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# Blood & Ink: Great Men
- URL: https://www.zenmedicine.co/61/
- Published: 2024-12-12T12:30:54.000Z
- Updated: 2025-02-09T15:58:17.000Z
- Description: dune wisdom / real virtue / answering the call
- Author: Eric Brown
- Tags: Blood x Ink

## There’s something important in this thread…

Plato is attributed with another banger that echoes this theme:

> *“Only those who do not seek power are qualified to hold it.”*

You can follow this thread back to the ancient Tao Te Ching:

> *"Superior virtue has no intention to be virtuous and thus is virtue. Inferior virtue cannot let go of virtuosity and thus is not virtue."*

I don’t believe the all-too-cliché’d line that ‘all power corrupts.’

I believe fiercely that positions of power and status hierarchies *attract corruptible and corrupted people* at *disproportionately high rates*.

Believing that all positions of power necessarily and inevitably corrupt an individual reflects your moral shortcoming more than any objective statement about the nature of reality (see ‘[Beliefs are Not Facts](https://www.zenmedicine.co/60/)’ from yesterday).

Power *amplifies*. Power is not but the ability to channel energy. Just like *money* amplifies.

- It can—and often does—amplify shadow tendencies.
- Knowing this, one must be cautious of the allure of power, but not strictly forbid it.
- Those who understand this and are guarded to it are those best equipped to hold it.

I am reflexively and habitually cautious of those who seek power, leadership, and authority over others.

I am unbelievably open to those who are *asked by the people to lead*, and who *answer the call that life is giving them*.

Answer the call,  
EB.