Today I Learned

I don't think that's wrong, exactly, but I think it's an oversimplification. Most poor people who win huge lotteries don't become sinister tycoons, they spend the money and then go back to being poor. Sort of like how when Smeagol and Bilbo and Frodo and Sam wear the one ring, they don't gather armies unto themselves and conquer Middle Earth. They don't know how, and they don't want to learn. I think the corruption of power requires two elements: a knowledge of the cruel mechanisms by which power accumulates, and a will to exercise those mechanisms.

The more one knows about the mechanisms of manipulation, I suspect, the greater the temptation to use them becomes, because the true awesome scope of the power becomes clearer in your mind. Suspect, because I have never enjoyed the option of declining to use massive wealth or political influence. I have had the smallest possible serving of this malignant thing: I once held the title of Manager. It's a small sliver of capitalist power, and while much (if not all) of the power of that role is illusory, the title can confer a small amount of real power over other people. The small decisions I made had huge consequences for the people I had been assigned to manage. When submitting performance evaluations I had to consider the consequences my teammate might face if they lost their job. The temptation to use it for gain is subtle, and justifications for abuse come almost effortlessly to mind. Not abusing power is work, and it's not fun work. It's much easier to just relax, and make decisions as they come, and not worry too much about whether every little decision is fully morally justified. It's so, so easy.

I think it's kind of like a drug in that once you start habitually abusing power, you become dependent on it and have to keep doing it to keep the teetering tower of your own reputation from collapsing. You get to the point where not abusing power is so far from the realm of viable options that you stop even thinking about it as an option, and when you can't even imagine life beyond the cocoon of misery you have spun around yourself, you have been enthralled by power and cannot escape. You are a wraith.

Power is horrifying.

P.S. If by chance there's anyone reading this thinking that they can't imagine a life beyond the mountain of abuses and bad decisions their life has become, that they have become a wraith and are beyond hope: I think you give yourself too little credit. Wraiths can never consider the idea that they are wraiths. If you can as the question "Am I beyond hope?", the answer is "I am not beyond hope." It's not easy; you will have to do a lot of work and you will probably need to ask for help along the way. It's not fun. It's work. It's worth doing, but you have to actually do it and not just imagine doing it for it to get done.