Kort Explores conundrums of the human condition

Power isn't yours unless you can abuse it. Those who use the power with which they have been entrusted, to accomplish the purposes of those who entrusted that power to them, make themselves the servants of the powerful. Only when an individual abuses power does the exercise of power become an extension of the individual. Only the powerful can abuse their power, and only by abusing their power can the powerful prove that they are powerful.

Mankind has long been driven to seek power. Our obsession with the use and abuse of power over our environment and our fellow man, has been one of the most potent driving forces behind our temporary ascendancy to the dominant species on Earth. As a people, we've embraced the desire for power in our popular culture. We laud those who appear to possess it, and encourage our children to seek it. We reverently refer to the powerful of the past as great men in our too often distorted perceptions of history.

However, while we would like to believe that the acquisition and exercise of power has, at least at times, appeared simple and straightforward, a critical view of the human experience indicates otherwise. When twisted and distorted by the perversities of human nature, the exercise of power nearly always manages to show its dark side. Man's seeming inability to resist abusing power, has been a primary factor in turning repeated attempts to build civilizations based on higher principles into sad burlesques of their intended purpose, endlessly frustrating the efforts of our better natures to civilize the beast within.

It has long been recognized that power becomes a dangerous mistress in our modern world. Folk wisdom offers the insight that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The most minimal exposure to the twisted tale of human history, or just paying too close attention to the minor annoyances of everyday life, provides endless confirmation of the distressing truth in at least this bit of folk wisdom.

There is a distressingly consistent human tendency to favor those alternatives that allow the greatest exercise of power, over the best possible solution. The need to abuse power can often transcend such traditional motivations as greed and lust.

Even when there is no advantage to be gained, those with even temporary power are often unable to resist abusing that power. Doing the right thing may be intellectually satisfying, but abusing power serves an older, more fundamental aspect of human nature. What is it about power that holds such an irresistible attraction? And why is nearly everyone who manages to acquire even a tiny amount of it so driven to abuse it?

At its most basic level, power is simply the ability to cause something to happen that would not otherwise have occurred. Implicit in the definition is the need for there to be some form of resistance that requires power to overcome. The resistance that is overcome becomes the measure of the power that overcomes it.

In the primitive world, purpose and power tend to be directly tied to physical acts such as killing food, evading predators, providing shelter, and raising the young. Resistance is provided by the survival instincts of predator and prey, and the limitations of the physical world. As long as power was directly linked to purpose as a function of survival, abuses of power tended to be self-eliminating.

Just as mankind has changed much of the nature of life by adding a layer of artificial civilization on top, we've also substantially altered our relationships with power and purpose. It's hard not to notice the vastly expanded potentials for power we've created through technology and artificial social structures. Less obvious is the artificial disconnect between power and purpose resulting from those same technologies and social structures.

Within the artificial environment we've created for ourselves, even the least powerful among us enjoy more food than they should eat, and more reproductive success than the Earth will be able to tolerate for much longer. Personal power is no longer needed to achieve the original purpose of basic survival. The exercise of power has become largely a function of our egos and emotions, expressed through the filters and distortions of our individual world views. Where previously power followed and supported purpose, most people today see purpose as little more than a stepping stone to power.

In order to demonstrate personal power, we must accomplish some effect that would not have resulted without our involvement. Only if the effect depends on our participation does it become an expression of our personal power. The resistance to be overcome in the modern world is often provided by unwilling participants, and by violating the abstract constraints on human nature that make civilization possible in the first place.

The power-hungry routinely dismiss reasonable solutions, while aggressively advocating arbitrary purposes with little potential for solving the claimed need - and which they are indifferent to accomplishing. The key to understanding the dynamics resulting in such seemingly illogical motivations, is to follow the flow of power that results from implementing the seemingly irrational purpose. Ignore the deceptive camouflage of the claimed goal. Understanding can almost always be found at the point where the flow of power, and the interests of the advocates, converge.

Mankind's problems dealing with power divorced from purpose, impact modern life at all levels. The desire to take a toy away from another child is often a stronger motivation, among infants, than the desire for the toy itself. Normally polite and considerate individuals subconsciously slow down in no-passing zones, abusing the power they hold over the drivers trapped behind them. When they encounter a passing zone, these "traffic obstructors" speed up, preserving their ability to feel powerful, even if only in the most transient and meaningless of contexts.

