Thread by @SteB777

1) @GeorgeMonbiot is entirely correct about humans having a weakness "that makes us highly susceptible to charlatans". I have spent a life time, 50 years of my life, thinking about this very deeply and I have a fully worked out explanation consistent with the evidence.

https://twitter.com/GeorgeMonbiot/status/1331143084760051715

2) Here I will lay out this explanation in this tweet thread. It's obviously in abbreviated form and I can't provide all the supporting evidence here because of the format.

3) Let me first outline a basic thinking tool I've developed for thinking about this. I imagine the whole of history (not just written events), but everything that's happened, on a timeline like that of a video, which you can rewind, replay etc.

4) I try and summarise everything that is known using a thing I call "accurate approximation" in which I don't over-extend simplifications beyond what can be known for certain, a prime weakness in our culture about which I could write a book.

5) Essentially, to test out whether something is a real human trait or a recent cultural tradition not innate to humans, I replay my conceptual historical timeline and ask was that trait present in human societies before a certain point in time.

6) Powerful rulers, ruling over large societies, which were not just one tribe don't seem to have existed before about 5,000 years ago i.e. there is no real archaeological evidence of it. Here, we must separate a ruler, a fairly recent innovation in human society, from a leader.

7) A leader is someone who a society choses to follow, and who they can chose not to follow, where a schism can happen, and those who chose to follow a different leader can break away. A ruler is someone who rules over a delineated territory by force.

8) To rule by force you need some sort of core military force, which is stronger than any temporary mob of people objecting to rule by the ruler. A relatively small force of trained, disciplined and armed soldiers, say a hundred, can defeat an uncoordinated mob of thousands.

9) The way a ruler operates is to defeat any uprising against them using their disciplined, armed and trained army to put down any uprising using deadly force, and terrorise the people by making an example of supposed ringleaders.

10) It's basically the same tactic gangsters use. People learn they can never win, because they can never organize a resistance fast enough to overwhelm this army before it defeats this uprising.

11) As I say, this model of rule does not seem to have existed much before 5,000 years ago. There is no exact date when it arose and it did not arise everywhere at the same time. It is just a dynamic, which arises when societies become not merely one tribe.

12) Humans never evolved to deal with this sort of rule. Homo sapiens, our species was fully evolved many tens of thousands of years ago, and as a species we've been around for about 200-300,000 years.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human

13) In other words, for most of modern human existence we lived in small bands of people, all who spoke the same language, had the same culture, and who had known everyone else for the whole of their life, and the lives of the others in this band and larger tribe.

14) This pattern was the same with pre-modern human hominids. The important thing to bear in mind that this societal pattern existed not just for most of modern human existence, but also our hominid upright walking ancestral line.

15) Therefore we evolved behavioural traits i.e. innate behaviour to cope with life in relatively small bands of people, who's most important trait was cooperation.

16) If there's a unique human behaviour aside from tool making and the mastery of technology in a plastic way, it's cooperation through communication. That is what allowed a relative weak species to be able to over power any other predator no matter how large, fierce or powerful.

17) This cooperation and coordination is best achieved by following a leader, a human everyone in that small band recognises as the most able, the wisest, with the best decision making ability and tactical judgement.

18) As I've explained a leader is someone that society innately trusts and follows. They were not rulers who ruled by force. No such rulers existed in the whole existence of our species, or the ancestors of our species. So we evolved no ability to deal with them.

19) Rulers, can't just rule by force and terror. They must also convince the people they rule over, that they are their leader, their benefactor, their protector, the traditional type of leader humans have always followed.

20) However, these new rulers enjoyed wealth and lifestyles far removed from that of those who they ruled over and were in fact using them and exploiting them for their own benefit, very much in the manner of a farmer, farming livestock.

21) Please note this is not an attack on farmers, just explaining how livestock farming operates. The farmer must fool their livestock into believing they are their protector, their benefactor who feeds them. Even though the actual intention is to eat them when they are ready.

22) Most livestock species also had an evolved trait to follow certain dominant animals, and the farmer plays that role, exploiting the evolved behavioural trait of that species to follow a leader.

23) Again, I am not evaluating this in a judgemental way, just saying how it works. As long as the livestock don't realise what their fate is, and how they are being exploited for the ends of someone else, the system works.

24) It is the same with human rulers. For most of the time they convincingly play the role of being the natural leader, the protector and benefactor of their herd, although of course this is not their real objective.

25) Any society who decides they have had enough of their ruler, will soon find that their ruler is not the benign leader they pretend to be most of the time, and they will use terror and mass killing to perpetuate their rule.

26) Human rulers can get away with pretending to be a natural leader, the benefactor and protector of their people, because of their control of our societies. They create a wall of secrecy, so most people do not see most of their life, their real traits.

27) In some of the earliest civilizations, where people lived in large towns and cities, such as the Indus Valley Civilizations, there is no clear evidence of them having rulers. Most of the houses were of the same size, with there being no great palaces.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_Val…

28) In other words, it becomes clear the rule by powerful rulers was a dynamic which emerged at a certain point on this timeline, and doesn't seemed to have existed before that point in time.

29) Archaeologists see evidence of high status individuals before that point, but most likely there were classic tribal leaders of a type which emerged, when these tribes got bigger.

30) A classic case of how someone went from being a tribal leader, to an all powerful ruler in one life time, was Genghis Kahn. He went from being a Mongol tribal leader, to the emperor of what we now call China.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genghis_K…

31) However, Genghis Khan did this by organizing the Mongols into a dominant fighting force, and conquering a large civilization, and inserting himself into the pre-existing role of Emperor within that civilization.

32) The first "rulers" couldn't do this because there were no pre-existing empires and role of Emperor to insert themselves into, and this emerged out of long and gradual processes.

33) I outline all this on the basis that to solve a problem, you first need to fully understand the problem, before a solution can be found.

34) Everything I say is pretty clear cut from the archaeological record. Yet the strange thing is you will not find this truthful narrative of how rulers emerged in societies, and how rulers operate. You won't even find any distinction between leaders and rulers.

35) What I am ultimately saying is that by necessity rulers must rule by deceit, hiding from the people they rule, that their true intention is to exploit the society they rule for their own ends.

36) You see, all along rulers have exploited this evolved weakness in humans, like a farmer exploits the evolved behavioural traits in the livestock they farm.

37) People would not willingly except the rule of a powerful ruler exploiting them for their ruler's own ends if they were aware of what their real intentions before. So they must project the flimflam of the benign leader, and hide their true nature, to keep their livestock calm.

38) It is my firm belief that to create a much better and sustainable society that can address the climate and ecological emergency, created by these powerful exploitative rulers, we must understand the true nature of our society and how it came into being.

39) This true narrative of what we are, and how we got there is really not too complex for anyone to understand. The obstacle to understanding it, is that powerful rulers have filled people's heads with all sorts of falsehoods about what they are, and how we got here.

40) Overall, misunderstanding is a much bigger problem that no understanding. When people misunderstand something, they don't see this misunderstanding. They believe they do understand and they firmly believe they know what we are and how we got here.