Power is not a means, it is an end.

Thank you for your responses, Schopenhauer. Here are my counter-arguments: 1. Money is of course a means acquire the power of wealth, although it can also be a means to get anything else, one of those ends being security. Hoarders, as previously mentioned, fit this description well; their money isn't spent or invested in ways to generate power over their fellow humans. Instead, it is essentially buried in holes and under mattresses, where it creates nothing but the pleasurable feeling of security that is its own end. One could argue that this feeling of security is a form of power"power over danger and the like"but overlooks that natural dichotomies between multivariate human psychologies. The study of man is the study of conflicts that spring varying interests: the aggressor who promotes violence for its own sake, the victim who desires power as defense against the aggression, the predator and prey, oppressor and oppressed, etc. This paradoxical relationship exists in nature, in every level of society, in all creatures; the motivations and behavior of the creatures are not the same"without the need for power on the part of the attacker, there would be no need for defensive power on the part of the attacked. 2. Love can certainly be used as a method of psychological control or power over others"no argument here! However, it can just as easily be argued that this does not constitute "true love," what the Greeks called "agape," or "compassionate love." It doesn't take into account a universal love of mankind for those unrelated to you (this altruistic drive has been studies in the brain activity of certain individuals, but not necessarily all: http://www.sciencedaily.com...). An act of generosity to a stranger you'll never meet has no direct benefit to yourself, but can be explained as logical attachment to a personal ideal (a drive other than, and at times opposed to, personal gain.) 3. I think we can agree that sex is only done for the purpose of procreation rather than the pleasurable feeling in a more limited number of instances. If it were the case that people only had sex strictly from a desire to procreate, then there would be no need of birth control and abortion. 4. Knowledge is only power if it's applied. I think we can also agree that the vast stockpile of theoretical knowledge accumulated over a lifetime does not match this description. 5. Power supersedes other ends as an aim only as the best strategic means to achieve those ends. 6. Mental illness is an illness according to whom? This seems to prove the point about subjective, individual motivations and desires. If we believe that the motivations of hermits, obsessive philatelists, or other crazies are "wrong" or in some way intrinsically different from our own, then we have accepted that primary, driving motivations vary from person to person, and we can't therefore impose a single universal constant of a simple urge for power on all humans. One can argue that the mentally ill *should* desire or seek power, but this of course would be a conflation of an Is and an Ought in the Humeian sense, and the question we are currently debating is whether power *is* the end, not whether it *should* be. 7. Finally, while I believe that money can occasionally buy happiness, it has been noted that many people in wealthier and more powerful countries sometimes exhibit higher rates of depression and unhappiness (http://articles.latimes.com...), when by all accounts they should be happier, given broad-based superiority in all avenues of power, and increased likelihood of achieving it. Attaining the sole purpose of our desires is what creates fulfillment and long-term happiness, and if it's true that all purpose can be reduced to power, then people with less of it should by no means be more fulfilled. The fact remains that whether due to genetic or environmental forces, humanity is different, and primal drives change, mutate, and evolve (http://www.newsweek.com...) (http://www.livescience.com...)