more indifference required. Our founders understood this which is why they designed a weak central government and tried to leave power local so there would be less need for decision making in the abstract. Today we have people crying about how you have this right or that, access to this or that depending on what side of state line you live on as if that is bad thing - ITS NOT A BUG ITS A FEATURE.
The more you do a thing the better at it you get. The longer you stay in Washington exercising power the more indifferent to the pain you cause some individuals you become. Which is why terms limits are so desperately needed. We should apply them as a totality of time in elected federal office. Say 24 years - that would be four senate terms - plenty! Now lets say you have served two terms in the House (4 years) and you decide to run for Senate, you'd be only eligible for three terms.
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Our founders understood this which is why they designed a weak central government and tried to leave power local so there would be less need for decision making in the abstract. Today we have people crying about how you have this right or that, access to this or that depending on what side of state line you live on as if that is bad thing
You're right that most issues are too small for the federal government to spend time on and need constant attention. But the founders did not know the size of the future country. You have 50 states that all have most of the same macro and micro needs. It's more efficient to pool resources than to have 50 different approaches with all the bureaucratic overhead involved with that number. Any argument I've heard that different states have different needs will point out a rural area of one state against the
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The urban rural divide is real because some states are very much urban while others are largely rural by population and economic output. Yes every state has some urban area but that inst really the point.
The problem though is even if there is a lot of shared needs as you say we are past being able to reach any real consensus. At least 1/3 of the country is quite disaffected at any given time, and its been that way since the mid 90s when an every shrinking political center has led the pendulum swing back and
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At the same time, I can’t help but be reminded of a professor I had that criticized term limits as “stomach stapling for democracy”.
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You are very right that politics tends to select people with certain dispositions. Yet, I think more generally, being in any kind of position of power will tend to select those.
I just don't see term limits as a solution because the next person in line is going to have those same traits. Whether they were corrupted by the power when they were in charge of their business, their non-profit, their family, their church, their community...
It's not Washington that's the problem. The problem is leadership and peopl
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I think the wisdom of the Framers (and, yes, in spite of their flaws) would greatly illuminate many of the issues we face today. Even the issues on which they were wrong.
We are simply not nearly as informed nor literate as they were, particularly on this subject.
But reading the Federalist and (equally or more importantly) Anti-Federalist Papers would be a great start for anyone wanting to learn more.
IMO, nearly every step we have taken from the limited, constrained, divided, consensus-requiring, and purpos
Or maybe... (Score:2)
Or maybe that in a Democracy, those who gain and stay in power are the best at getting votes.
Which may not be the best way to run a government, but seems to be better than basing rule on finding the closest relation to the last ruler (monarchy) or who can seize power and maintain power via force (authoritarianism).
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Or maybe that in a Democracy, those who gain and stay in power are the best at getting votes.
Which may not be the best way to run a government, but seems to be better than basing rule on finding the closest relation to the last ruler (monarchy) or who can seize power and maintain power via force (authoritarianism).
Which, luckily, is why we're a republic of multiple states, and NOT a democracy, as a nation. Very thoughtful, on the part of the founders.
Illusion of control (Score:2)
The more power the stronger your illusion of control, if you have to be some kind of superhuman to maintain that control then that's what you believe you are.
Just like owning a motorcycle grants you superhuman traffic insight and reflexes.
What you are. What you become. (Score:2)
People go into politics because they are narcissistic sociopaths or they become narcissistic sociopaths while in office.
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Well thank goodness that is not entirely true, if the UK politicians I know are anything to go by. You have to have some particular personal qualities to survive or maybe succeed as a politician, but narcissistic sociopath is not an absolute requirement. I have corresponded with my local MP on various topics, and his comprehensive replies indicate a very sound grasp of the political realities, and how they affect ordinary people.
I do admit though, that there are some lying back-stabbing bastards that get ah
Like alcohol (Score:2)
Remove the inhibitions or constraints, and most people start acting how they really want, deep down inside, to act. In other words: Rather poorly.
+1 for direct democracy (Score:2)
If you have a system of direct democracy (or optionally-direct democracy) where if a politician exists, they aren't much more than a spokesman / paperwork technician passing along the votes of their supporters (unless they want to try a political exit scam that will ruin their career), that person will be much less powerful and thus accrue far less brain damage. Plus they'd be far easier to replace in any case.
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Direct democracy has a track record? It's hardly ever been tried. In an optionally-direct system, you're free to do all your own voting or take away your referral power from a representative after the first time they do something you don't like (or perhaps even pre-emptively on a per-issue basis if you suspect they may do something you won't like on a particular issue), so there would be very little room for “what my expertise and ideology say is best for my constituents” - deviate too far and y
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I read that as Pelosi 101 but didn't think she was Speaker for that long.
