Wanting a King
Anything would be humanly possible if it weren’t for human nature.
There is a zone in large-scale social interaction called ideal—a perfect balance between self-reliance, ambition, and selflessness, where social harmony is possible. Needless to say, it doesn’t exist. Human beings simply are not what they are in theory. In mobs they either gravitate to the deep end, or get lost in the anonymity of the shallows; and individually, given power, they rot within.
We generally take for granted, like Hobbes, that civilization (i.e., the creation of the state) has been a good move. That living in large social groups, and harnessing the exponential creative possibilities of large-scale cooperation, have been desirable, if not inevitable. Certainly, we tend to believe, large-scale settled social life is an improvement over the hunter-gatherer lifestyle that preceded it—not all at once and not universally, as James C. Scott argues in his 2017 book Against the Grain. But Scott also questions the glory of that gradual transition into sedentary, agriculture-based lives, pointing out the miseries that came with it. It seems dishonest to blame civilization for our anxieties and discomforts while enjoying its benefits, but there’s no mistaking a latent sense in society at large of something spiritually damaging in our submission to the strictures of mass life. Thoreau went to Walden Pond because he “wished to live deliberately”—that is, apart from the coercions and sops of the state, to discover what was left when you rid yourself of them, and most of us have no trouble understanding and admiring that impulse. The problem with freedom, of course, is the enormous responsibility that comes with it. We all “yearn to breathe free” but are rarely willing to pay the price for the privilege. Resisting tyranny is a full-time job and requires the hardest work of all: doing the research and thinking originally. We can’t channel state propaganda and call ourselves free. It’s easier to conform and complain than to dig beneath the surface and take full responsibility for ourselves.
Unable to imagine any alternatives, and able to live now and then like people in beer commercials, one might ask what is so terrible about living in large social groups? One might answer, it dilutes morality. There are more places and ways to hide in large groups. And now, with all the sophisticated social media, AI, and the dominance of fashionable cynicism, it’s even easier. You discover that you can do mean things, and hurt people, abstractly, without much wear and tear on the conscience. Also, though we’ve always created “front” selves for social interaction, now there are better tools for it and it’s all more calculating. The groups we are a part of, macro and micro, are mostly an abstraction, and we are free to make whatever grotesque exaggerations out of other members that suit us. We are genetically disposed to interact one-on-one with other people, and when we replace those interactions with artificial ones we undermine the respect for others that is the foundation of morality—which in turn obscures the violence of competition that drives the state. As Hobbes knew, human beings are always in competition with each other. Given the opportunity, they will take advantage of their fellows, and call it by another name.
The state controls by defining possibility. The state offers a prescribed way of processing reality, a lowest common denominator vision of what human life should be, and a set of diversionary entertainments—politics, religion, mass art, sports, drugs—to rein in the naturally roving mind. There’s so much “advice” out there on the internet now about how to succeed in this or that, how to interview, how to pitch ideas, how to market yourself, how to Win, how to get a spot in the system, how to make the most of your conformity, how to be “savvy” in the social media that are stealing your soul, how to please the master. Articles and tweets and commercials everywhere: this is how you should live, this is what you should want, this is what will make you happy.
In large groups, these compulsions to do as we’re told are too easily disguised.
And our innate tribalism too easily exploited.
Magicians pull off elaborate tricks by getting us to look the other way. In our society the creation and fomenting of tribal rivalry achieves the same effect. We can’t see what’s at the root of things, what’s taking advantage of us, when we’re looking at a decoy.
Today in America we are engaged in another great civil war, not to test whether the ideals behind the founding of this nation can long endure, but to argue about what they were. And we can’t agree on much but that something has gone wrong. So wrong, some extreme quarters believe, that nothing can save us but an authoritarian leader. A king.
Wanting a king is hardly an outlandish idea. The real revolution was not wanting one.
Human beings seem to be predisposed to anoint a leader, a savior—the haves to keep things as they are, disguised as returning them to an idealized exaggeration of what they were; the have-nots to hope for better cards on the next deal. Given human nature, the first group can easily manipulate the latter by convincing them that they’re both after the same thing: the recovery of a lost better world.
And it can be very convincing. Our minds are constantly seeking guidance, something to make the decisions, to take control, tell us how and what to think, what is right and wrong. In the evolution of modernity since the Enlightenment, that responsibility has increasingly been falling on, or rather, within, us. We have lost the outside help. Fundamentalists want a stable hierarchy—a “God,” or control center, a Führer. They are uncomfortable with things being charismatic, enigmatic, relative—uncertain in any way. They loathe randomness and fluidity across what they consider fixed borders. And to them, giving everybody a voice and power just creates a muddle.
