THE SELF-REINFORCING NATURE OF SOCIAL HIERARCHY: ORIGINS AND CONSEQUENCES OF POWER ..

[nihilistcat]

In fairness, these observations on my part are no less anecdotal than Nietzsche's observations, but they do at least attempt to get at the origins of power, whereas Nietzsche seems to accept our lust for power as a foregone conclusion, and in an almost religious fashion, proclaims it as an innate feature of human nature with no further exploration or insight or study (which IMO is pretty stunning for a thinker who get's so much fanfare in philosophical circles).

Did you honestly think everybody would take your link at face value without looking? The content of the linked paper has very little to do with the point you're making.

Nietzsche has the entire experiment of recorded human history to make conclusions regarding lust for power. What better experiment do you have to conclude differently? Certainly not that paper you linked. Those management academicians certainly haven't conducted any experiments or study other than referencing others' work. What was your criticism of Nietzsche again?

Here's the CV of one of the authors of the study you linked to:
http://wagner.nyu.edu/files/faculty/cv/j...e-cv_2.pdf

I want to know what you find in this that is superior to Nietzsche. Joe Magee has no practical experience, none. Since graduating he has worked in NYU's graduate school of public service. Graduate school of public service. Graduate school of public service. Graduate school of public service. Let this sink in a moment. Here you have a person that has never held a non-academic position in his life teaching other inexperienced people what it is to allocate taxes (public resources) for the sake of a cushy elected public office (public service). A fucking graduate degree!!!!

There's so much wrong with this; I'll just stop for now.

The paper was to simply provide one resource to facilitate a discussion of power theory (and I think Magee does an okay job, but unfortunately the best work on this topic isn't freely available, so I didn't have the luxury of cherry picking from the best scholars). I raised Nietzsches' views because he is perhaps the most prominent philosopher to grapple with the nature of power.

I've read plenty of Nietzsche, in most cases I love his work (and especially his skill as a writer), and I don't even dispute his contention that men are driven by power lust. However, Nietzsche treats power as a basal instinct, whereas in my view, power lust is likely caused by other deeper factors.

What I'm interested in is exploring those deeper factors. But it is also interesting that you chose to discuss via ad hominen (and that seems to be the posture of the only other poster in this thread as well). Is this threatening a deeply held belief on your part? Would it shatter your worldview to discover that Nietzsche wasn't right about everything or didn't penetrate deep enough on every issue?

With all due respect ... I think that's a pretty shitty way to have a conversation?