Power reveals.
For deeper explanation, you need look no farther than this thread. Everyone in this thread is exercising power: the power to answer, to inform, to contribute to the shape of another’s thoughts.
Or, you know, to ask the question in the first place. And how is that power used?
You seek understanding and an expansion of knowledge.
Quilliam, a loyal Gallente, doesn’t quite answer the question, but does feel a need to tie ‘freedom’ into the mix.
Ulysses, an Intaki looking for the chance to see his people free from what he considers to be opporession, frames the issue in terms of ‘what is corruption?’ and offers the axiom ‘What a man can do is what a man will do’, which is generally understood to mean both that we always act in accordance with our natures, and both our virtue and depravity are often limited only by opportunity and how much we think we can get away with.
Lafisquefiscfes (I never spell that name right) seeks to strike a balance between the concepts, as though corruption itself isn’t revelatory where the person involved is concerned.
Aria finds a long-winded way to say Everything Is More Complicated Than You Know™, and ends up offering a value judgment on seeking power that has nothing to do with the original question.
And me? I find fault with all of them like the conceited know-it-all that I am. (You didn’t think I’d escape my own notice, did you?)
All of which, anyone who’s paid attention to our posting could have predicted.
And then there’s all the people who aren’t responding. Maybe they don’t want to get dragged into long-ass discussions. Maybe they oppose responding to you on the grounds that your capitalization style offends them. Maybe they just don’t care. Whatever the cause, they’re opting not to contribute to the shape of your resulting thoughts, to deny you their contributions. And that, too, is power, and that choice does tell us something about them.
When given power, we either use that power or don’t. It’s a choice, from ‘nothing’ to all of the various options we can express in how we choose to use or not use it. And in that choice—noble, corrupt, hard-hearted, empathetic, detached, doesn’t matter—we reveal who we are.