In the private sector, seemingly reasonable people become petty tyrants when promoted to supervisor. The tendency of those in management to obsessively pursue personal power and status, even when their abuses compromise the survival of the company, has become such an expected behavior pattern that we're surprised and suspicious when we encounter someone who just wants to do a good job.

Vandals don't enrich themselves in any tangible way by damaging the property of others, and face official sanctions if caught. The thrill of empowerment vandals experience by overcoming the resistance of the rightful owner, and "owning" the targeted property through the damage they cause, continues to be sufficient motivation for the most cowardly of the power-hungry.

Few citizens fear the rigorous application of reasonable laws, by officials willing to employ whatever power is required to accomplish the reasonable purposes of those laws. But vesting reasonable people with a modicum of official power, often turns them into the worst sort of petty and vindictive despots. The well founded expectation that officials will inevitably become intoxicated by power, and actively seek excuses to abuse whatever power they've managed to acquire, is the reason America started out with a constitutionally limited government. Some of us are not surprised that, as we've foolishly allowed our government to escape its constitutional limitations, abuses of power by the employees of our government have increased dramatically.

Judicial rulings today are far more likely to be an expression of the power of judges to "interpret" the "law" in ways that offend sense and reason, than the dispassionate application of the clear principles they've sworn to uphold. The judge who truly seeks justice has no personal power - only an obligation to conscientiously apply principles to facts. Such a judge honorably serves the purpose of his position. Unfortunately, the satisfactions of doing a good job pale to insignificance compared to the attractions of becoming a powerful person.

The judge who can impose an outcome other than what would seem reasonable to a fully informed jury of citizens, makes himself a powerful person - more powerful than the citizens, more powerful than the principle of justice, more powerful than the law itself! In the mind of a "powerful" judge, the actual details of the outcome are reduced to trivialities, relative to the prime importance of imposing a different outcome than would be reasonably expected to occur. The difference between reasonable expectations, and the actual outcome, becomes the measure of the judge's personal power.

Police officers and prosecutors lie in order to convict the innocent, when their desire to demonstrate their personal power, exceeds their respect for real justice. The tragic fates of those unfortunate citizens, whose lives they destroy, become little more than insignificant technicalities, within the mind-set of police and prosecutors obsessed with creating conditions that will allow them to feel personally powerful.

Mankind's obsession with power, while phenomenal in its magnitude and variety of expression, is not unique in the animal kingdom. Our obsession with power must have had some evolutionary advantage in the primitive world, where nearly all of our evolution occurred. Why does the very nature of power, and man's relationship to it, change so radically when transported from the primitive to the modern world?

In the primitive world, our instinctual attraction to power likely evolved out of the necessities of survival. Indeed, the obsession with power permeates much of the animal kingdom. The connection between predators and power is obvious. If your own survival is dependent on overcoming the instinct for self-preservation of your prospective dinner, the exercise of power becomes an everyday concern. Predators who lose the source of their power to overcome the defenses of their prey, through accident, age or disease, tend to physically decline as their ability to exercise their power declines.

However, while the purpose of power may be to accomplish a given task in spite of resistance, the motivation to exercise power is often an emotion driven need to feel powerful. A well-fed cat will still hunt and kill mice, bringing its trophies home as proof of its prowess as a hunter, even when the original purpose of satisfying its hunger is no longer a factor. It continues to hunt because making a kill satisfies its emotional need to exercise its power, to feel powerful within the context of its world view.

There are substantial downsides to being an herbivore from the perspective of civilization-building. The low energy content of the diet of most wild herbivores requires them to spend nearly every waking moment eating. A high energy diet, that frees a significant percentage of the individual's time from such mundane tasks as acquiring and consuming food, would seem to be a necessary precursor to the establishment of complex structures such as modern civilization.

Lacking the convenience of modern supermarkets, the only reliable means for primitive man to obtain high quality protein, was to either kill something himself or steal the kill of another predator through trickery or intimidation. Power in the primitive world directly translated into the very desirable ability to get enough to eat without being eaten.

