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Just be Power Seeking

Date: 2025-11-02

I am tired of feeling lost and helpless. I can effect entire digital world at my finger tips but don't know what to do with such power. I live in one of the greatest metropolitan cities on earth and don't know who I am in it. I am tired of being a butterfly in the wind, observing but never grasping the reality I actually find myself in. Power seeking changes this meta.

What I am really in the middle of, and have been all my life, is an identity crisis. I retardedly rejected the religious and institutional structures I was born into without understanding them, Chesterton's fence style. Rejecting the ideological frame I was born into had me searching and trying on new frames. I have now learned that trying on frames for the sake of trying on frames doesn't leave me feeling fulfilled. You may be in a similar position, is the purpose of your life to be a consoomer, learning things for learning things sake, or is it to use what your learned and act it out on the world.

Power comes in all shapes and sizes, weather they be in self interest, altruistic, or towards some sort of Ideal. In fact even if you have a fixed slave mindset you should still be power seeking, in fact you are forced to be power seeking and realizing that can help you live a more fulfilled life.

Self Interest can still be Altruistic

Power Seeking or Self Interest at the right abstraction is still altruistic.

Most people don't realize this but Altruism is actually an evolved phenomenon exuberated by The Selfish Gene and Game Theory. The unit of selfishness is not at the level of the organism but that of the Gene. At the abstraction of the Gene, sacrificing oneself for the tribe, hive, colony, or collective still allows the Gene to proliferate via the survivors.

Just remember when you help people, you are participating in shaping the collective. A move to donate blood, return a lost wallet, or whistle blowing is still you as an individual giving up your "power" to help another person in the interest of the collective.

Video Games are Power Seeking Abstractions

There is an epidemic of NEETs who spend most their time playing video games. It's more comfortable for these people to engage with pixels than interact with the real world.

As a human we have no choice but to engage in The Power Process,

The power process has four elements. The three most clear-cut of these we call goal, effort and attainment of goal. (Everyone needs to have goals whose attainment requires effort, and needs to succeed in attaining at least some of his goals.) The fourth element is more difficult to define and may not be necessary for everyone. We call it autonomy and will discuss it later

Video Games provide a medium for The Power Process that is more comfortable to engage with than The Real World.

Engaging in The Real World is complex, difficult and prone to error. Video Games finesse these attributes. Why deal with the question of "Who you are" when you can just choose a new free to play game on Steam where you can pretend to be a pre written character or class. Why do something tangible in the real world when you can adjust the difficulty of a video game.

If you want to compete for status, it's still easier, and very measurable in ranked video games than the real world. Real life doesn't have save points, it's always moving forward.

Meaning Maxing vs Pleasure Maxing

Some people I know repeat EA talking points about reducing suffering for the most number of people on this planet.

The problem with pleasure maxing is the weird caveats you end up with such as Telescopic Philanthropy, creating a Drug induced Soma managed society, removing the risk of life and ending up living in a Pod eating Bugs, The Matrix or becoming something like the Borg. This stuff is well exemplified via discussions about the Moral Circles Heatmap Meme.

Reducing suffering can't be a goal in and of itself, it needs to be couched inside another goal.

As always the Devil is in the Details. Just like the Simon Pegg movie Absolutely Anything, even when you command the universe to do anything it's up to the implementer figure out to what degree that command is to be implemented.

The solution is to take an inside out view of things rather than an outside in view.

Invert the problem from, How do I help people who are suffering? to How am I suffering? or Why am I not thriving?

Start with yourself, do you Treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping? Are you healthy? Is your room clean? How are you doing on your goals? Do you know what your goals are?

You must learn how to help yourself before you can help others. If you choose to violate this Heuristic please answer in your heart of hearts why.

Once you have power over your own life, it can be extended to your friends, work, community, and institutions.

But what does Power Seeking have to do with Meaning Maxing?

The actions one takes with their life are statements of their values. One's values is directly linked to where one get's their meaning in life. By accruing power, be it helping a friend move, going to the gym, cooking someone you love a meal all these actions are value statements that cultivate meaning in your life. So please beware the decisions you make with your life, they say much more about you than the words you say.

Conclusion

The goal of this post is to make people aware that all their actions are power seeking and that is not a bad thing. In future posts we will explore cognitive tools for modelling power in ones own life. Abstractions are easy, actionable insights are hard.