The Epstein Case: When Power Becomes a License to Transgress

 

When Absolute Power Devours Humanity

The shock you feel is understandable. What has come to light in the so-called “Epstein files” is not merely a political scandal—it is a moral sinkhole. For many readers, the details are more disturbing than fictional horror, because they expose something far worse than imagination: what happens when wealth, power, and secrecy collide without accountability.

History has warned us about this before.

Long before private islands and global elites, one of the darkest literary works ever written attempted to capture the same phenomenon. The 120 Days of Sodom, penned in the 18th century by the infamous French aristocrat Marquis de Sade, tells the story of four men at the pinnacle of society—a duke, a bishop, a judge, and a financier. Together, they represent authority, religion, law, and money.

Their decision is chillingly familiar: they isolate themselves in a remote fortress, beyond the reach of society, law, and scrutiny. There, they exercise absolute power over vulnerable victims. Civilization collapses the moment oversight disappears. What remains is not refinement or superiority—but brutality.

De Sade was not merely writing fantasy. He was articulating a grim truth: when human beings are placed in environments of unchecked power and total isolation, the latent capacity for cruelty emerges.

Modern psychology reached a similar conclusion centuries later.

In The Lucifer Effect, psychologist Philip Zimbardo—best known for the Stanford Prison Experiment—argues that evil is not always an innate trait. More often, it is situational. Given absolute authority, anonymity, and immunity from consequences, ordinary people can descend into moral collapse. Empathy erodes. Accountability vanishes. The “dark side” awakens not because the person changes, but because the environment permits it.

Neuroscience adds another layer to this picture.

The human brain adapts to pleasure. Dopamine—the chemical associated with reward—diminishes its response to repeated stimuli. What once brought joy quickly becomes routine. This is why new cars, luxury, and success lose their emotional impact over time.

For the ultra-wealthy and powerful, this adaptation becomes dangerous. Having exhausted every socially acceptable pleasure, some develop what researchers describe as anhedonia of power—a numbness born of excess. The brain, no longer stimulated by ordinary rewards, seeks extremes. The final remaining taboo becomes the object of pursuit.

This is not about desire. It is about transgression.

Breaking the ultimate moral boundary delivers a false sensation of omnipotence—a feeling of being above humanity, law, and even morality itself. Victims are no longer perceived as people, but as objects. Psychologists refer to this process as reification: the reduction of human beings into things.

History offers a disturbing parallel. In decadent periods of the Roman Empire, elites would gorge themselves at lavish feasts until physically full—then deliberately induce vomiting so they could continue eating. They were not hungry. They were chasing the endless pleasure of consumption, attempting to override biological limits.

The pattern is identical: the appetite has no ceiling, even when the body—or the soul—has reached its limit.

At this stage, cruelty is no longer accidental. It becomes performative. Violence against the powerless is not driven by lust, but by domination—the will to power. The goal is not satisfaction, but affirmation: I can do this, and no one can stop me.

Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche warned of this descent: “If you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss gazes back into you.”

Islamic theology diagnosed this condition long before modern psychology.

In just seven words, the Qur’an identifies the root of human tyranny:

Qur’an 96:6–7 (Surah Al-‘Alaq)

Arabic:

كَلَّا إِنَّ الْإِنسَانَ لَيَطْغَىٰ
أَن رَّآهُ اسْتَغْنَىٰ

English (Sahih International):

No! Indeed, mankind transgresses
Because he sees himself as self-sufficient.

The Qur’an does not describe humans as inherently evil. It identifies a condition: the illusion of self-sufficiency. When a person believes they need no one—not God, not society, not law—restraint dissolves. Power without humility becomes destructive.

Another verse reinforces this warning:

Qur’an 42:27 (Surah Ash-Shūrā)

Arabic:

وَلَوْ بَسَطَ اللَّهُ الرِّزْقَ لِعِبَادِهِ لَبَغَوْا فِي الْأَرْضِ
وَلَٰكِن يُنَزِّلُ بِقَدَرٍ مَّا يَشَاءُ
إِنَّهُ بِعِبَادِهِ خَبِيرٌ بَصِيرٌ

English (Sahih International):

And if Allah had extended provision for His servants, they would have transgressed throughout the earth; but He sends it down in precise measure as He wills. Indeed, He is, of His servants, Acquainted and Seeing.

Moral boundaries, then, are not chains that suppress freedom. They are guardrails that protect humanity from self-destruction. Without limits—on wealth, desire, or power—the human soul risks becoming an endless void, consuming everything without ever being filled.

What the Epstein case reveals is not an anomaly. It is a warning—one humanity has been receiving, and ignoring, for centuries.