I wonder,
Shaewaroz, if your definition of power is over-inclusive. The intuition in this thread is that the man who spends his whole life pursuing power is likely to end up depressed. People who have "everything"--six figure salary, hot wife, attractive kids, big house, nice cars, enough money and political clout to secure their advantage for the foreseeable future--are often not happy. To the extent that they commit suicide, or in the extreme burn down everything they own, kill their family, and then commit suicide (this is a real example that happened in the USA).
I have the feeling that you would say those people do not have real power. They had a great deal of resource, but lacked strength: the courage and tenacity to face their mental demons and arise victorious. Meaning an anti-social person in poverty can technically have more "power" than a millionaire with vast resources, despite never seeking a better job or acquiring a hot wife, if they had the willpower and disposition to enjoy life.
I personally do not want to live in poverty and that is why I have pursued a career which affords me and my loved ones certain luxuries. But, without a massive shift in my reality, I will not commit suicide. Do you know why? It's not my money, nor my social status, nor even my friendships (though those, I agree with you, massively boost our ability to obtain our own advantage and make life
better).
It is because I
enjoy life. I
enjoy philosophical debate (even with myself), solving differential equations, and puzzling over number theory. I
enjoy playing piano. I
enjoy playing video games and reading books and having sex and eating delicious food. If those things were taken away I would find other things to enjoy. It's unclear whether you would view this as accumulating power if they lead a person to choose life rather than death, but if your definition of power is, essentially,
anything that (actually) benefits a person, then it is an impotent concept. I wonder if you aren't using "power" in two different ways. One meaning "the ability to obtain benefit" (which is neither good nor bad, for an ability can be expressed to obtain benefit or not) and the other "the benefits accrued from one's actions."
On a side note, I think the most fundamental "joy" comes from being a good person. A good person enjoys being honest, beneficent, compassionate, confident, et cetera. Provided they are not under severe and chronic duress, a virtuous person can enjoy
being as they are (virtuous) even with very limited material resources. Jeff Beszos might be able to purchase his own island and completely define his external world to his liking, but even if he is wholly content, he isn't living a more worthwhile life than a middle-class programmer who spends his afternoons reading scifi and watching movies with his fiance.
As a side note, there has been a lot of studies about children's gaming habits and considerable amount of them conclude that gaming games often don't stimulate young brains in the right way to strengthen healthy mental development. They often also conclude that impatience and general lack of self-discipline and self-regulatory skills often result from excessive gaming. These are all very undesirable results with regards to power acquisition as well as a child's healthy development.
Such topics need to be treated with more nuance. Surely the "gaming habits" of most children today are swiping mindlessly on an ipad while their (probably single) parent engages in various deviant behaviors, or screaming obscenities in whatever bland reiteration call of duty is up to now. That has no bearing on a teenager playing Planescape: Torment and being exposed to new ideas through the telling of TNO's story or a young lad playing chess with his father (or Risk or some modern tactical/strategic board game).