In a world controlled by psychopaths bullies, we feel this strike in the gut constantly. Time to stand up for a fairer world. Thank you for your clever insights and words Chusana.
Appreciate your words, Irene. I have to admit that it does feel strange to start seeing the bullies more clearly.... and there are so many of them!! If you were to ask me a few years back, I would still be operating under the assumption that these 'bullies' don't know what they're doing, they don't know any better. But how naive was I? Cruel people know exactly what they are doing because they really do view life SO differently to the more empathetic people. Life, for these bullies, is about 'winning' and being 'better' and 'above' everyone else. It's a shame that we're leaving these people to set the dominant narrative for how we should be spending our life.
To tie this into politics, look at Jonathan Haidt's Five Moral Foundations, most importantly his chart. It shows that for liberals, Fairness and Caring is all-important, and for conservatives, less so. Conservatives, OTOH, value Authority, Loyalty and Sanctity higher than F/C, and these hold little weight with the left. Haidt's conclusion (which I disagree with) is that conservatives have broader moral grounds for their positions.
Thank you for introducing me to this. Very interesting and I have to agree with you that I also disagree with the definition of moral grounds being "broader" as being more ethical. To me, it's already a recipe for disaster if we prioritise authority and loyalty over fairness. Surely these elements should be prioritised.
Essentially, this is where my frustration is. The prioritisation of the "status quo" (e.g. because that's the norm, because that powerful person says so) has led us to this very moment when some of us stopped thinking for ourselves as well as letting the obvious unfairness continues.
Nothing has been more eye-opening than calling out bad behaviour and watching other rally around the 'system' instead of the person harmed. It really is fascinating to see it plays out in real life. So here I am, writing, processing and letting off some steam on Substack! Sometimes you just have to accept that it's human nature and that, ultimately, most of us are still driven by fear.
Another excellent piece, highly relevant in times of soaring inequality and injustice.
I'm glad you found some value in Arnold's work - his podcast is the single most intellectually stimulating thing I've encountered over the last five years. The first three episodes of his podcast are phenomenal and provide a great entry point for the larger topics he's working on. I haven't regretted listening to a single episode so far. (Plus he's one of the smartest people I know personally.)
In those episodes (“The biology of the left-right divide”), he argues that there is a natural basis for the never-ending political quarrel (and conflict) between the two basic opposing camps, those that favor egalitarianism (liberals) and those that favor authoritarianism (conservatives). Interestingly, when you poll people in a relatively free society, you’ll find that they fall onto the spectrum between egalitarianism and authoritarianism in a “normal distribution,” aka a bell curve with most somewhere in the middle, and fewer and fewer towards both extremes. This hints at a biological component, since other randomized attributes like body height or IQ in a given population show the same distribution.
Now we can add the insight of John Gowdy from his latest book “Ultrasocial: The Evolution of Human Nature and the Quest for a Sustainable Future,” in which he points out how, historically, authoritarian systems have made a sport out of exterminating dissidents and crushing rebellions (like the Romans who crucified six thousand renegade slaves after Spartacus’ failed revolution) – thus systematically eliminating those on the egalitarian side of the spectrum from the collective gene pool. We can expect that society has, as a direct result, slowly become more authoritarian-tending over the past few thousand years (aka recorded history, aka the rise of civilizations).
In regards to Thai society, I think that the rampant authoritarianism here is (among many other things) a direct result of the Thammasat University Massacre in 1976, when basically the whole next generation of egalitarian thinkers, politicians, philosophers and activists was either exterminated or terrorized into submission/silence. It’s those people that Thai society lacks right now, and why things seem so hopeless. Ever since, it was only the authoritarians that have called the shots.
I’m very happy to hear your opinion on Confucius, and I totally agree – I’m extremely skeptical of most of his views, and never understood why people think he’s so smart. He’s strongly authoritarian, an enemy of every anarchist, and often seems like some sad, frustrated old dude who seriously believes that he deserves respect and power just because of his age.
I mean, it makes *some* sense that old people’s opinions in an agrarian society have more value/weight, because they simply have more experience and are thus generally “better at stuff” – but that doesn’t mean that a) they can abuse, oppress and exploit younger people, or b) that this still works in an age where someone can spend 50 years of their life watching TV and still thinks their age makes them more qualified.