It wouldn't be surprising. (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the things we've learned over forty years of research is that the brain is far more dynamic ("plastic") than anyone imagined back when I took a few neuroscience courses back in the early 80s.
Back then it was thought that the adult brain doesn't grow, it just slowly decays over the decades of your life. But now we know that if you practice memory exercises, your hippocampus will actually get bigger. In an extreme example of plasticity, some patients who've had half their brain removed have regained motor function on the side of their bodies with no brain left to control it. The remaining hemisphere can remodel itself to take over the functions of the missing part. Brain anatomy and function turns out to be quite dynamic.
So it makes perfect sense that extreme, long term social power would remodel the brain somehow. Characterizing that as "damage" is a value-judgement; you could also characterize it as an adaptation: the brain relinquishes capabilities it doesn't use to enhance the ones it routinely uses. You probably don't want to get into some kind of Game-of-Thrones style contest of life-or-death backstabbing with a powerful person. Even if he doesn't seem very smart overall, his brain may have what amounts to an efficient Machiavellian co-processor.
That said, the lifestyle of the powerful is, from an evolutionary standpoint, highly unnatural. We evolved to live in small, tight-knit social groups where even the most powerful individuals were highly dependent on everyone else for survival. People whose brains have adapted to lack of dependency on any individual other might have limited abilities in areas that have been critical to survival for most humans who have ever lived. If they were somehow to lose their status, that would be an impairment, so it's not entirely unreasonable to characterize that as "damage".
+1 Interesting (Score:2)
OT I know ...
Let's cure them with psilocybin and MDMA, both shown to create new neuron growth
and to enhance pro-social behaviour.
If you can turn on someone in a position of power please do so (best to seek consent, know family psych history, explain set and setting, be a good guide and so on) ;)
No shit (Score:2)
Look at Schumer or Pelosi or McConnell or Sinema or Manchin or Romney or any of these geriatric patients at the top of Congress.
They're powerful enough to matter but not quite high enough to be in a 50 ft bubble the way the potus is. And they've got a constant throng of pretty young people sticking cameras and microphones in their faces and following them around wherever they walk. That can't not fuck up your sense of personal boundaries and make you king of your own pointland.
Kicking and Screaming into Office (Score:5, Interesting)
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One of my favorite sci-fi series from my youth was Children of the Star (http://www.sylviaengdahl.com/cots.htm). SPOILER ALERT. She explored this concept with a society that was a technology-based-religion totalitarian system. Later on you find out that the only way to join the ruling class is by rebelling against the system hard enough to be sentenced to death for heresy, after which you find out the necessity of the political system and that only those that hate it are fit to rule, as they work to end it.
Save them with term limits! (Score:2)
Maybe OSHA can declare the Capitol building to be a toxic environment and provide some guidelines on how long a person can safely work there.
Power: a means or an end (Score:2)
Regardless of the physical effects on the brain or not, consider the nature of power on moral intent.
A great deal depends on what you think power is for. Do you seek power for its own sake, or do you seek power to Do Good Things? There are no doubt rich people and powerful politicians, for whom gaining and holding on to power is the prime goal in their lives. Those people could be classed as sociopaths by some measures. But there are people who seek power because they need power to get things done. So they
Power != Authority (Score:2)
They are people with Authority but not Power, and people who are in Power who actually don't have Authority.
We have been electing people who we hope will be a Powerful leader, while we actually need a person who has the Authority to make the big decisions.
We seem to want an Action Hero as our leaders, while what may be needed is a meek administrator.
Genius Yang (Score:2)
So, the great genius Andrew Yang has discovered that power corrupts? Nobel Committee, take notice!
Why? (Score:2)
Why do people keep listening to this loser?
Good to know (Score:2)
I'm happy to realize that I've been spared the effects of brain damage that results from being in a position of power.
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The underlying problem that I see with adhering to that concept while dismissing the other, is that this can only be true if you believe that the nature of a person can't possibly change given the circumstances, that the human personality is this immutable monolith that's determined by birth alone.
I think that such an assumption is not substantiated by evidence as we are fundamentally part of our environments a
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Power doesn't corrupt. Power reveals.
If Andy suddenly finds himself to be "...more impulsive, more reckless... less able to see things from others' points of view... rude, more likely to cheat on one's spouse, less attentive to other people, and less interested in the experiences of others..." - that's because he always was like that. No big reveal there. Except, seemingly, for Andy.
And... bingo.
Exactly this. If we take presidents as a highest level example - the previous two, Trump was no different as president than he was as before, just wielded more power, and his inherent corruption was revealed, only more dangerous because of the position. Several children by multiple wives, a habit of consorting with hookers,reckless business decisions, and paying people off to have them silcend regarding his transgressions.
And given that no one is pure, I'm certain that predecessor Barry O'B
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Frank Herbert said it well: Power attracts the corruptible.