Advocates for a strong man want a revival of “American” values and way of life—their version of which I can’t find defined specifically anywhere in our founding documents; just as they want a return to “Christian” values—and, again, I can’t find their version defined specifically in Scripture. All I find is, in the first case, the general idea of personal liberty and equality, a government blocked from becoming tyrannical, and an assumption of the self-reliance of the citizenry needed to make all that work; and in the second, a reliance on the existence of an alternative reality, a change of our inner nature revering that reality, and an ethic of non-violence. In both cases, we ourselves, in our capacity for inner transformation, are the strong men, and the invitation is to self-creation (rebirth), not servility. If it weren’t so omnipresent, it would be shocking to observe not just how different, but opposite from, their primal ideals our institutions have evolved to be. It is hard to see any trace of Emerson’s “self-reliance” in the bingeing on propaganda of the masses today. It is even harder to see the humility and non-violence of Jesus in the modern monetized and politicized church.
* * *
Plato’s mistrust of democracy has been fully validated in modern America. The natural human propensity for selfishness, moral laziness, and corruption has triumphed. We have been spoiled by our freedom, and spend more energy dissatisfied with it than grateful for it, blind to its fragility. And we have facilitated the rise of demagogues, as Plato knew would happen. What have we created? The bloated bureaucracy of the state on the one hand, with all its inefficiency, waste, and avoidance of responsibility; and the shock, on the other, that America is now harvesting the inevitable fruits of its originating ideals of of equality and liberty, as well as the fruits of their betrayal, and is and until it fractures forever will be, something different from a nation solely of white Christian heterosexual Europeans. As for the modern state church, there is hardly a trace of the original ethic left, only a “defeat” of death through a sacrifice not our own, through which we can continue our earthly lives in magical form—based not on action but belief. That is, not spiritual but political. We forget that “no sign shall be given to this generation,” and “Neither shall they say, lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.”
History has many examples of great leaders, and we could use one right about now, but even more we could use a transformation of the needy, vindictive thought patterns of the led. Unfortunately, neither our vision of the leader, nor of the led, takes into account human nature. Those advocating for an authoritarian are the ones who have no interest in general social welfare and believe in magic. They’re either unaware, or don’t care, that once that paradigm gets in the door it will be available for any ideology, and it’s unlikely we will move backward from there any time soon.
Is the alternative a swollen bureaucracy and the leader hardly a king but more a benevolent figure trying to please and provide for everybody, including those without the capacity to please or provide for themselves?
The worst full of passionate intensity on one hand, the best unfit for battle on the other. In both cases, an obsession with I ME MINE. That’s human nature. Where is the middle way? It seems out of our reach. If you want a brotherhood of man, you can only, as John Lennon sang, imagine it. People are what they are.
* * *
Most people accept, like Socrates, that a social person cannot supply all their own needs, and that we must rely on some kind of state. Today we are still trying to figure out what the best form of that would be, and still discovering that there is nothing that can accommodate everyone. The possibilities range from minimal to elaborate.
On the minimalist end of the spectrum there’s anarchy, typically associated with the radical left, the working class, and bombs, but its rejection of authority in general has come to appeal, usually under the name “libertarianism,” with an emphasis on private property, to the haves in a society who resist any impulse toward economic leveling. Anarchism and libertarianism share an aversion to globalization and war, but in modern times anarchism has a more socialistic, wealth-leveling flavor, and libertarianism (in spite of its left-wing origins) has embraced laissez-faire capitalism. It will accept a permanent underclass in order to keep the ideals of liberty and autonomy alive in the only way they can be kept alive: in a limited group.
Minimalist ideas of the state tend to reduce its role to guardianship of basic human rights, and autonomy, and nothing more.
It’s impossible to imagine such a government ever happening, and more than impossible to imagine a dictator-king bringing it off.
* * *
In Republic, Plato/Socrates offers an outline of the evolution of government: aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny—a story of wealth and power concentrated in small, privileged groups descending into the clamorous muddle of democracy and then into the inevitable corrective of tyranny; a movement, in Plato’s view, from best to worst. He concludes that the ideal government (rule by the wise) could only be realized by an ideal governor: the philosopher-king. This advanced being, in whom virtue and knowledge were co-equal, would be rigorously trained in philosophy, and devoted to essence, not appearance. He would be magnanimous, without ego, without property, immune to corruption.
Though history has known some ethical and effective leaders, with some even nominated as exemplars of a true philosopher-king—the second century AD Roman emperor Marcus Aurelias a top contender—none to my knowledge have come close, laughably not in our own era, to the wisdom, impartiality, and self-subordination Socrates describes.
Socrates recognized the pitfalls of human nature, and had a complex system for how these kings would be selected and bred (in a Dialogue that advocates eugenics for the citizenry and communal child-rearing)—but is there anything that can really prevent or overcome human nature?
The brilliant 17th century English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes also contemplated the concept of the ideal state. Like Plato he had little confidence in the masses, and saw the role of government as primarily to provide safety for its subjects—protecting them from a “state of nature.” Such a ponderous feat requires a ponderous force—a “leviathan”—strong central governance anchored in a monarch of absolute power. This sovereign doesn’t sound much like Socrates’ philosopher-king, but must rule absolutely and with impunity to keep the wolves away, and order in the masses, who have granted this power in exchange for protection. A protection racket, some might say.