Furthermore, it only works in a society where things stay more or less the same. When the world changes as fast as it does today, most old people simply fail to understand it fully. The vast majority of older people today are intellectually and ideologically stuck in the 20th century and are thus utterly unable to deal with (or even comprehend) the rapid changes shaping our future.
I often think about how different Asian societies would look like if Lao Tze (harmony with Nature) would have been favored over Confucius (harmony with society). But only the latter validates and reinforces the belief systems of those in positions of power, so perhaps it was pretty much inevitable?
It’s also always important to point out that, for the vast majority of our species’ long history, societies were much more on the egalitarian side of the spectrum. Most contemporary hunter-gatherer societies still employ so-called “leveling mechanisms,” sophisticated cultural techniques aimed at nipping any would-be autocrat in the bud.
The most famous example comes from anthropologist Richard Lee’s time with the !Kung-San (“bushmen”) in the Kalahari desert. At the end of one of his stays with them, he purchased the largest cow he could find from some nearby pastoralists to gift to the indigenous community he stayed with. When Lee gave the cow to the ǃKung, they responded by mocking Lee and laughing about his gift, calling it a "bag of bones" and joking that they would have to eat the horns because there was no meat on it. When Lee asked an elder as to why the village responded in such a hurtful way to his generosity, the old man responded:
"When a young man kills much meat he comes to think of himself as a chief or a big man, and he thinks of the rest of us as his servants or inferiors. We can’t accept this. We refuse one who boasts, for someday his pride will make him kill somebody. So we always speak of his meat as worthless. This way we cool his heart and make him gentle."
This common practice is called “shaming the meat,” and serves to curb authoritarian tendencies and ensure everyone is treated fairly and equally, despite differences in skill or competence.
Among Amazonian hunter-gatherers, a common leveling mechanism is “gambling for arrows”: the “owner” of a hunted animal (and thus the distributor of the meat) is not the person who shot it, but the person who made the arrow that killed it. Since everyone makes arrows and the distribution is randomized (through gambling and other games of chance), nobody has more power because he’s a better hunter. Nobody is able to monopolize this crucial skill and use it to gain advantage over others.
And your (excellent!) recommendations on how to deal with workplace bullies and petty tyrants actually reminded me a bit of everyday resistance strategies against colonial powers, laid out in James C. Scott’s remarkable book “Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance.” You don’t have to incite an outright rebellion in order to make things harder for the authoritarians.
If you’re not familiar with Scott’s work, I highly recommend his phenomenal magnum opus “The Art of Not Being Governed – An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia.” The single greatest book on SEAsian history I know, and the only one that’s written from those at the margins of empire – not the usual self-aggrandizement of the empires themselves.
Thanks a lot for writing about this issue – we as a society would benefit greatly from having open and earnest discussions about power and authority.
Brilliant post, Chusana. It immediately brings to mind Melanie Joy's work on 'systems of oppression', particularly looking at industrialised (animal) agriculture. Those playing power games often have a decent sense of the game they are trying to play. As a result, through various means / methods, the actual patterns / realities are hidden from the rest of us. What you describe, which is effectively encouraging people to become more adept meta-cognitive observers (then courageous actors), speaks to me deeply (and I'm imagining soooooooo many others), largely because it helps us make the implicit more explicit. When the dynamics are genuinely out in the open, and we are able to see them for what they more realistically are, we massively enhance the possibility for normative action (we have more agency). Thank you for all of this work. Every post is on point!
Nathan, thank you for introducing me to Melanie Joy's work. This goes to show how much evil we're willing to justify simply because we don't want to feel the 'discomfort'. I admittedly have never questioned the systems before until after COVID... the lockdown was kind of the right place, right time combo that got me questioning things I've not taken much notice before.
When I researched into Frans de Waal, he's also another thinker who recognised this early on. He saw how animals clearly exhibit empathy, cooperation and even moral judgement, but still, he faced resistance from the scientific community when he suggested that these qualities weren't unique to humans.
So in part, I am grateful that modern science is now circling back to what indigenous and animist traditions have always understood... that we are not as separate from the rest of nature as we were taught or like to believe.
