(This short entry was written several years ago, at the height of the neoconservative folly, that is, during the George W. Bush Administration, but its currency still holds today, and, I am afraid, may hold well into the future.)
The Arrogance of Power, as Senator Fulbright once put it, as the title of his memorable book, does not seem to go far enough in making the most compelling point, which Nietzsche has expressed with his usual brilliance: "Power makes stupid!" Had Washington politicians, but especially “America’s white-haired elders,” as I once called the thinking branch of this nation’s power elite, read more Nietzsche, they might, perhaps, have stumbled on this profound statement of his, which reaches beyond the simple Andersen’s child’s observable fact that the “Emperor has no clothes,” to exposing the reason why the Emperor is naked.
The sense of possessing superior power does make one stupid. The fall of the Dark Lord Voldemort in J. K. Rowling’s delightful and profoundly philosophical Harry Potter series, is splendidly explained by the very fact that, overconfident in his Dark Arts proficiency, the wizard treats everything else with utmost disdain, refusing to understand the seemingly “inferior” powers (which he himself does not possess), and, as it turns out, these are exactly the powers which are destined to defeat him!
I am far from calling anyone a "Dark Wizard", but the comparison with Voldemort is very proper. As a matter of fact, a far more benign character Sirius Black suffers from the same lethal shortcoming in his own attitude toward the House Elf Kreacher, and toward all other such "Untermensch," and he too has to pay the ultimate price for his folly. The arrogance of power is stupidity, as no one in modern world wields absolute power, and to denigrate and casually dismiss the combined, even if individually inferior, powers of others; to go against the elementary common sense contained in the principle of the Balance of Power, will prove again and again that there are no exceptions.
The Arrogance of Power, as Senator Fulbright once put it, as the title of his memorable book, does not seem to go far enough in making the most compelling point, which Nietzsche has expressed with his usual brilliance: "Power makes stupid!" Had Washington politicians, but especially “America’s white-haired elders,” as I once called the thinking branch of this nation’s power elite, read more Nietzsche, they might, perhaps, have stumbled on this profound statement of his, which reaches beyond the simple Andersen’s child’s observable fact that the “Emperor has no clothes,” to exposing the reason why the Emperor is naked.
The sense of possessing superior power does make one stupid. The fall of the Dark Lord Voldemort in J. K. Rowling’s delightful and profoundly philosophical Harry Potter series, is splendidly explained by the very fact that, overconfident in his Dark Arts proficiency, the wizard treats everything else with utmost disdain, refusing to understand the seemingly “inferior” powers (which he himself does not possess), and, as it turns out, these are exactly the powers which are destined to defeat him!
I am far from calling anyone a "Dark Wizard", but the comparison with Voldemort is very proper. As a matter of fact, a far more benign character Sirius Black suffers from the same lethal shortcoming in his own attitude toward the House Elf Kreacher, and toward all other such "Untermensch," and he too has to pay the ultimate price for his folly. The arrogance of power is stupidity, as no one in modern world wields absolute power, and to denigrate and casually dismiss the combined, even if individually inferior, powers of others; to go against the elementary common sense contained in the principle of the Balance of Power, will prove again and again that there are no exceptions.
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