Nipate
Forum => Kenya Discussion => Topic started by: vooke on September 06, 2021, 12:46:25 PM
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I was one of seven professors who facilitated a leadership training in my university here in Georgia for local government chairmen from a major Nigerian southwestern state.
In the course of the training, I adverted to a January 13, 2018 column I wrote about how power literally damages the brains of people who wield it and causes them to be dissociated from reality.
A few of the chairmen at the training initially said they “rejected” what I said “in Jesus’ name.”But the more I expounded the research on the psychology of power, the less resistant they became.
In the light of the interest it excited among these local power wielders, I thought I’d share a revised version of the column for the benefit of other people in power.
Almost everyone I know wonders why people in power change radically; why they become so utterly disconnected...
from reality that they suddenly become completely unrecognisable to people who knew them before they got to power; why they get puffed-up, susceptible to flattery, and intolerant of even the mildest, best-intentioned censure; why they appear possessed by inexplicably malignant...
forces; and why they are notoriously insensitive and self-absorbed.
Everyone who has ever had a friend in a position of power, especially political power, can attest to the accuracy of the age-old truism that a friend in power is a lost friend.
Of course, there are exceptions, but it is precisely the fact of the existence of exceptions that makes this reality poignant. As the saying goes, “the exception proves the rule.”
Abraham Lincoln once said, “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” Look at all the power brokers in Nigeria—from the president to your ward councilor—and you’ll discover that there is a vast disconnect between who they were
before they got to power and who they are now.
Also look at previously arrogant, narcissistic, power-drunk prigs who have been kicked out of the orbit of power for any number of reasons. You’ll discover that they are suddenly normal again.
They share our pains, make pious noises, condemn abuse of power, and identify with popular causes. The legendary amnesia of Nigerians causes the past misdeeds of these previous monsters of power to be explained away, lessened, forgiven, and ultimately forgotten.
But when they get back to power again, they become the same insensitive beasts of power that they once were.
So what's it about power that makes people such obtuse, self-centred snobs? It turns out that psychologists have been grappling with this puzzle for years and have a clue....
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1433844247329918978.html
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Is it only politics; or even jobs or big business ; or success in life; turn people from being humble normal human beings; into narcissistic power hungry ambitious greedy fools - and mostly people without intellectual or character depth.
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Is it only politics; or even jobs or big business ; or success in life; turn people from being humble normal human beings; into narcissistic power hungry ambitious greedy fools - and mostly people without intellectual or character depth.
You can say that but see politics are premised on serving the mass. That's why this change is catastrophic