by Jonathan Young

Created on: May 22, 2008

First, a little background on the topic at hand. Homo sapiens concern themselves with power on an instinctive level: our evolutionary predecessors learned that the strongest survive to successfully pass on their genes, so seeking power is one of those things we do to pass the time, even if survival and procreation are relatively easy for most of us.

So who stands at the top of our present-day chimpanzee tribes, thumping his chest and asserting his evolutionary fitness? Arguably, the President of the United States wields the most power, in terms of his command of various military forces and a massive nuclear arsenal that could destroy the entire world. But let's notice that all U.S. presidents are routinely lampooned by comedians and thereby brought down to earth. Presidents can also be assassinated or impeached, so it's not as if they possess absolute power.

So what about Presidents and CEOs of major corporations? As supported by recent events on Wall Street, CEOs can be lampooned by comedians, fired from various companies, and hobbled in their career aspirations. Presidents and CEOs are really only as powerful as they are competent and lucky, meaning their godlike powers are strictly limited to human endeavors.

Dictators? Dictators can only avoid assassination and revolution if they work hard to either serve or oppress their people. Most of them are intensely paranoid, given their tendency to create political enemies for themselves, and therefore are not especially happy. It must take a lot of work to be a dictator, to serve the idea of power in the absence of true power, and most people would not define true power as being enslaved to the idea of power. Dictators are, almost without exception, trapped in a mindset of intense paranoia, and required to spend their careers spreading propaganda in the absence of true political accomplishments. This is not true power.

The Dalai Lama? The Pope? Muslim leadership? Religious figures can sometimes number their followers in the billions, so it might make sense to describe them as occupying some of the most powerful positions. Although they are often lampooned, they are invariably defended by the faithful. And although they are sometimes kicked out of their religion or assassinated, they are not ostracized or targeted nearly as frequently as politicians. But then again, all religious leaders hold themselves to standards that most people (being hedonists) would not want to accept. The religious are limited by religious precedent

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