In Hobbes’ view, man left to himself in nature (i.e. outside a state) is far from an idyllic hunter-gatherer, but a savage at war with all other people. War, Hobbes felt, is more natural to people than political order. People can’t handle liberty and will use it to exploit each other. Hobbes had the English Civil War, that so disrupted his life, as a model for what happens when central authority dissolves: a state in which human life truly is “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.” The only remedy was a dictator-king to quell the inherent competitiveness and violence of the human race, and defend his subjects from hostile outside forces. It was a contract: the sovereign’s effective providing of security legitimizes his power; and the subjects, in turn, cooperate and peacefully satisfy the needs of society. People, Hobbes believed, would accept servility in exchange for safety. They would have no incentive to cooperate if they were living in fear.
But one wonders: if the sovereign really could eliminate outside threats (which seems impossible), how could he prevent the inevitable rise of internal ones? And what would happen if the sovereign was unable to deliver but refused to surrender his power? Or, if he really was a good leader, how would society manage succession, and the chaos that would almost certainly surround it, upon his death?
A brutish life in nature, presumably, is inferior to a calculating, grudging, duplicitous life in a state, where one is constantly seeking advantage, constantly perfecting the performance of one’s roles. In fact, they are both “Bellum omnium contra omnes”—a war of all against all.
* * *
Democracy is a deeply flawed system, as Plato knew—even in concept as it erroneously assumes a reasonable (magical) human nature. People are not driven, rarely even convinced, by reason, but by emotion. Shifting the driving force of society from wisdom and submission (as Plato imagined it) to freedom brings out the basest and most materialistic instincts in people, along with endless bickering—a chaotic state that stifles cooperation, breeding a receptivity to magical salvation.
Nobody today who believes American democracy has run its course thinks in terms of a return to wisdom and reason and the sacrifice and discipline they require, but solely in terms of personal desire and fulfillment. Life is not about living, but getting. The haves are tired of propping up the have-nots; and the have-nots resent and fear the “equality” of those they perceive as more have-not than themselves, and envy the haves—and since they will never be haves, they have nothing to lose. Plato emphasized that the chaotic nature of this state of affairs would create a longing for order which would be filled by an opportunist with all the worst features of human nature. Funny thing about philosopher-king types: they may exist, but they don’t want anything to do with government.
The emphasis in capitalistic democracy on “unnecessary” consumption highlights the fact that the real driving force is not the system of governance, but of economics. Anti-democracy culture warriors feel personally threatened by the slow erosion of central authority since the Enlightenment, and its usurpation by what they perceive as relativism and nihilism—an inevitable process, I would say, mirrored in the undermining of the Newtonian world view since the early 20th century upheavals in physics. All things evolve. These warriors want authority, borders, clear categories. But their real driving motivation is keeping the economic system, that favors them, in place.
Since not wisdom or peace of mind or enlightenment, but wealth, is the driving force in a capitalistic democracy, any attempt to solve the real problems—the suicidal imperative of eternal growth and production, the fabricated need to consume and the inequality of wealth that results, the destruction of our living environment—will fail, blocked by the haves, resisted by the majority, emasculated by bureaucracy. And though these things are generally seen along party lines, they are in reality common to the system itself. Any substantial change by a swapping of politicians is a chimera. No matter who gets elected, and whatever lip service they are disguised by, the rich will stay rich and the poor will stay poor. Human nature will resist harmony and equity and, as Barnum knew, take the bait every time.
For not all, but most, of us, capitalism has delivered the goods—pretty much everything material we have; and, in spite of its shortcomings and insoluble dilemmas, democracy has given more people a decent life than any other system ever has. It’s hard not to believe that whatever our age of hatred and blame comes up with to replace it will be worse.
Since economic parity is off the table, we have been seduced not by economics but by cultural issues that push emotional buttons but don’t change the economic status quo. And that’s all we’re going to get: someone else’s values imposed on us and zero doors opening for the have-nots.
There are no philosopher-kings, no Marcus Aureliases, no benevolent leviathans today. If we must have a king, we’d better be prepared for a vain puppet, without morals, ethics, principles, or vision, serving at the pleasure of the small and wealthy groups who hired him. Groups that do have a vision.
There is no solution for our troubles but a change in how we think, which we can only hope will evolve with the coming of age of new generations. For now, thinking in couplets has paralyzed us. The propaganda has done its job: turned us away from our real problems and against each other. Both political extremes, in their intransigence, are a threat to democracy. The dominance of either over the other will be tyranny. We have to keep the power somewhere in between the extremes to survive.
We’re at a turning point.
If we destroy the blueprint, something tells me it will be a long time before human nature makes room for anything like it again.
May 10, 2024