The Philosophy of Powerlust

[Mister A]

On a recent appearance on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, actor Sean Penn lapsed into his Jeff Spicoli role when he defended fellow scumbag Hugo Chavez:

"Every day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it! And accept it. And this is mainstream media, who should – truly, there should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies."

Yep. Imprison those who would dare call an elected leader a dictator. No contradiction of principles there.

The disturbing part is: if you came up to Penn and calmly explained to him that imprisoning reporters for not validating his perspective is actually dictatorial, he would have no idea what you are talking about. Helpless and agitated in the face of logic, his default response would be snarling insults and histrionics (probably with vague references to Fox News and the “military industrial complex”) and after you back down in disgust and confusion, then in Penn's mind, the matter is settled and he is in the right. It makes no difference if he wins the debate with syllogisms or invective; because there is no objective reality to him, only the beliefs of people. Penn is really just a product of his time.

When most of us think of the word ‘dictatorship’, we associate the word with specific individuals in history and current events. History doesn’t dwell on the legions of enforcers, enablers, followers and all the anonymous collaborators who enthusiastically act out the whims of an otherwise impotent thug. At best, they are portrayed as hoodwinked dupes, magically hypnotized by the dictator to act against their nature. What’s left unexamined is the psycho-epistemological paradigm that fuels these lost souls, turning them into mindless Powerlusters.

Lets get one thing straight first: it is a fatal misconception that power-lust is a synonym for ambition. Ambition is a persistent desire towards achievement and personal growth. The concept is neutral in the moral sense. Powerlust is the actively malignant drive to subdue the minds of others under the belief that doing so would grant control over reality itself.

Powerlust is also not a synonym for narcissism. It is self-evident that all narcissists are Powerlusters but not all Powerlusters are narcissists. The distinction is that the primary subject of a narcissist’s fantasies and evasions are his own self-image which he seeks to inflate beyond proportion. A Powerluster can be personally down-to-earth and sensitive to the needs of his friends but his illness manifests in other areas, usually those outside the boundaries of his personal life. If you ever knew a person who seemed charming and intelligent during casual conversation but became obnoxious and irrational whenever the subject turned to politics or philosophy that is an example of a Powerluster. The primary trait is a willful rejection of reality coupled with counter-aggression as the default response to any intellectual challenge regardless of substance (note: counter-aggression is not to be confused with frustration or outrage; natural reactions to perceived idiocy or offense respectively).

The chronic Powerluster is a broken creature who long ago abandoned intellectual autonomy for the approval of others. Faced with the choice of trusting his own judgment or being judged by a random passerby, the Powerluster destroyed his self-esteem for the sake of being esteemed. At some point further down his childhood, simply fishing for approval is not enough to satisfy the little shit; he seeks to seize approval by aggressively manipulating anyone around him. Lying, intimidating, taunting, seducing, flattering -any tactic will do. The more the Powerluster continues and gets away with his manipulations, the deeper he entrenches his dependence and the deeper he supresses his better judgment. Over time, the fantasy he constructs in the minds of his victims takes priority over observable reality -he effectively deceives himself with his own cons. By implication, he develops a deeply-seated and automatized fear of reality -he loses the ability to function in it while still being technically sane. Alienated from an objective reality to serve as the basis of healthy associations, the Powerluster regards all humans not as intelligent beings to be reasoned with but as animals that have to be tamed (“for the common good”).

To the Powerluster, the universe is an unintelligible, formless void through which we float blind and aimless. Metaphysical concepts like consistency, causality, logic, etc. have no relevance in this void since there is nothing solid they can be anchored to. Instead, there are only people, desperately trying to shape the plastic material of the void with the mystic power of words, images and emotion. This ‘plastic material’ is actually the minds of others and the 'mystic power’ that the Powerluster employs are fraud and force.

