Repose

Power

Power corrupts, they say, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  And yet a few minutes before I started writing this I had the thought: How do we know what absolute power, or absolute corruption, looks like?

Obviously we're looking at some kind of scale here, with a little bit of power/ corruption on one end and the absolute on the other (and if you'd have seen how many times I managed to misspell absolute just now you'd laugh) but the thing is, the thing that bugs me and prompted this little rant, is what is absolute power?

Power of life or death?  Pretty powerful I'd say, but unless that's taken to mean the power to give life that that which has died, a bit meaningless.  After all, you kill something, they're out of your control.  Attendant to that is the caveat that power over living things i.e. people is dependant on some kind of consciousness to acknowledge said power. 

Lets drop that line for a minute before I start thinking too big.  We'll get back to it, don't worry.  I just came up with a corker.

Alright, so corruption.  What's that?  Let us consult the good old internet dictionary for an answer.

From the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

 Main Entry: cor·rup·tion  
Pronunciation: k&-'r&p-sh&n
Function: noun
1 a : impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle : DEPRAVITY b : DECAY, DECOMPOSITION c : inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means (as bribery) d : a departure from the original or from what is pure or correct
2 archaic : an agency or influence that corrupts
3 chiefly dialect : pus

Obviously corruption can't exist in a moral or sociological void.  Power can.  So why are the two connected?

Actually, I can't really think of a real answer to that apart from real life.  Historically, and also in modern society, we have examples of those with a certain power using it to perform acts we consider unwholesome.  Obviously this is compared to what society considers the norm, the standard of good and responsible behaviour.

I'm not sure what I'm really getting at here, or if I'm just spouting crap to see how long people will read it before getting bored and buggering off to do something worthwhile (build a house, paint a self-portrait) but I think I'm aiming to prove that unless we can have a definite, solid, concrete, see it with your eyes and touch it with your hands example of what absolute power really is, we can never even come close to defining absolute corruption, or the absolutely corrupt.