Man's relationship with power evolved as we added the multiple layers of our brains, and the often contradictory dimensions of human nature. Lacking the claws, fangs, and brute strength that allowed other predators to eat while avoiding being eaten, humanity evolved an unprecedented level of intelligence that allowed him to gain a significant degree of control over the world around him. With the accent of modern man, the concept of power became intimately linked to control.

Since the dawn of civilization was the direct result of mankind's efforts to control his source of food through intentional agriculture, it can be argued that power and control are good things - at least among those of us who find value in civilization. But as a further complication, human group dynamics have added another dimension to power that didn't exist when we were more primitive creatures. In addition to the ability to directly overcome obstacles and predators, the concept of power now includes the ability to influence other humans as a means of accomplishing our desired goals. And as power and control have become more closely linked, the disconnect between power and purpose has increased.

Power becomes a factor in evolution to the extent it provides a survival advantage. Social power over other humans started as an extension of purpose. The leader of a hunting pack earned his personal power over the other pack members, by demonstrating that he could use that power to serve the purpose of the hunt. The leader increasing the potential for a successful kill, by using his power to coordinate the actions of the individual members of the pack. Over time, the survival advantage of power over our environment has been, in many ways, displaced by the advantages of power over our fellow humans.

Just how did we get to this situation where power and purpose have become so completely disconnected? One potential culprit - or at least contributor - is that perennial "complicator" of human existence - sex. While personal power may be a useful survival tool, it's often in a form that is unsuitable for use in mating rituals. To this end, many species develop abstract representations of personal power. Having the brightest color, largest tail feathers, loudest call, or other representation of power, becomes a primary factor in determining reproductive success.

Humans don't naturally sprout colorful plumage, or other physical indications of reproductive value. Hunting as a cooperative group, limits the usefulness of the simple ability to acquire food as a measure of an individual's attractiveness as a mate. Status and social power evolved as abstract representations of successful power and purpose during the hunt, and thereby attractiveness as a mate.

As the abstraction of our artificial environment has increased, power and purpose have become ever more independent of each other. The connection was completely severed when the leaders of hunting packs, who earned their personal power through their ability to accomplish purpose, gave way to hereditary rulers, whose personal power was largely independent of any purpose they might accomplish.

The baggage we've accumulated, as a result of the many stages of our evolution, is an integral part of being human. We're all born with a set of basic animal instincts and drives adapted to the primitive world in which nearly all of our evolution occurred. We can improve our intellectual ability to deal with our basic animal nature, but we can't change the fact that it is an inherent aspect of being human. It would take generations of carefully controlled breeding, to accomplish even the most modest intentional change in the core aspects of human nature.

Society functions to the extent we've learned to adjust, accommodate, redirect, and control those aspects of the mixed bag of human nature, that don't map well onto the artificial world we've built for ourselves. Mankind's inherent difficulties with power were once well understood. America's Founding Fathers drew on a variety of resources, as they struggled to assemble a system of checks and balances, that could defuse and accommodate the more counterproductive aspects of human nature. The system they created was robust enough to allow mankind, with all his flaws, to cope with the rapidly expanding complexity and personal power, that the industrial revolution has since pumped into the equation.

But in some ways we've succeeded too well. We've managed to mask and mitigate our more obvious "uncivilized" aspects so effectively, that those who have only experienced the illusion of civilization, now try to frame their understanding of themselves entirely within the context of who we want to believe we have become.

Shielded from exposure to humanity's more primitive aspects, by loving parents wanting only the best for their offspring, each generation has sought to understand themselves within the context of the world their parents created for them. Reflecting the natural desire of parents to see only the positive aspects of their children, society has progressively moved from accommodation to denial of many aspects of human nature.

Only when we're willing to recognize who we are, can we become who we want to be. We create the source of our own problems when we attempt to deny those aspects of human nature we find inconvenient or distasteful. Denial, even when resulting from the best of intentions, is all too often the handmaiden of disaster.

Technology and evolving social structures continue to enhance both the opportunities, and costs, of abuse. Over two centuries ago, America's Founding Fathers recognized that understanding man's paradoxical relationships with purpose and power held the key to structuring a free society where life could continue to be worth living. Modern man seems determined to abandon his understanding of himself, even as his need for understanding increases.