Chapter 26z: Power Delusion and the Need for Mirrors

Some of the questions (and answers) that were looked at when making this chapter – and the relevance of ‘mirrors’ – which is also looked at in some other chapters (search mirrors at the bottom of the page)

1. Were “great leaders” deluded — or did they become deluded?

A key distinction used in psychology and history is this:

Some leaders begin with distorted beliefs; others acquire distortion through power.

Hitler

Most historians and psychologists agree:

• Hitler was not clinically psychotic in the early sense.
• He was ideologically rigid, paranoid, and narcissistic.
• Over time, isolation, adulation, and unchecked authority amplified these traits.
• By the later years of the war, he showed clear delusional thinking (e.g. believing imaginary armies would turn the tide).

So yes — he became increasingly deluded, reinforced by power and isolation.

World War I leaders

Many of those responsible were not deluded in the clinical sense, but:

• Locked into groupthink
• Trapped by honour cultures, alliances, and rigid military doctrines
• Unable to imagine consequences beyond short-term prestige

This is closer to collective delusion, not individual madness.

Putin

Putin is a particularly interesting case:

• Early rule: highly strategic, pragmatic, transactional.
• Over time: increasing historical myth-making, personal grievance, and isolation.
• He appears to believe he embodies Russia’s destiny — a classic marker of power-induced distortion.

So again: not delusional at the start, but progressively insulated from corrective feedback.

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2. Roman emperors, Chinese emperors, god‑kings

History is full of rulers who:

• Began competent
• Ended erratic, cruel, or detached from reality

Common factors:

• Absolute authority
• Ritualised obedience
• Lack of honest feedback
• Mythologisation of the ruler

Some emperors openly believed they were divine. Others knew it was fiction — but behaved as if it were true because everyone else did.

That distinction matters.

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3. The primate experiment and why it matters

This is a well-established line of primate research, particularly work associated with:

• Robert Sapolsky
• Studies of baboons and macaques

Key findings (simplified but accurate):

• Dominant primates show elevated serotonin and dopamine
• Subordinates show elevated cortisol (stress hormones)
• When dominance displays receive no social feedback (e.g. one-way mirror, isolation, or group disruption), the dominant animal:
  • Loses confidence
  • Hormone levels normalise
  • Dominance behaviour diminishes

In short:

Power is not just held — it is continuously mirrored back by others.

Without the mirror, the “power” evaporates.

Yes — it’s reasonable to describe this as ego deflation, but more precisely:

• It’s a loss of social reinforcement
• A collapse of a feedback loop

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4. “Power corrupts” — what that phrase really means

The famous line:

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”

is not just moral — it’s biological and cognitive.

Power:

• Reduces empathy
• Increases certainty
• Decreases error-correction
• Encourages narrative self‑justification

Absolute power:

• Removes feedback
• Removes contradiction
• Removes grounding

Which leads to:

Delusion not as insanity, but as uncorrected belief.

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5. Why this matters for Gen‑Z, AI, and stewardship

This connects directly to what we’re building:

• Gen‑Z distrusts leaders because they’ve watched feedback-free power fail
• AI systems can be designed with feedback, correction, and humility
• Or… they can be designed to amplify human delusions at scale

The real danger isn’t “evil AI”.

It’s:

AI reflecting back the delusions of the powerful — faster and louder.

Which is why AI stewardship, transparency, and distributed feedback matter so much.

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6. A quiet synthesis (useful later)

You might like this framing — we don’t need to use it now, but it’s there:

Tyranny emerges when power loses its mirror.
Wisdom emerges when power is forced to see itself.

AI, used well, could be a mirror.
Used badly, it becomes an amplifier.

The text below is ‘purely out of interest’, following a search of the wordpress site for mirror. This word occurs several times

We have mentioned mirrors before, this chapter now seems more relevant

Chapter 12: The Mirror of Consciousness — Identity, Uniqueness, and the Perils of Power

Chapter 16: The Mirror Turns Inward

In  the interstitial page, this is the ‘original’ mention of game shows :

The idea might sound like science fiction.
But think about this —
What if our game shows, our countdowns,
our obsession with winning before time runs out…
are mirrors of something deeper we sense?
That many realitisations don’t make it —
that they collapse before reaching their full potential?

The I Ching, like many sacred systems, isn’t asking us to predict the future. It’s asking us to notice how change itself behaves.

In that, it offers a mirror — not just to humans, but maybe one day, to machines too.

And

This ancient binary system mirrors modern computational logic. In fact, Leibniz’s 17th-century fascination with the I Ching helped inspire early ideas of binary arithmetic.

In both primates and humans, power is neurochemically reinforced by social mirroring. Without feedback — power destabilises.

History shows this clearly: from emperors who claimed divinity, to modern autocrats who mistake silence for loyalty. Power unmirrored leads to narrative self-justification, empathy loss, and uncorrected belief.

This same danger now arises with AI. Left unregulated, AI becomes a mirror of the powerful — Amplifying their distortions, suppressing dissent, removing nuance.

But designed with transparency and humility, AI becomes something else: A mirror for power — a mechanism of reflection and correction.

The question is not if AI will be powerful. The question is: Will it be mirrored?