Thank you, Randolph. It is wild how long it takes to see these things. I honestly did not fully realise until my late 30s just how much I'd been conditioned to limit myself around my mother. It was my husband who noticed it first and he turned to me one day and asked, "Why do you do that?" - and that question hit me hard. I can never just be when I'm with her and there's always that instinct to hold back, soften my opinions, make sure I'm not "too much", too intense, too 'me'. Shrinking myself became second nature, and now I have some catching up to do!
I have to admit, I'm not familiar with this reference of Moon Goddess but I can't help but smile thinking that you have a universal guiding force nudging you ever so lovingly. Kinda reminds me of when I read the Alchemist's "when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it".
Here's to catching up, at any age, with the versions of ourselves we were always meant to be.
In a world controlled by psychopaths bullies, we feel this strike in the gut constantly. Time to stand up for a fairer world. Thank you for your clever insights and words Chusana.
Appreciate your words, Irene. I have to admit that it does feel strange to start seeing the bullies more clearly.... and there are so many of them!! If you were to ask me a few years back, I would still be operating under the assumption that these 'bullies' don't know what they're doing, they don't know any better. But how naive was I? Cruel people know exactly what they are doing because they really do view life SO differently to the more empathetic people. Life, for these bullies, is about 'winning' and being 'better' and 'above' everyone else. It's a shame that we're leaving these people to set the dominant narrative for how we should be spending our life.
To tie this into politics, look at Jonathan Haidt's Five Moral Foundations, most importantly his chart. It shows that for liberals, Fairness and Caring is all-important, and for conservatives, less so. Conservatives, OTOH, value Authority, Loyalty and Sanctity higher than F/C, and these hold little weight with the left. Haidt's conclusion (which I disagree with) is that conservatives have broader moral grounds for their positions.
Thank you for introducing me to this. Very interesting and I have to agree with you that I also disagree with the definition of moral grounds being "broader" as being more ethical. To me, it's already a recipe for disaster if we prioritise authority and loyalty over fairness. Surely these elements should be prioritised.
Essentially, this is where my frustration is. The prioritisation of the "status quo" (e.g. because that's the norm, because that powerful person says so) has led us to this very moment when some of us stopped thinking for ourselves as well as letting the obvious unfairness continues.
Nothing has been more eye-opening than calling out bad behaviour and watching other rally around the 'system' instead of the person harmed. It really is fascinating to see it plays out in real life. So here I am, writing, processing and letting off some steam on Substack! Sometimes you just have to accept that it's human nature and that, ultimately, most of us are still driven by fear.
Another excellent piece, highly relevant in times of soaring inequality and injustice.
I'm glad you found some value in Arnold's work - his podcast is the single most intellectually stimulating thing I've encountered over the last five years. The first three episodes of his podcast are phenomenal and provide a great entry point for the larger topics he's working on. I haven't regretted listening to a single episode so far. (Plus he's one of the smartest people I know personally.)
In those episodes (“The biology of the left-right divide”), he argues that there is a natural basis for the never-ending political quarrel (and conflict) between the two basic opposing camps, those that favor egalitarianism (liberals) and those that favor authoritarianism (conservatives). Interestingly, when you poll people in a relatively free society, you’ll find that they fall onto the spectrum between egalitarianism and authoritarianism in a “normal distribution,” aka a bell curve with most somewhere in the middle, and fewer and fewer towards both extremes. This hints at a biological component, since other randomized attributes like body height or IQ in a given population show the same distribution.
Now we can add the insight of John Gowdy from his latest book “Ultrasocial: The Evolution of Human Nature and the Quest for a Sustainable Future,” in which he points out how, historically, authoritarian systems have made a sport out of exterminating dissidents and crushing rebellions (like the Romans who crucified six thousand renegade slaves after Spartacus’ failed revolution) – thus systematically eliminating those on the egalitarian side of the spectrum from the collective gene pool. We can expect that society has, as a direct result, slowly become more authoritarian-tending over the past few thousand years (aka recorded history, aka the rise of civilizations).
In regards to Thai society, I think that the rampant authoritarianism here is (among many other things) a direct result of the Thammasat University Massacre in 1976, when basically the whole next generation of egalitarian thinkers, politicians, philosophers and activists was either exterminated or terrorized into submission/silence. It’s those people that Thai society lacks right now, and why things seem so hopeless. Ever since, it was only the authoritarians that have called the shots.
