I think one of the principal problems any person or government or social structure faces is justification for power. Because power is it’s job. Government (or any social institution) exists to do something, it is a psycho-social mechanism. Power is their business because they require energy and do work and have function. And justification is the mechanism by which they absorb energy and are able to convert it into action and perform their function.
Power is really just the ability to take action. It comes in many forms. Action based on decision is the critical ability of humans. It’s how we shape the future. Justification and assent is the critical currency. Power can be gained and justification acquired by many means: technology, mythology, popular sentiment, social influence. You need some sort of argument, because the thing you’re ultimately trying to steer is this ability of humans to alter the future based on decided action. It’s most powerful when it’s aggregated, when the powers of many are attuned to the same decision, the same action, the same future. But how do you manage that, and what currency do you use? There are many types of currency, and therefore many pathways to justification, and they change throughout time, some rising, some falling. And all are founded in some very basic aspects of life and the human personality.
The argument from vulnerability and positive prejudice is one of the most powerful human instincts. It’s one of the best, one of the oldest, and one of the most irresistible. And it’s time fo supremacy, alone above all others, has come. Children are weak and vulnerable, and we are predisposed to a positive prejudice toward them, especially when they’re crying and communicating fear and harm, and our natural instinct is the investment of unbounded parental authority into someone to solve that problem.
It’s a bit like how the Roman government would appoint dictators during a time of crisis. The most fundamental and instinctive form of that response is child and parent/guardian. We grant enormous authority, enormous asymmetry in relationship, and excuse almost any protective action taken. Just watch a kindergarten teacher sometime, and you’ll see kindness, compassion, and absolute authority. And this argument, the argument from child vulnerability, is one of the most itrresitable. The authority it grants is absolute, and the excusable measures allowed and prejudice allowed and license allowed are almost unbounded. You would do anything to protect a child. Arguments because come unnecessary, because I said so. Explanations become unnecessary. And the authority granted to someone parenting a child is greater than any other we allow. They assume a responsibility that is unmatched, and so also a sovereignty that is unmatched.
You can hijack all that to sieze the reins of powers in a society. It doesn’t just work with mothers and children. It works for anyone who can convince you that they’re acting as a mother, about anyone you can paint as an effective child. Motherhood is a benevolent tyranny. The idea that it couldn’t be abstracted or relocated into a political force is absurd, and fails to understand from whence all political forces originally derive. All government, all society, is the pack writ large, abstracted, expanded, adapted. All relations are familial, whether because they are inward facing and internal or outward facing and external. All law is patriarchal by its mythological nature. All conservation of culture is matriarchal by nature.
That’s super weird, but it is what it is. We can’t make something out of nothing. We are a particular sort of creature, with a particular set of innate abilities and technologies and frameworks we bring to the table, deeply tied to our embodied nature. We think like the things we are, not like dolphins or spiders or fungi or lizards. Our sticky fingerprints are all over everything we do. And we’re so deeply embedded within it we cannot imagine it as anything other than what it is, as everything, as perfectly ordinary and independent, and in no way saturated with our unique character. As if a lizard of similar intelligence would think like us or organize society like us or build a civilization on similar innate psychological and archetypal foundations.
We are mammals. Unusual mammals. Pack mammals, exceptionally familial, and among the very few where the males are somewhat maternal. These are the foundations of our power, not just over the world but over one another, an inner world we inhabit as pack animals far more than other kinds of living things. All society, all law, are built on the innate power and structure of the pack, including things like the investment of ultimate power into an authority figure for the purpose of protecting the young and vulnerable. It’s not just authority, it’s one of the primary fundamental sources of all authority (not the only, but one strong one). You can build a civilization on that, a law, a government, a culture, a justification for all kinds of authority and action, all kinds of judgements. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s stable, or wise, or infallible. But it’s strong.
Making Nobody Happy 