Unlimited power

Dec 20, 2025

Lately, I've been reading this book called "Fascinating short stories" by H.G. Now, I am 3 stories in but each story has a different world view altogether. Despite that, there are other stories with which you can kind of compare the outputs. This goes on to show that outputs are generally finite but there are infinite ways to get to them (interesting thought, needs more deep thinking). Let's compare "The Man Who Could Work Miracles" with the "Midas touch" to drive this point across.

The crux of this story is the protagonist discovering the effects of being able to create anything he wishes for. It starts off harmlessly - getting dressed without having to move a muscle, eating/drinking whatever he wants whenever he wants. Then it escalates - due to some incident with a constable, he sends the constable halfway across the world . Not only is the protagonist morally conflicted but he's also scared of getting caught. So once in a while he keeps sending the constable back to this place and provides amenities for him to live a comfortable life. He discusses this dilemma with a confidant who uses these powers to get his way and amplifies the side effects by a huge margin. The catastrophic disaster they end up causing is pausing the rotation of earth to "pause time". So they could spend more time pushing the boundaries of magic. This causes deaths, thunderstorms, fallen trees, flood, protagonist and confidant's separation. Frustrated, he makes the last wish to turn back time to before he had the power and to not have them at all.

Similar to this, Midas touch starts of harmlessly. Gaining unprecedented amount of power. doing harmless tricks. Realising that too much power can also be limiting and shouldn't exist to begin with?

All of this begs the question, what does one think of when he/she/they say "unlimited power"? The more you think, the more you'll realise your idea of power is still very limited and is a direct result of your lived experiences. As such, all power is acquired at a price and with a vision to harness it. And continuously gaining that wisdom is more powerful than unlimited power (which is great in theory but isn't practical).