Fraud is the presentation of information that contradicts with reality; the intent is to misdirect the mind. Force overpowers people with the threat of violence or humiliation to make them act in conflict with the mind. Whichever strategy the Powerluster employs, the mind is always the bitter enemy that threatens to topple the house of cards that passes for his endopsychic structure.

There are three things that invoke mortal terror in the heart of the Powerluster: the words ‘why’, ‘what for’ and ‘how’ (in regards to abstract thought rather than physical objects). No, he does not fear mouthing those words or responding to them with vague, canned bromides. He fears the prospect of having to seriously answer them! 'Why’ is a request to consult the past for validation. 'What for’ is meant to conceptualize the future for validation. 'How’ is the foundation on which we interact with reality to fulfill our desires. If pressed to be sincere, the Powerluster would answer the first two with “Because I feel like it!” and the third with “Somehow!” (or he would point a gun at your face). Of course, these are not really answers but the dismissive grunts of a neanderthal who can only perceive the present in the context of his arbitrary whims. The fear comes from having to glimpse into the Nietszchean Abyss (more like a mud puddle actually) that the Powerluster has allowed his mind to become.

The Powerluster’s epistemological ideal that he desires to achieve is the mind of an animal. Nature provides an animal with instinct; an automatic, unerring knowledge of the actions needed for its survival. An animal never concerns itself with ethics, philosophy or any other form of conceptual discipline (i.e. it never asks ”why”, ”what for” or ”how”). It never dwells on the past or speculates on the future. It never sets goals for itself or belly-aches over missed opportunities and failures. It has no concept of responsibility and by implication, no concept of guilt. In essence, an animal is intrinsically innocent -but that does not imply that man is intrinsically guilty.

Lacking instinct to provide automatic knowledge, man’s survival is reliant on his capacity for reason; the faculty that identifies and integrates the facts of reality as they are detected by his senses. Unlike instinct, the practice of reason is not reflexive or infallible and it is not independent of an objective reality (i. e. one learns nothing of practical value by trying to commune with a supernatural dimension through the use of prayer or drugs as a medium). It is understandable why one would prefer to evade the risk of error that presuppose reason but humans do not have the luxury of becoming animals; whenever they try, they become monsters instead.

By dominating others and forcing or bilking their unearned consent, the Powerluster acquires the automatic epistemological validation that reality and his human mind deny him. As long as he is surrounded by fellow true believers who repeat his bromides and biases, the Powerluster feels safe to repress the chronic fear and guilt that are the natural result of voluntarily shutting down his own survival mechanism. He can fool himself into believing that he is an all-knowing, universally-competent, morally-impeccable authority who channels raw genius through his whims and emotional outbursts.

People tend to reserve their bitterest hatred towards those who withhold something of great value from them like respect, money, love, etc. Keeping that in mind, it becomes easy to understand the visceral antipathy and rage experienced by the Powerluster when someone looks him in the eye and says, “Sir, that is just wrong.” Such a statement (or often, just the passive existence of such a person) has the equivalent impact of a sledgehammer swung into the chest except the damage is not physical but epistemological. What is damaged is not the body or even the Powerluster’s particular beliefs (he actually has none) but rather his protection against reality which he has conditioned himself to regard as a mortal hazard. With this protection compromised, all the fear and guilt that he keeps repressed and festering erupts through the surface in a spectacular and unsightly meltdown.

The poor bastard has no real defense against this. Saying “No, you’re wrong” does not have any satisfying kick without the mental effort to back it up. The only recourse is to utterly destroy the offender through brute force to prevent further mental injury. A Powerluster living in a society that respects individual rights has an arsenal thankfully limited to insults and petty mischief. At best, he can “network” with his own kind or his dominated cronies to gang up on offenders but without the resources of a functioning mind, the tactics of a gang of Powerlusters are just as disorganized, bull-headed and self-defeating as those of a solitary Powerluster; even with superior numbers, intimidation is finite in efficacy. But what happens when the restraints of a rights-honoring society are absent? Here we can begin to isolate the secret that draws the Penns to the Chavezs.

