People seek to succeed. Power is secondary because it's too complicated to handle. Success is power, they postulate. And besides, power is free anyway, they blink -- as long as you're, uh, successful... But, but.
But it dawns on them that power is required to achieve success, and bitch about the nuisance of acquiring it. *What* a conundrum! So they scratch their pretty little heads and ponder how to access power without success. Or how to achieve success without power. Long moments of meditation, that, while driving the car on a lonely stretch, or sitting on the throne during a stubborn one. Or after a quickie. Oh -- always after a quickie.
Firstly, they figure, one must feel "self-confident". I suppose? But doesn't that come for free along with success, as like with power following success? They fidget: darn it all -- all this complicated thinking -- it's not like I can open a book and *memorize* things! Damn, life is tough. Damn tough, they gasp. So they go about exercising what they imagine "self-confidence" might be, and feel smug about their "advances". Ah, but they're smart these pretty little heads, for they discovered early on that when you stick with your own kind, there's no need to feel... unconfident.
Anything or anyone that causes them to loose an ounce of their precious "self-confidence", on their arduous quest for success, will be promptly dealt with and knocked aside. And that's a fact. Period. No if's or but's too. No siree.
Hey! They just discovered... power!
But a power that owes much to company -- a diluted power. And a cowardly one too for they will never meet you alone in the dark.