| Political Philosophy |
| Jim Hlavac |
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Political Philosophy
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The natural condition of mankind is to band together in families with one
leader. A number of families then got together and one leader among
them became a leader of them all. In the beginning it was through
consensus. It simply had to be for their was no other mechanism to
create a leader. The person who became the leader had to exhibit the
talents and the personality to get the job done.
It is often said that the strongest were the rulers, because they could
beat everyone up. But this is not really true, mostly because the strongest
are often without the personality that leads them to persuade others.
Also, the smartest among any group can always overpower, even kill, the
strongest with a lot less effort than might be supposed.
The way this still operates is that even the strongest brute
government can not keep the smartest people from getting around the
club of force. The smartest engage in the smuggling and the black
markets and hidden activities. The smart can always outwit the strong.
So it was back in the mists of time. The strongest did probably try to
overpower everyone else, but it couldn't have worked.
The smartest got together each day and went over what went wrong
and what was good and then tried to duplicate that effort the next day.
That they did so is evindent in the slow development of hunting and
gathering systems into an agricultural system and domesticated animals.
If the hominoids kept going back to the same place were food and shelter
were obtainable then they were making conscious decisions. Even
animals have enough conscious decision making power to remember
where food and shelter -- the very things of survival -- are. Even the
lowliest insect knows were food and shelter are likely to be obtained, and
within its tiny world and tiny mind there is a thought about what is going
to happen tomorrow based on what happened today. That a bird returns
to its nest is a sure sign that it learned something: where its nest is.
The smartest in prehistory were the ones who became the rulers. As
the technologies at hand increased and more families joined together and
the amount of goods and services increased, and as the last few millennia
before writing occurred, the development of religion came about as the
people gained the consciousness to assess the world around them. The
smartest had to know that there was something larger going on than their
own existence. As they ran across different things, and different people,
and no matter how far they went there was still a place further to go, they
began to realize that there was something larger.
The enormity was so huge and the mysteries so great to these people
that religion was born to explain the unexplainable. The more they knew
the more they knew they didn't know. So ideas and theories and
concepts developed. And the smartest realized that they could use
religion as part of their tools to exercise power.
Since all this was new there was no model to follow. Progress was
limited to the ideas that were possible. Once a workable model was
established, however inefficient it was in practice, it was duplicated by
those with worse levels of success at satisfying the need.
People, being cooperative animals, got together in ever large
conglomerations of people. One rose up to be preeminent. He was at
first the smartest, and he then tired to get his family first in line for the
necessities of life. Thus he used every tool at his disposable. And
religion was the one of those tools. At some point, nearly simultaneously
with the creation of the first "town" or settlement with more than a few
families, some leader said he was obviously appointed by the mysteries of
the universe -- it makes no difference what the words he used were, or
what the actual belief was, that is what rituals or texts or whatever -- the
reality was that the power came from God.
So the Divine Right of Kings was born.
leader. A number of families then got together and one leader among
them became a leader of them all. In the beginning it was through
consensus. It simply had to be for their was no other mechanism to
create a leader. The person who became the leader had to exhibit the
talents and the personality to get the job done.
It is often said that the strongest were the rulers, because they could
beat everyone up. But this is not really true, mostly because the strongest
are often without the personality that leads them to persuade others.
Also, the smartest among any group can always overpower, even kill, the
strongest with a lot less effort than might be supposed.
The way this still operates is that even the strongest brute
government can not keep the smartest people from getting around the
club of force. The smartest engage in the smuggling and the black
markets and hidden activities. The smart can always outwit the strong.
So it was back in the mists of time. The strongest did probably try to
overpower everyone else, but it couldn't have worked.
The smartest got together each day and went over what went wrong
and what was good and then tried to duplicate that effort the next day.
That they did so is evindent in the slow development of hunting and
gathering systems into an agricultural system and domesticated animals.
If the hominoids kept going back to the same place were food and shelter
were obtainable then they were making conscious decisions. Even
animals have enough conscious decision making power to remember
where food and shelter -- the very things of survival -- are. Even the
lowliest insect knows were food and shelter are likely to be obtained, and
within its tiny world and tiny mind there is a thought about what is going
to happen tomorrow based on what happened today. That a bird returns
to its nest is a sure sign that it learned something: where its nest is.
The smartest in prehistory were the ones who became the rulers. As
the technologies at hand increased and more families joined together and
the amount of goods and services increased, and as the last few millennia
before writing occurred, the development of religion came about as the
people gained the consciousness to assess the world around them. The
smartest had to know that there was something larger going on than their
own existence. As they ran across different things, and different people,
and no matter how far they went there was still a place further to go, they
began to realize that there was something larger.
The enormity was so huge and the mysteries so great to these people
that religion was born to explain the unexplainable. The more they knew
the more they knew they didn't know. So ideas and theories and
concepts developed. And the smartest realized that they could use
religion as part of their tools to exercise power.
Since all this was new there was no model to follow. Progress was
limited to the ideas that were possible. Once a workable model was
established, however inefficient it was in practice, it was duplicated by
those with worse levels of success at satisfying the need.
People, being cooperative animals, got together in ever large
conglomerations of people. One rose up to be preeminent. He was at
first the smartest, and he then tired to get his family first in line for the
necessities of life. Thus he used every tool at his disposable. And
religion was the one of those tools. At some point, nearly simultaneously
with the creation of the first "town" or settlement with more than a few
families, some leader said he was obviously appointed by the mysteries of
the universe -- it makes no difference what the words he used were, or
what the actual belief was, that is what rituals or texts or whatever -- the
reality was that the power came from God.
So the Divine Right of Kings was born.