The greed for power
Why wouldn’t you stay in power if you could
I really don’t know what it is about power that most people love so much. I can only hypothesize that it's the lack thereof that scares people and compels them to want to stay in power for as long as they possibly can. I can’t really speak to having tremendous amounts of power because I’ve never had that, but I can speak to not having any power, what it looks like and how it feels.
Unless you are born into a royal family, I think everybody else can relate to what it's like to be powerless and have to rely on others for our survival. To be ignored by everybody, so you have to work hard to make a name for yourself. Once you get that recognition and wealth, you strive to never let it go and as long as you can, you’ll try to hang on to this recognition and fame. Everybody tries their best to stick to power, but unfortunately, circumstances change and force us to do otherwise; either the laws of nature kick us out, or the rules of society prevent our long reign, yet again it might just be the fact that we got tired of it all. At the very least, change is the only constant which means eventually, it's time to move on whether we like it or not.
The only things which tend to stay the same are the elements of our lives which have become so ubiquitous that we no longer even notice them anymore. These elements hold great power, and their strength resides in their ability not to get noticed. Once you have something to which you are subservient to and which has an ego you have to pander to, then eventually you’ll want some change.
Clinging to power
The main reason people cling to power is that they know what it's like to be powerless. For most people, this is not a choice. Eventually, when their time comes, they’ll have to leave, but politics is one of those spheres where a person gets to change the rules that govern him. Why wouldn’t you stay in power if you could? We tend to attribute the greed for power only to persons whom we deem “bad men” but even good men do tend to cling to power because they believe they have much more good to accomplish. This isn’t to equate good and bad men because there is a difference there, but it's to show how universal the greed of power is.
Its not hard to understand why people will be greedy for power, all you need to do is look at the alternative of that. On the one hand, you have countless perks, adulation, benefits and praises, countless people looking up to your every work and dedicating their energy to make sure your instructions come to life. Then on the other hand, you are just a forgotten individual that most people don’t even remember to check on, you slowly fade into irrelevance and the only other notable moment of your life will be your burial. The stark difference between how we treat people in power versus how we treat everybody else makes people want to cling to power as much as they possibly can.
Let me use a simpler example, you have two actors, the best actor of all time who maybe obtained that title after a couple of years. And another actor who has been in the industry for decades but never gained that title. On the one hand, you treat the best actor with all the adulation possible. Everywhere he goes, he gets recognized, so much love is shown to him, and he is always the center of attention. Meanwhile, the other actor, despite putting in much more work, gets ignored totally and relegated to the darkest corner of the restaurant. Now this best actor would want to remain the best forever, especially just seeing the treatment given to the other person, so in him will be bred the greed for power.
Conclusion
The greed for power isn’t something that strange or far-fetched, it's present in all our lives I believe, and it is just the rules we put in place. And also that nature has put in place which eventually keeps us in check. The way to avoid people clinging on to power for too long is by putting in place rules and ensuring that these persons don’t get to change them in one way or the other.
Thanks for reading ☺️
About the Creator
real Jema
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