How important is power in one’s life? Surely you need power to do the basic things in order to live, but is that enough power? According to a power-luster, the answer is “no.” A power-luster is a person who seeks power for its own sake. More power in itself seems like a solid strategy for existing. However, fixating on just power actually creates derangement and instability in one’s own mind. Since the purpose of life is to live itself, focusing on power creates a target that ultimately falls outside the proper purview of life. It would be similar to focusing on the accumulation and consumption of tuna melts (or anything other than life) for its own sake. Eating a tuna melt in and of itself doesn’t fall outside proper living, but, if your purpose in life was to simply eat tuna melts, your life would become imbalanced and distorted (ultimately making an unhappy existence). Power-lusters are ultimately dangerous people with a fixation that distorts them into enveloping other people into their unhealthy world.
Power lust creates a distortion of consciousness. Since power is the primary thing which one is concerned with, the person becomes fixated on it. Without the tempering context of life itself, the person becomes obsessed with any fluctuation or tinge in power. The person expects to have dominance over the world and, when frustrated with lack of dominance, becomes angry and hateful. As power becomes one’s primary goal, one’s consciousness adjusts itself to look for power itself, so the power-luster becomes obsessed with minutiae and any slight. Without taking life itself into account, the power-luster has no clear direction to what he should focus on except the power moments themselves. All he wants is more power and is impressed by and strives to be those with the most power.
Since the power-luster seeks power, he must seek that with the most power, which is other people. The power-luster is ultimately obsessed with other people, as they become his tool for dominance and his greatest threat. He goes through other people to avoid having to deal with material reality. In his mind, conquering other people is a proper short-cut for dealing with the nasty realities of the world. The power-luster doesn’t make his own food; he gets other people to do it for him. However, since people are more than automatons and have their own minds and spirits, the power-luster has to appeal to and/or destroy their interior worlds. This becomes an automatic habit to the power-luster, as natural as breathing. The power-luster gets to the point where he can merely sense disagreement with or separation from them, and he must take the appropriate action to corral his subjects of interest back into his fold.
Power-lust creates an inordinate fixation that betrays the purpose of life. Although power for its own sake may seem like a stable plan for existence, it actually creates a distortion in one’s mind and treatment of others. One becomes obsessed with power, and it takes away from one’s pursuit of happiness. Indeed, power-lust may simply be a reaction to one’s own deep feeling of inadequacy and fear. Power-lust is adopted in varying degrees among people, which may provide cover for the worst power-lusters, however mild it may be in most people.