“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by authority,” (Lord Acton)
If giving even the best of people power will eventually corrupt them, as the last two novels have argued, why do we need authority at all? Why a government? Why leaders in the Church? Why can’t everyone just be a free agent entirely in charge of himself or herself?
5 Comments
Fernando
5/6/2024 11:40:17 am
We need authority to make sure not everyone goes and do whatever they want. There are some people that are not the brightest and without authority there is no one to stop them. We need a government to make the laws/rules that people need to follow. There is a need for leaders in church for people to pay attention to and when people need confession or need to be saved/ put towards the way of god they have someone to go to. If everyone was a free agent this world would be complete chaos the world would not be a place where people could live in, in the first couple days.
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Nathaniel Haan
5/7/2024 09:22:35 am
The reason that there are leaders and everyone isn't just free to do whatever they want is that that would be chaos. People can not rule themselves or they would make just selfish decisions almost all of the time. If everyone in the world is given absolute power over their own life then won't they become corrupted as well, so why have everyone become corrupt. Leaders are important because all though they can be corrupt they also make the decisions that no one else wants to make or can make.
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Peter
5/8/2024 04:03:40 pm
We need authority and government to make decisions and to hold people accountable for bad things they do. If no one is there to make decisions and hold people together people don't prosper. People work better together in groups because we were made to have strengths and weaknesses and where we have weaknesses people can fill in. Authority should help people stay together and organized. Leaders are also often only made for the people, to serve communities provide jobs, roads, public bathrooms, schools etc.
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William LF
5/8/2024 05:43:07 pm
we need leaders because not everyone has common sense. if we didn't have leaders it would be nearly impossible to work together/form community's. although a world without leaders sounds nice, it's too idealistic. if we didn't have leaders, we would all be equal, but communism hasn't worked out yet. it always seems to end in a disaster when the plan to fix the hierarchy is to get rid of the hierarchy all together.
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Elijah Trostel
5/9/2024 06:43:41 am
Lord Acton is correct. Power will corrupt anyone to some measure, due to its alluring nature and the sense of control it gives you. It was that same feeling in the Garden of Eden that tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. God has infinite power, and he is perfect and incorruptible. God's limitless power reflects back on how righteous and holy he is, because he is the only one who can be entrusted with much power. However, humans, as a whole, need leadership. The book of Judges states what happened in Israel when every man was his own king. It wasn't good, to say the least. All people should have leaders, and those leaders, ESPECIALLY those in the church, should always look to God, the perfect example, to lead them.
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Non-Western LiteratureGuidelinesThe whole purpose of this assignment - whether you're reacting to an idea, sharing your own story, or analyzing the reading - is to discuss the ultimate issues of life. With that in mind, make sure that you: Archives
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