To put it bluntly, the Powerluster admires dictators as if they were rock stars; the more ruthless and amoral, the greater the admiration. He has no problem whatsoever with bending knee to a tyrant. Having already jettisoned his self-respect early in life, he experiences no degradation from his kow-towing. On the contrary, nothing else makes him feel more empowered. In the dictator, the Powerluster sees an epistemological bodyguard; a champion who can protect the Powerluster’s fragile mental structure from reality better than his manipulations ever could.

There are two essentials that a Powerluster looks for in a dictator: he must have disregard for individual rights (as opposed to the “collective” rights of arbitrarily favored groups which negates the concepts of responsibility and self) and be intellectually non-demanding; this means he should promote no principles that are even remotely related to personal integrity and instead demand blind faith to a collective (state, race, class, etc.) or a supernatural entity.

With the dictator setting up ironclad intellectual dominance over society, the Powerluster no longer needs to rely on petty bullying to shout down free thinkers; a tip to the local commissar can make them disappear forever, allowing him to blank out their existence and continue his delusions of automatic omniscience in peace. The economic devastation that is common to all rights-denying shitholes is no cause for concern but actually welcome; it’s easier to control menial laborers on the verge of starvation than educated professionals with disposable income. Since indifference to reason implies indifference to life, the Powerluster feels no outrage when the regime takes increasingly lethal measures to suppress public discontent; if humans are unthinking animals, then fear is the only practical way to deal with them when they get stubborn. The Powlerluster will tolerate the sight of corpses piling in the streets and blood flowing through the gutters before he allows a syllogism to violate the sanctity of his delusional consciousness.

A reliably repeating pattern that can be observed in history is that it takes some monumental disaster to discredit bad philosophy. Europe endured centuries of intellectual stagnation before religious mysticism was discarded (although it’s enjoying a comeback elsewhere). The wars of the 20th century exposed collectivism as a genocidal fraud. Now with the Information Age reaching its peak, blatantly totalitarian and eliminationist attitudes are commonplace in the intellectual discourse of a constitutional republic. This is perhaps appropriate since the accessibility of information must be extremely straining for those inclined to be Powerlusters; it is desperation that has dragged this sickness out of the shadows and into the light of day for all to behold and identify.

Tensions can only escalate from this point onward but the key to intellectually survive the next inevitable disaster is the recognition of the Powerluster's abject impotence. Fiction and literature tend to idealize the Powerluster as a Machiavellian mastermind with limitless resources and ability devoted to realizing his ambition. The real Powerluster is actually an ignorant mediocrity whose power comes second-hand from those willing to give him the benefit of a doubt and what drives him is an antithesis of ambition that is much closer to the nihilistic pessimism of a suicide bomber. Trust your rational judgment or you will be baited into his blast radius.

[Mindy]

A comment:

The "controlling" personality, which is your "powerluster," I believe, is not aiming chiefly to get others' approval, but rather their submission. Their "following" him, or being intimidated by him gives the appearance of his being influential, powerful. Control of others, even ones he despises, is proof, to him, of his efficacy, his reality, his manhood.

The fact is, it proves only the greater foolishness, the pathetic inadequacy of those others, whom he controls. This sort must, then, always aim at controlling more genuine, fully functioning individuals, to keep his self-delusion alive. The reality of whom he can succeed at controlling is constantly manifest, though, and he is haunted by it. The very thing he spends himself on achieving, he must also avoid. A dog chasing his tail, getting only mouthfuls of hair.

-- Mindy

[Mister A]

The "controlling" personality, which is your "powerluster," I believe, is not aiming chiefly to get others' approval, but rather their submission.

Approval is the initial (and later, subtextual) motivation but after the powerluster feels adequately practiced in his manipulation abilities, the passive need for acceptance twists into an aggressive, uncompromising demand for what was previously withheld.

