The thing with dictators/absolute rulers is that they cannot be wrong. Even when they are wildly wrong.
When you go back and look at how the world bent over backwards to make itself align with whatever the top said, you would think the world mad. It’s only a recent thing that we the people aren’t bound to that madness.
Slavery, murder, rape, killing, genocide, public execution, prisoners killed by wild animals, etc etc the list goes on.
People who are in power can be supremely depraved.
It’s loyalty screening enforced at all levels by all the participants.
It’s the fuse for the bomb, the calling card of fascism. One by one, groups will fall to their venerated rage until there is no out group left, and then the hate turns inward. Once lines have been crossed, there’s no going back. No way for the brain to rationalize the evils commited. No way for the brain to convince ourselves we are good for the group - and let’s just throw out what stupid people say - we are so absolutely pro-social, or group centered (not self centered) that lack of touch will kill us. The young and old fall first, but it’ll take down adults. Usually down the darkest of paths. You can physically die from a broken heart.
We would have no reference, no parameters, no metrics, no reason to will, no purpose, no goals, without other people. No reason to not pull the trigger. Nothing to look forward too. Once we suspect that we are a net negative, there’s no going back. It’s wall that part of the psyche up and never speak of it again. So strong is our need for narrative the brain has near unlimited capacity to retcon reason, or even deleting whole swaths of memory.
Rome existed for 2000 years and it had 5 benevolent dictators.
People absolved of accountability rarely, about once every 400 years, turn out well.
That’s the lesson that we ALL need to learn or nothing changes. We have to hold each other accountable, and that means we have to all have peers. The top down heirarchy needs to sunset for more horizontal foundations to rise.
In other words, we need to bring income inequality down to SINGLE digits.
The thing with dictators/absolute rulers is that they cannot be wrong. Even when they are wildly wrong.
When you go back and look at how the world bent over backwards to make itself align with whatever the top said, you would think the world mad. It’s only a recent thing that we the people aren’t bound to that madness.
Slavery, murder, rape, killing, genocide, public execution, prisoners killed by wild animals, etc etc the list goes on.
People who are in power can be supremely depraved.
It’s loyalty screening enforced at all levels by all the participants.
It’s the fuse for the bomb, the calling card of fascism. One by one, groups will fall to their venerated rage until there is no out group left, and then the hate turns inward. Once lines have been crossed, there’s no going back. No way for the brain to rationalize the evils commited. No way for the brain to convince ourselves we are good for the group - and let’s just throw out what stupid people say - we are so absolutely pro-social, or group centered (not self centered) that lack of touch will kill us. The young and old fall first, but it’ll take down adults. Usually down the darkest of paths. You can physically die from a broken heart.
We would have no reference, no parameters, no metrics, no reason to will, no purpose, no goals, without other people. No reason to not pull the trigger. Nothing to look forward too. Once we suspect that we are a net negative, there’s no going back. It’s wall that part of the psyche up and never speak of it again. So strong is our need for narrative the brain has near unlimited capacity to retcon reason, or even deleting whole swaths of memory.
Rome existed for 2000 years and it had 5 benevolent dictators.
People absolved of accountability rarely, about once every 400 years, turn out well.
That’s the lesson that we ALL need to learn or nothing changes. We have to hold each other accountable, and that means we have to all have peers. The top down heirarchy needs to sunset for more horizontal foundations to rise.
In other words, we need to bring income inequality down to SINGLE digits.