"Beware of thyself, old man."

Young men with power are foolish and wanton in the pursuit of their crude schemes, but the self-absorption of old men may make them even more dangerous.

When I was a boy the iconic figure of a vain and self-absorbed old man who only cares about his power—and who has no empathy for the millions who must live with the consequences of his actions—was Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin, who becomes the Emperor Palpatine’s right-hand man after the Imperial Senate is dissolved. When asked what will hold the polity of the galaxy together without the old administration, he replies, “Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.”

When I went to college and studied literature, this iconic figure was Captain Ahab in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. There’s a great scene in the novel when the first mate, Starbuck, tells Ahab as they are headed through the Strait of Formosa and into the Pacific, that the ship is leaking oil and that they need to put into port to repair it. Ahab has not the least concern about the ship, its crew, or the owners, as he is obsessed with his crazy and deeply personal vendetta against the white whale.

“I was speaking of the oil in the hold, sir,” said Starbuck.

“And I was not speaking or thinking of that at all. Begone! Let it leak! I’m all aleak myself. Yet I don t stop to plug my leak.”

“What will the owners say, sir?”

“Let the owners stand on Nantucket beach and outyell the Typhoons. What cares Ahab? Owners, owners? Thou art always prating to me, Starbuck, about those miserly owners, as if the owners were my conscience. But hark ye, the only real owner of anything is its commander.”

“’Captain Ahab,’ said the reddening mate, ‘a better man than I might well pass over in thee what he would quickly enough resent in a younger and happier Captain Ahab.’”

“Dost thou then so much as dare to critically think of me?”

“’Nay, sir, not yet.’ Ahab seized a loaded musket from the rack and pointing it towards Starbuck exclaimed, ‘There is one God that is Lord over the earth, and one Captain that is lord over the Pequod. -- ON DECK!’

Mastering his emotion, Starbuck half calmly rose, and as he quitted the cabin, paused for an instant and said, ‘Thou hast outraged, not insulted me, sir; but let Ahab beware of Ahab; beware of thyself, old man.’”

Sadly for the entire crew of the Pequod, Ahab does not beware himself, but insists on pursuing his monomaniacal adventure to a final confrontation with the gigantic, white bull sperm whale, who sinks the vessel in the middle of the Pacific. Only the narrator, Ishmael, survives.

“And I only am escaped alone to tell thee,” Ishmael says, quoting the four messengers in the Book of Job who tell him about the destruction that has been wrought on all of his family, friends, and possessions.