Posted: Oct 01, 2019 8:24 am
Blackadder wrote:I wonder (and this is pure uninformed speculation on my part) whether it isn’t misdirected evolved survival behaviour? A bit like seeing ghosts is a misdirected expression of our highly evolved ability to recognise predators from scant visual information.
Consider this: early humans lived in small groups, quite possibly headed up by an Alpha male. For the non-Alpha males, survival would depend on accepting and demonstrating their subjugation to the Alpha male, otherwise he would see them as rivals and kill them or drive them out.
As this mode of living became disused, perhaps the need for subjugation remained. And what better object before which to practice self abasement than the Alpha-est of Alpha males, an angry god who controls daylight, weather, disease and crops? You could see how the constant grovelling and begging for favours would satisfy an ancient and primitive instinct.
Wouldn't it be lovely if there were a nice 'technical' analysis for how people got into this mess? Origin stories are unreliable now, and many details are lost to the guesswork of sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists. There aren't any alpha males any more, except on very small and manageable scales. I mean, Dominic Cummings is no alpha male, and neither, for that matter, is BJ. Another easy rationalization is that human juveniles just take too fucking long to mature, sometimes an entire lifetime, and as such, treat others as authorities even when it is not appropriate, except insofar as they need help lacing their shoes or concluding trading arrangements.
Clive Durdle wrote:Durkheim:-)
