“Power is the strongest drug we can feed on. Power over the self is strengthening. The need for power over others is an addiction that can’t be sated.” – Ruben Papian
There are all kinds of formulas, books, seminars, workshops, and gurus describing different paths to achieve what is commonly believed as success followed by happiness.
Some might even say that it should be the other way around, meaning a happy person is already successful since one’s ultimate goal is to achieve that happiness. However, as most people have experienced in their journey, these are easier said than done and perhaps that is why the majority feels unsuccessful and/or unhappy. It may not be that difficult to accept the fact that work is going to fill a large part of one’s life irrespective of whether one is an employee or self-employed or just managing one’s wealth helping the others.
The difficult part is to find out what one believes as “great work” or what she/he really loves to do in serving the world while sustaining the type of lifestyle prefers to be experienced. Certainly, one must continue looking until she/he finds it. Can one find it if she/he doesn’t know what he is looking for? If we don’t know what we are looking for then, will we be able to recognise it even if we saw it or experienced it?
Collective efforts
What this means is then one should have a good understanding about how she/he is going to contribute to our collective efforts of improving the conditions for all living beings on the planet, rather than destroying as much resources as possible and looking for another planet to move to and repeat the process.
It is certainly beneficial to the planet if one can gain such understanding at the earliest possible time of one’s life, certainly before one enters the workforce or at least during the early part of the work life.
Most of the humans spend the better part of their lives just attempting to meet core human needs. That means, most of what we do is motivated by one or more basic human needs. If most of our actions are motivated by similar needs, then why do we see various types of motivational factors and different types of actions in achieving these, nearly similar goals?
This can be due to different levels of awareness we bring to the relationship between our needs and our actions. Though education plays a major role in developing such awareness, other key components affecting the process could be cultural, religious, social, political, and economic too.
Informal education
Since the formal education process in the country is at a standstill at the moment it would be more productive to focus on informal education: learning from the environment and experience.
As Thomas Edison had supposedly responded to a question about thousands of unsuccessful attempts to make the light bulb by saying: “I didn’t fail. I have found thousands of ways not to make a light bulb; I only needed to find one way to make it work”.
Regardless of the outcome, each one of those attempts has contributed to the knowledge base for anyone to learn. One can learn from one’s own or someone else’s experience if one has the correct receptors open to receive that information and has the ability to process that information through one’s own compiler.
Just as one can learn to be an entrepreneur or a leader by studying the characteristics of successful entrepreneurs and leaders, one can accelerate such a learning process by learning what not to do along the way.
Since entrepreneurship and leadership are hot topics in formal education curricula around the world these days, there is no better time for Sri Lankans to try to learn about these topics from what they see and hear in their own living environment these days.
One may try to be a leader like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., or Nelson Mandela and not to be one like Hitler, Stalin, or Napoleon.
It would also help if we can learn, at least the basics, about how our brain processes information. Research done by Oxford University’s department of Politics and International Relations shows that power, especially absolute and unchecked power, is intoxicating even to extents that can lead one to making poor judgment, extreme narcissism, perverted behaviour, and gruesome cruelty.
The primary neurochemical involved in the reward system of the brain, be it from achieving a goal or exercising power, is dopamine, the same chemical transmitter responsible for producing a sense of pleasure.
Addictive
A summary of the results of similar studies goes on to say that power creates an addictive ‘high’ much the same way as drugs or alcohol does. Like addicts, most people in positions of power will seek to maintain the high they get from power, sometimes at all costs.
When withheld, it produces cravings that generate strong behavioural opposition to giving it up. Recommendations made through such studies specifically mention that, in cases where leaders possess absolute and unchecked power, changes in leadership and transitions to more consensus-based rule are unlikely to be smooth. Gradual withdrawal of absolute power is the only way to ensure that someone will be able to accept relinquishing it.
An interesting characteristic of dopamine is that the sense of pleasure it produces helps us to retain information and engage in reward driven learning. We experience such pleasures through achieving goals, consuming food we like or even exercising power over others, and it is the effects of dopamine that makes us crave for repetitions of such experiences.
Human life
Unfortunately, the same effects are created through drugs, alcohol, or gambling. History shows that leaders such as Hitler, Stalin, and Napoleon, all appeared incapable of empathy and of comprehending the value of human life.
According to predictions of behavioural studies, it is likely that power itself (rather than any specific behavioural aberration), may have been responsible for exaggerating certain behavioural traits over others.
Power can use the ready-made reward circuitries of the brain to produce extreme pleasure which can create emotional detachment that can lead to ruthlessness and obsession with achieving goals and conquests.
High levels of dopamine are even associated with a sense of personal destiny and preoccupation with religion or other cosmic powers. Former US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are thought to have believed that God wanted them to wage war against Iraq to combat evil.
Extremely high levels of dopamine in such powerful leaders can make them not only egocentric, but also paranoid. This certainly would not downplay the drastic influence the conflicting advice of their close associates may have had on the decisions that destroyed a whole country.
The writer has served in higher education sector as an academic over twenty years in the USA and fifteen years in Sri Lanka and he can be contacted at [email protected]