SOMETIME ago, the Wall Street Journal published a study looking at this very issue, which is what prompted me to further examine the matter. What the study found, and this is largely through an article by the Wall Street Journal’s Jonah Lehrer, is that there is no personality trait in people that shows any predilection towards corruption; nothing you can immediately spot, like Julius Caesar in Shakespeare saying how Cassius has a “mean and hungry look.”

Indeed, it may just be the opposite. The study, undertaken by psychologist, Dachner Keltner, found that it is the genuinely good people, people who care about others, who are the ones that ascend to the top of the social groups.
An article from Keltner himself, entitled: ‘The Paradox of Power in America’ sums it up thus:
“…studies… show that once some people assume positions of power in the private or public sectors they’re likely to act more selfishly, impulsively, and aggressively. This presents us with the paradox of power: The skills most important to obtaining power and leading effectively are the very skills that deteriorate once we have power.”
The focus of this article is not on Power, but on Individual Achievement and what I classify as Self Destruction. However, if we substitute the word “power” for “achievement,” I think you will find virtually the same thing, with some variations.
A few years ago, in an article titled “Schadenfreude and Public Life,” I took a look at how some leaders fail, to the delight of their opponents, citing the case of former New York Governor, Eliot Spitzer.
Spitzer rose to power with his self-avowed mission, as Attorney-General, to clean up Wall Street and curb corruption, scoring a string of success indictments along the way. There was talk of an eventual bid for President at one point, until the entire thing crumbled because he chose to jeopardise his career by patronising a prostitution ring. This is a textbook case of self-destruction at the peak of achievement.
And so is the case of Tiger Woods. Once the highest paid sportsman in the world, with hundreds of millions of dollars in endorsement deals, in his thirties and on top of a game in which the best peak in their fifties, he engages in behaviour so morally incorrect that he alienates even the most sympathetic of his fans, costing himself into the bargain a hefty chunk of his endorsement deals, and perhaps most importantly destroying his family life.
Perhaps the most poignant case of self-destructive behaviour — and one that I could personally associate with — is the case of Michael Jackson. I’ve written about Jackson more than once, and as a huge fan of his, there are questions that still linger concerning the reason he drove himself so hard, even while knowing the potential consequences of his actions. Why go so far to hire a doctor to administer the drug that would accidentally take his life, when the very fact of hiring a doctor to do so, indicated the risks associated with taking the drug?
I want to know what drives people to do often meaningless and pointless things that end up costing them their entire life’s work in many cases. I keep going back to Bill Clinton’s ultimate answer in his interview with Dan Rather on why he cheated.
According to the President, he did it “Because I could.” It’s easy to say that this sense of impunity lies at the heart of self-destructive behaviour — as it clearly did in the Clinton case — but I don’t think the same can easily be said in the case of Spitzer, Woods or Jackson.
In Spitzer’s case, the hiring of the call-girls, over a period of years, had nothing to do with power being an aphrodisiac and all that. A young, rich, powerful good-looking man resorting to call-girls over a period of years, in my mind, shows not the exercise of strength but the succumbing to a personal weakness.
And when it comes to Woods, in my mind, it was a similar thing, but Woods’ case was different in that (and I’m not excusing his behaviour) he was marketed as a sex symbol while expected to behave like a saint. Condemn him all you want, but I don’t think I know of anyone who could live up the duality that was expected of Woods; and it is in that context that we should probably be seeing his behaviour — again, bad as it was.
With Michael Jackson, the potentially career-ending scandals of the nineties behind him, his self-destructiveness, I believe, came from his ongoing desire to please his millions of fans and supporters the world over. It’s an ironic tragedy that Jackson’s self-medicating turned out fatal when it was done as a result of his trying to live up to the tremendous achievement he had built throughout his career.
So far, I’ve used examples of three men, and so might have opened up myself to some accusations of bias. But the examples are only incidental, in that I’ve dealt with them in my writing before. Anyone having read about the antics of Britney Spears, or the ongoing drama facing Lindsay Lohan would clearly see that self-destructive behaviour doesn’t favour one sex over the other.
In closing, I didn’t start this article expecting to come to any position on why high achievers often seemingly deliberately self-destruct; because I don’t think any one answer exists. It could be weakness; it could be over-confidence; it could be the desire to build upon their legacy no matter the personal cost — it could be one factor, or a combination of factors. All we can ever really know, perhaps, that it’s a fact of life.

(Previously published by the Guyana Chronicle)

(By Keith Burrowes)