Joss Whedon: "It's Always, Always About Power"
Or:
No, It Isn't

Well, it's silly to nit-pick something like this, but since I like Whedon and I ran across it and the alternative is reading more A. J. Ayer...well, you see where I'm going with this...

Whedon's talking about surviving high school, and he probably has better things to say about it than I do. All I've really got is: (1) find some interesting things and study them hard (math comes to mind); (2) find something you love and do it (I did debate; it's not the best thing to do, but it's not the worst); (3) learn to fight well (I learned Judo; MMA and BJJ are better now); (4) get some good friends (two or three will do the trick, even if you don't fit in with the Herd); (5) aim hard for college, and get into one where the nerds rule (the egg-headier the better). (And I'm tempted to add (6) Get high sometimes, but not too much...)

But, as I said, Whedon has probably thought more about this than I have. Unfortunately, he quotes Bacon's "knowledge is power" line, and then follows it up with this: "And it's always, always about power."

No, it isn't.

This is a line that's trickled down from dumb lefties to smart liberals.

Sometimes it's about power; much more often it isn't.Power is a side-effect of knowledge, but it's not the main reason for seeking knowledge. The right view here is the Aristotelian one: knowledge is intrinsically good, and we seek it primarily in order to satisfy our natural human desire to understand. To reduce it all to technology, or power, or whatever is to debase it. Sane people seek power only so they have the power to defend the more important things--life and liberty and loved one and so forth. Without power, bad people will take away the things we need in order to live a good life. But that in no way means--nor does it come close to meaning--that "it's always about power."

O.k., that's way too much on that.