Power is relative change within a complex system. There are two types of power: Influencing change through responsibilities or forcing change through the usurping of responsibilities. The first leads to new qualities while the other leads to destruction.
Traditions are subjective truths that have survived the evolutionary process over hundreds of years. They are needed due to the fact that we cannot measure quality, but can only instill quality in principles, that over time become traditions, or markers of great quality.
Tyranny is forcing concepts or actions at the wrong hierarchy of dependencies in a complex system. We have seen this over and over again in complex social systems, but this also takes place in complex software systems. Tyranny should be avoided in any system if that system is to endure the test of time.
Within a fractal system, there is an inherited conflict between higher and lower level nodes: higher level nodes wants lower level nodes to solve specific problems and the lower level nodes want higher level nodes to solve general problems. This conflict is central to a developers growth in creating modular code that is of high quality.
Goals should be quality based. Since quality can't be measured, one will have to use techniques like nomological networks and human judgement to gage if one is achieving their goal.
LongLoft - Code Writer 