In the end I began to understand. There is such a thing as absolute power over narrative. Those who secure this privilege for themselves can arrange stories about others pretty much where, and as, they like. Just as in corrupt, totalitarian regimes, those who exercise power over others can do anything.

The greatest power one human being can exert over others is to control their perceptions of reality, and infringe on the integrity and individuality of their world. This is done in politics, in psychotherapy.

Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, to rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely

Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.

We have the power to choose narratives in which we absolve ourselves of guilt and blame everything on conspiracies or others.

Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.

That’s power, Mitch, absolute power. And you know the old saying. Power ennobles. Absolute power ennobles absolutely.

It's a general moral principle that the more power you have over someone, the greater your duty to use that power benevolently. Well, who is the one person in the world you have the greatest power over? It's your future self. You hold that life in your hands, and what it will be depends on how you care for it.

Never underestimate the power of someone to try and write your narrative .

It is within such structures that I feel a grand narrative can exist, like a dictatorship—solid, like the worst tyrant.

Those who tell the stories rule society.

The awful bottom line, of course, is that if you’re going to rule the world, you have to have absolute power, and everybody knows what absolute power does.

When we reject the truth of someone’s story — the ultimate failure of story stewardship — it’s often because we’ve stealthily centered ourselves in their story, and the narrative takeover is about protecting our ego, behavior, or privilege. The less diverse our lived experiences, the more likely we are to find ourselves struggling with narrative takeover or narrative tap-out.