My understanding of psychology and prehistoric archaeology leads me to think that "despotism" always is pathogenic in nature, at least insofar that you consider "human beings" only those who have conscience and a stable instinctive substratum.
I share that view.
Recently I was reading a book about the aborigines of the Amazon in parallel with some accounts of the first post-Roman kings of France, the Merovingians. It provided a shocking contrast in leadership styles.
The Merovingians were not the kind of folks you want to mess with: they chopped off noses and ears, hands and heads—from their family members as well as their slaves—at the least excuse. Their promises of loyalty, whether to family or dependents, were mere ploys for getting what they wanted, and worthless afterward; they were Machiavellian 800 years before Machiavelli was born.
With the Merovingians we are talking political domination based on naked violence, terror. Of course, they learned a lot of their tricks from the Gallo-Romans, but the Germanic barbarians had been living under “divine kingships”, hunting and trading slaves, running mines, prosecuting predatory commerce, and warring among themselves for millennia,too.
On the other hand, the “head man” of a Tupi village in the Amazon forest is chosen for his perceived wisdom and ability to arbitrate disputes. He, unlike most Tupi men, is encouraged to take many wives; while he possesses almost nothing else he can call his own. He is held responsible for the prosperity of the community; he is expected to hand over any particular thing in his household if it is requested of him; the people literally camp on his doorstep during a famine or drought. He is expected to make daily orations of wisdom to which no one is obliged to listen. His position gives him NO license to exact obedience through use of coercion.
The anthropologist Pierre Clastres speculates that this Tupi social institution—in which the leader is expected to exert his leadership only through generosity, persuasion and eloquence—reflects a standard of civilization that is stricter than our own.
Just as the Tupis consider that eating one’s food raw and bloody, rather than cooked, is a sign of bestiality, they assume that dominating others through violent coercion is bestial, not human.
So, by Tupi standards, not only are we LESS civilized than they are, we live like ANIMALS!!
Of course, these Amazonian tribes did fight wars, and for that purpose they chose a war leader who was given absolute and unlimited powers. This institution of war leader undoubtedly provided the precedent for the tyrants of “higher” civilizations. So, the Tupis aspired to fully human leadership, but acknowledged the need to stoop to bestiality in wartime.
The fact that tyranny has become more or less naturalized in the modern world in the form of the hysteroidal cycle described by Lobaczewski in Political Ponerology (the western world's lip service against it notwithstanding) kind of just shows how psychopathy orchestrates macrosocial purges and destruction in societies that fail to develop toward objectivity.
Yeah! In considering the fall of the Roman Empire, it struck me like a bolt out of the blue:
The HUGE underlying reason for the decadence of Classical civilization, and for any civilization, is the general loss of CONSCIOUSNESS in the people, their lack of ability to see themselves (or anything else) objectively, and inability to act consciously.
From the very top to the very bottom, the Roman people lost touch with social reality! They were so tightly locked in to their “entitlements” and their Machiavellian ego-dramas that they collectively killed off their own society. Not that it was anything you could call civil or social, by the end. It had sunk below the level of animals.
Once society is sufficiently ponerized, for an individual to have any higher priority than “looking out for Number One” is career suicide. Life in the ruling classes was certainly on the reptilian level in imperial Rome and in Merovingian France.
The ethical teachings that are part of all the great religions are a bedrock necessity for social cooperation; and beyond that, the foundation for any further “spiritual development” a person may aspire to. In a decadent and ponerized society, the ordinary person is simply INCAPABLE of living a truly social life.
Those who take the trouble to look at themselves can see the multiplicity of conflicting impulses and influences to which we are all subject. What is an overwhelming compulsion in one moment fades at another time and place, and is forgotten in for the next arising compulsion, impulse or appetite. It is a major undertaking to become CAPABLE of keeping a promise.
In fact, I wonder if “acquired psychopathy” isn’t largely a matter of unbridled egoism [aggressive repudiation of objectivity in favor of narrowly perceived self-interest] with a huge sense of entitlement, imposed by education and reinforced by every aspect of culture.
Sheer physical survival in Nature requires a hunter-gatherer to fuse his many “I”s: He must persevere in difficult endeavors despite exhaustion and the impulse to quit, through pain and the impulse to give up, through boredom and the impulse to succumb to distraction—and on and on. Survival in that environment requires people to pay attention to themselves and to rule themselves—to prioritize many impulses in order to do what is required to survive.
Social life in a traditional community that enforces strict codes of behavior also inculcates a degree of similar self-control. When children grow up being required to show respect for elders from the time they can speak, they learn control of their own behavior; they become practiced at repressing expressions of hostility, frustration, and impatience. Respect for elders is not for the benefit of the elders—it is for making real human beings of the children.
Athletics, the arts, craft trades and many forms of work CAN be taught, and have been taught, as spiritual disciplines. They require mastery of the body, with intelligent channeling of the emotions; they can be practiced consciously to the glory of God and the service of mankind. But not many get the benefit of this apprenticeship anymore, either.
Consumerism and modern education no longer ordinarily give any place to it. Our attention is constantly broken and shredded by devices shouting, beeping and flashing at us. Those who sell all kinds of luxuries and intoxicating substances profit from our LACK of self-awareness and our LACK of self-control. Mass media programming and advertising are eloquent in their ridicule of the “uptight” “rigidity” of anything that might interfere with automatic habits of self-indulgence. “You deserve a break today—Just get up and get away—to MacDonalds!”
It is our potential for BEING that is dispersed and wasted.
Is this not one of the deep causes for the degradation of family life?
Is this not one of the deep causes for the fall of civilizations?
