The relationship between power, success, and ethics is a tricky one. We’re all expected to try to achieve success in our chosen fields and, though to some degree we define it differently from field to field, in large part ‘success’ always boils down to earning money and/or the respect of one’s peers. Both money and respect, though, come with power and influence, frequently influence which we cannot choose not to wield – at least not without also yielding our hold on success, and who knows if we can ever get that back? So, then, to become successful is to take on a moral burden, that when we exercise this power – which we cannot help but do – that we be mindful of the help and harm we might deal.
It is strange, to me, that we expect everyone to attempt ‘success’ when it has so much potential for harm, that we think less of those who do not. I’m personally not wild about this dangerous potential that fame and fortune harbor, but I’m not thrilled about the rewards of obscurity and poverty either.
We don’t talk much about the responsibilities that come with the power of achievement, which is probably why so many seem to fail to notice those responsibilities exist. There are many out there now trying to become ‘influencers’ without considering what they might do with this influence. This myopia is beneficial to those who would utilize these influencers, for advertisements or propaganda of one stripe or another, and detrimental for everyone else, since an influencer who fails to in any way account for the content of his or her influence tends to vent a lot of humanity’s worst brain garbage on those they influence. And, of course, those they influence tend to be those most vulnerable to outside influence, which boils down basically to those people who already inclined to agree with what they’re saying and children – who mostly agree with anything that they hear early and persistently enough.
If there was a college curriculum for this sort of career path it would be high time to integrate ethics classes into it, the same way ethical engineering classes became a priority after the invention of the nuclear bomb. More traditional creative educational programs would probably also benefit, except that the arts and humanities tend to already contain various morals and parables. You cannot learn about fiction or history without learning about action and consequence, without learning about butterfly effects and wars lost for want of a nail.
This is not an especially fixable problem at the moment. The problem rests in how we’ve defined success as influence, and then made each individual’s survival and prosperity contingent on realizing that form of success. This isn’t even entirely a problem with capitalism, although the close ties between artistic success and financial survival aggravate the situation: As long as we have an economy of attention and respect that only recognizes artists with wide reach as successful, we’ve created a scenario where everyone who is successful will have wide reach, whether they wanted that reach or not, whether they can use it responsibly or not.
We’ve decoupled the desire to become a leader from the skills and responsibilities of leading. Perhaps all we can do for now is convince as many as possible to stop following – or, as it were, unfollow.