How machiavelic it is to think everything is revolving around power. I haven’t read Foucault but I tend to think I’m more enclined towards other values, like morale for example.
The universe however doesn't care about souls (rescued or not).
In other words, you can very much kill your way to power and then be fine (as to "how you sleep") with it.
Even more, unless you overdo it like Hitler or Stalin, you can have other people (heck, history itself) be fine with it, and celebrate you as a great leader, a beautiful soul, etc...
The article directly refutes the misconception that Foucault believes everything is about power.
I know postmodernism isn't in favour with a lot of people, especially around here, but Foucault's ideas are profoundly interesting, and I strongly recommend you read him.
I think it's an unstable equilibrium. In the right group/social context, some values lead the behaviors of people (love, morality, spirituality) but it doesn't take much to go back to negotiation/power.
I think otherwise, and thanks to this fact we are still alive today. Just think of the numerous false positives in the Cold War, where individual soldiers responsible for launching the nukes reverted back to their moral code, undermining the very power structure that depended on them to function.
that's needlessly pessimistic. we're all bundles of values. power is the mechanism by which our values are expressed and used to change others, for better or worse.
if you want to understand people, and especially organizations, you need to understand power.