[Mindy]

Approval is the initial (and later, subtextual) motivation but after the powerluster feels adequately practiced in his manipulation abilities, the passive need for acceptance twists into an aggressive, uncompromising demand for what was previously withheld.

I'm curious what your source is on saying approval is the primary motive, could you explain?

-- Mindy

[Mister A]

I'm curious what your source is on saying approval is the primary motive, could you explain?

-- Mindy

The Comprachicos

http://xanthippaschamberpot.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/ayn-rand-the-comprachicos.pdf

[kainscalia]

Well, maybe Sean Penn is just getting ready to go into his new role:

[Mindy]

The Comprachicos

http://xanthippaschamberpot.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/ayn-rand-the-comprachicos.pdf

The link you gave is about 50 pages long. I'm familiar with The Comprachicos, but haven't read it in the past many years. I know Montessori theory pretty well, and I know in horrific detail what goes on in our schools.

I don't see what grounds you find in all of this to say power-lust is first and fore-most a strategy for gaining approval. You'll have to be more specific, please.

-- Mindy

[Mister A]

The link you gave is about 50 pages long. I'm familiar with The Comprachicos, but haven't read it in the past many years. I know Montessori theory pretty well, and I know in horrific detail what goes on in our schools.

I don't see what grounds you find in all of this to say power-lust is first and fore-most a strategy for gaining approval. You'll have to be more specific, please.

-- Mindy

I already answered your question and provided you a source. I'm not going to spoon-feed you further.

[JayR]

This reminds me of Ellsworth Toohey, especially the line where his teacher is discussing "what shall profit a man..." from the bible, and he replies "Than in order to be truly wealthy, a man should collect souls?"

Interesting essay, although your apparent reluctance to discuss any of it in detail with your readers is also fascinating.

j..

Edited July 21, 2010 by JayR

[Mister A]

This reminds me of Ellsworth Toohey, especially the line where his teacher is discussing "what shall profit a man..." from the bible, and he replies "Than in order to be truly wealthy, a man should collect souls?"

Interesting essay, although your apparent reluctance to discuss any of it in detail with your readers is also fascinating.

j..

I just don't take kindly to repeat questions and complaints that my sources have too many pages.

[Mindy]

I just don't take kindly to repeat questions and complaints that my sources have too many pages.

You are being asked--nicely--to be specific. I could have called you out on suggesting that the basis for your single assertion was a whole 50 pages. If you mean that somewhere in that 50 pages, the answer lies, then you are being uncooperative and evasive.

Why do you claim that powerlusters are principally after approval? Can you answer this or not?

-- Mindy

[Mister A]

You are being asked--nicely--to be specific. I could have called you out on suggesting that the basis for your single assertion was a whole 50 pages. If you mean that somewhere in that 50 pages, the answer lies, then you are being uncooperative and evasive.

Why do you claim that powerlusters are principally after approval? Can you answer this or not?

-- Mindy

It seems you confused my meaning of approval with the desire to fit in to a social clique; it's much deeper than that though it may superficially take that form. When I say a powerluster seeks approval, he does so on the metaphysical level i.e. he outsources the functions of his conscious mind to others because his formative experiences conditioned him to have no faith in it. Depending on temperament, the epistemelogical dependancy becomes abusive as the powerluster dehumanizes his suppliers of validation and expects them to provide validation promptly, unconditionally and with no regard to dignity and life; usually, this corruption happens when a potential powerluster is placed in a position of authority or he discovers to have some above-average talent in influencing others. There is a subtext of mortal fear in this antagonism; the powerluster instinctively senses that insubordination could lead to erasure of his own identity.

Existentially, our identities are constructed from our response to the presence of the Other (other people in general) and how the Other responds to us. The dynamic of the powerluster is a volatile and maladaptive example.

Edited July 21, 2010 by Mister A