The British historian Lord Acton said: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
This sentence raises two questions. The first, a factual question: Do people with extraordinary power tend to abandon moral values and use their power corruptly?
The second, a philosophical question: If we assume that people with such power do use it in a way that contradicts accepted moral values, is it because they have been "corrupted" – or have they rather been "liberated"? Do the moral values that most people espouse really stem from a desire for good and justice – or are they merely an expression of human weakness and dependence on others, and therefore, given power, one no longer needs them, and understands that they were merely an illusion? Perhaps detachment from the shackles of morality is actually a kind of maturation or disillusionment?
Plato already addresses the first question in his book The Republic, where he tells of the shepherd Gyges, who found a magic ring that makes him invisible (sound familiar from somewhere?..). Gyges, who until then was an innocent and upright man, uses the ring to kill the king and marry his wife. The message is that once you can be invisible and do whatever you want without fear – you will indeed do it.
What would really happen if people had the power to harm whoever they wanted, without any risk to themselves, without fear of being caught? I once heard from a psychology lecturer that, according to some psychologists, every time someone bothers you – you automatically feel a desire to kill them. Even if it's a trivial disturbance, like someone blocking the corridor for a moment, or making an annoying comment – the urge to kill arises in you. But we are accustomed from childhood to suppress and repress this urge immediately, and therefore we do not even feel it, except for a small moment of anger. But what if we had the ability? Would we really kill everyone who bothers us?
In one of the episodes of "The Twilight Zone", there is a story about a boy who discovered a shadow man living under his bed. In exchange for permission to live there, the shadow man promises to obey the boy, and go and kill anyone he commands him to. The nerdy boy uses his new power to take revenge on all the children who bothered him, or annoyed him, or he simply didn't like. Until one day the shadow man comes and attacks him himself; when the boy protests in panic against the violation of the agreement, the attacker replies that he is actually a shadow man who lives with another child...
Elsewhere (in the book Night Horrors: Grim Fears) I read about the threatening figure "Skin and Bones", which can be summoned by writing his name backwards on the mirror, if a person has a burning desire for hatred and revenge towards someone. "Skin and Bones" will appear next to the summoner's bed a few nights later, and demand from him: "Give me a name!". The summoner tells him the name of a person, and "Skin and Bones" will come to that person and kidnap him to his obscure kingdom, from which he will not return alive. (By the way, just for your information – "Skin and Bones" does not have a name of his own, and what he is actually asking for is to be given a name – to be called by his own name. If the summoner gives him a unique name, that no one in the world has, "Skin and Bones" will disappear completely and will not appear again. Just in case...)
In the same place, they raise the question, what if this knowledge about summoning "Skin and Bones" was distributed on the Internet, for example, and everyone could summon him at will to eliminate anyone who comes to mind. What would humanity look like like that? What would social life look like, when everyone knows that everyone else has the power to eliminate him easily, without his knowledge? Presumably the paranoia would rage, and anyone who suspected that the other was a little annoyed with him, would certainly rush to summon "Skin and Bones" himself and send him against him, before he gets ahead of him... Definitely an interesting idea to think about.
It seems, therefore, that whoever has absolute power will indeed tend to use it, and pay less attention to the rules of morality (if at all). The interesting question is, is it really a "corruption"? Are the rules of morality really true and binding, and whoever does not obey them is corrupt – or are the rules of morality merely a product of fear and weakness, and whoever has power is not really supposed to take them into account? Perhaps absolute power does not "corrupt" but "elevates", in the sense of "things you see from here you don't see from there"?
There were philosophers who saw morality as something that stems from weakness. Thomas Hobbes claimed that in the natural state every person is completely egoistic, and the only reason why people refrain from harming others is because they know that it will not pay off for them – because then others will harm them back. If there was no such fear, for example if the person in question is strong in a way that does not allow others to harm him, there would be nothing preventing him from harming others. We do indeed see this in dictators and tyrants of all kinds, who almost always behave in a cruel and murderous manner, and eliminate people and even entire populations without batting an eyelid – simply because they can.
Similarly, Nietzsche wrote that morality is an invention of the slaves, who, because they suffered under the abuse of the masters – invented ideas as if it were bad to be strong, conquering and violent, and sanctified these ideas in the name of "morality". But all that stands behind this noble morality is nothing but the interests of those slaves. If they were the all-powerful masters, they would very quickly abandon these baseless ideas.
An illustration of the idea is found in the book "The Power" (1956) by Frank Robinson, whose hero Tanner tries to discover the identity of a person with superpowers, who eliminates anyone who might expose him. In the end (spoiler alert!) Tanner discovers that he himself has these powers, which allow him to control other human beings, and as soon as he discovers this he "sheds his humanity, like a snake shedding its skin", and the thought crosses his mind that it would certainly be very amusing to be God. That is, it turns out that all his "moral" struggle against the superior man, stemmed only from his weakness and fear, not from a real belief in morality.
To anyone who is shocked by this thought, I would be happy to hear how he justifies the human treatment of animals. Most people have no problem with killing animals, eating them, conducting experiments on them, and so on. True, there is much more compassion and sensitivity today, animal welfare organizations, vegetarians, etc. But usually even the most devoted of them, treat harming animals as something much less serious than harming human beings. It is difficult to find someone who would refrain from spraying ants, or crushing a fly that bothers him. Does this attitude stem from the fact that there is indeed no moral problem in such harm to animals – or simply from the fact that it can be done without fear of reaction? And perhaps this reality is what causes people not to feel any moral problem on the subject at all?
Someone who crushes a fly just because it bothers him, would he not crush a human being who bothers him to the same extent – if he could do it just as easily and without being punished? Notice how people lash out at each other on the Internet, in comments, etc., behind a screen of anonymity. If they could erase the person who annoys them (or at least destroy his computer from afar), as easily as they write an angry comment – would they really refrain from it? [Although one could argue that animals are a much lower creature than humans, and we certainly don't react to the murder of a human like we do to the "murder" of an animal whivch we don't even consider murder].
The impression is that not only do people with power tend to use it without regard to morality, but that morality itself is at least influenced by the amount of power in the hands of the person, and by the possibility that he can be harmed in return. When it comes to helpless creatures like animals, the moral sense is aroused for their benefit in a very loose way – among other things, probably, due to their inability to harm human beings in return. And if human beings could harm each other without fear of reaction, it is very possible that they would not see any moral problem in it. The things are of course not unequivocal, and there is much to say on the subject, but it is worth taking these examples as food for thought.
In conclusion, I will mention one of the episodes in the Smurfs, in which the Smurfs discovered the magic word "Kaplawi!", that if you say it and point at something – it disappears immediately. The Smurfs began to spontaneously eliminate any object that stood in their way, encountered it, annoyed them, etc., without thinking too much. The next stage was inevitable – when Clumsy Smurf annoyed Grouchy Smurf, Grouchy Smurf pointed at him and eliminated him with the word. Although he was immediately very shocked by the results of the act, and in the end the Smurfs found a way to cancel the magic word and bring Clumsy Smurf back. In any case, it turns out that power is the kind of thing that is not worth giving to Smurfs – and probably not to people either...