> In Kemp’s narrative, our retrograde rush toward these vicious social structures has been less about consensus than the relentless ascent of the wrong sort of people. Goliath hierarchies select for assholes — or, to use Kemp’s preferred epithet, “dark triad” personalities: people with high levels of psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism.
> In this way, humankind gravitated “from hunting and gathering to being hunted and gathered,” Kemp writes. Early states had little to distinguish them from “criminal gangs running protection rackets.”
... are fair assessments of how we got here, imo. If you have criminals in control, able to institute a self-serving brainwashing culture (education) in the populace for a few hundred years, we are where you would expect - with people demanding forcible extraction from their masters out of fear (government, taxes).
> In this way, humankind gravitated “from hunting and gathering to being hunted and gathered,” Kemp writes. Early states had little to distinguish them from “criminal gangs running protection rackets.”
... are fair assessments of how we got here, imo. If you have criminals in control, able to institute a self-serving brainwashing culture (education) in the populace for a few hundred years, we are where you would expect - with people demanding forcible extraction from their masters out of fear (government, taxes).