Hubris: the intoxication of power

Power is a drug. Politicians and their courtesans are addicts. Hubris and failure follow. Clinging to humility could make a big difference.

Power seems always to beget hubris before nemesis and failure.

“Always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.” – Orwell, 1984

Orwell’s warning captures something profound: power is intoxicating. The consequences are not to be underestimated: they may be seen all around.

A wise man once told me during a period when a Prime Minister refused to go as they then obviously ought to have done, “Power is a drug. Being an MP is the soft stuff. By the time someone is Prime Minister, they are mainlining crack cocaine. That’s why they can’t give it up.”

He was right. It is a phenomenon which ought to be appreciated by anyone seeking to understand the world in which we live, to influence the course of events or to stand for election. Special advisers and other political operators ought to guard against drunkenness on power and so too must officials: hubris follows behind and after that, nemesis.

It is a very old and enduring story.

The psychology of rising power

I have seen people I thought I knew as cautious and kind evolve into arrogant oppressors, reckless of the justice of their strident condemnation and contemptuous of contrary advice. With a wearisome consistency, I have seen courtesans arise around political figures enjoying success, becoming incapable of entertaining the possibility that their principal might hold an opinion susceptible to improvement, rejecting the notion that anyone else might have an alternative yet supportive perspective. Every No. 10 operation falls into outrageous arrogance and a wicked tendency to brief against anyone who questions their absolute right to correctness. Even when they have been daft.