Pothos

A Greek word meaning “longing” or “lust”. Used by the ancient historian Polybius to characterize the military expansionism of Alexander the Great that would not rest until the whole Ecumene was conquered (Muslims admire Alexander the Great, whom they call Dzu'l-Karnain, the "Two-Horned One"). Napoleon and Hitler were possessed by a similar pothos, as were the Communist ideologues (energized by what Eric Voegelin calls an “immanentized eschaton”—a secularized deformation of religious eschatology).