I’m very happy to hear your opinion on Confucius, and I totally agree – I’m extremely skeptical of most of his views, and never understood why people think he’s so smart. He’s strongly authoritarian, an enemy of every anarchist, and often seems like some sad, frustrated old dude who seriously believes that he deserves respect and power just because of his age.
I mean, it makes *some* sense that old people’s opinions in an agrarian society have more value/weight, because they simply have more experience and are thus generally “better at stuff” – but that doesn’t mean that a) they can abuse, oppress and exploit younger people, or b) that this still works in an age where someone can spend 50 years of their life watching TV and still thinks their age makes them more qualified.
Furthermore, it only works in a society where things stay more or less the same. When the world changes as fast as it does today, most old people simply fail to understand it fully. The vast majority of older people today are intellectually and ideologically stuck in the 20th century and are thus utterly unable to deal with (or even comprehend) the rapid changes shaping our future.
I often think about how different Asian societies would look like if Lao Tze (harmony with Nature) would have been favored over Confucius (harmony with society). But only the latter validates and reinforces the belief systems of those in positions of power, so perhaps it was pretty much inevitable?
It’s also always important to point out that, for the vast majority of our species’ long history, societies were much more on the egalitarian side of the spectrum. Most contemporary hunter-gatherer societies still employ so-called “leveling mechanisms,” sophisticated cultural techniques aimed at nipping any would-be autocrat in the bud.
The most famous example comes from anthropologist Richard Lee’s time with the !Kung-San (“bushmen”) in the Kalahari desert. At the end of one of his stays with them, he purchased the largest cow he could find from some nearby pastoralists to gift to the indigenous community he stayed with. When Lee gave the cow to the ǃKung, they responded by mocking Lee and laughing about his gift, calling it a "bag of bones" and joking that they would have to eat the horns because there was no meat on it. When Lee asked an elder as to why the village responded in such a hurtful way to his generosity, the old man responded:
"When a young man kills much meat he comes to think of himself as a chief or a big man, and he thinks of the rest of us as his servants or inferiors. We can’t accept this. We refuse one who boasts, for someday his pride will make him kill somebody. So we always speak of his meat as worthless. This way we cool his heart and make him gentle."
This common practice is called “shaming the meat,” and serves to curb authoritarian tendencies and ensure everyone is treated fairly and equally, despite differences in skill or competence.
Among Amazonian hunter-gatherers, a common leveling mechanism is “gambling for arrows”: the “owner” of a hunted animal (and thus the distributor of the meat) is not the person who shot it, but the person who made the arrow that killed it. Since everyone makes arrows and the distribution is randomized (through gambling and other games of chance), nobody has more power because he’s a better hunter. Nobody is able to monopolize this crucial skill and use it to gain advantage over others.
And your (excellent!) recommendations on how to deal with workplace bullies and petty tyrants actually reminded me a bit of everyday resistance strategies against colonial powers, laid out in James C. Scott’s remarkable book “Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance.” You don’t have to incite an outright rebellion in order to make things harder for the authoritarians.
If you’re not familiar with Scott’s work, I highly recommend his phenomenal magnum opus “The Art of Not Being Governed – An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia.” The single greatest book on SEAsian history I know, and the only one that’s written from those at the margins of empire – not the usual self-aggrandizement of the empires themselves.
Thanks a lot for writing about this issue – we as a society would benefit greatly from having open and earnest discussions about power and authority.
Brilliant post, Chusana. It immediately brings to mind Melanie Joy's work on 'systems of oppression', particularly looking at industrialised (animal) agriculture. Those playing power games often have a decent sense of the game they are trying to play. As a result, through various means / methods, the actual patterns / realities are hidden from the rest of us. What you describe, which is effectively encouraging people to become more adept meta-cognitive observers (then courageous actors), speaks to me deeply (and I'm imagining soooooooo many others), largely because it helps us make the implicit more explicit. When the dynamics are genuinely out in the open, and we are able to see them for what they more realistically are, we massively enhance the possibility for normative action (we have more agency). Thank you for all of this work. Every post is on point!
Nathan, thank you for introducing me to Melanie Joy's work. This goes to show how much evil we're willing to justify simply because we don't want to feel the 'discomfort'. I admittedly have never questioned the systems before until after COVID... the lockdown was kind of the right place, right time combo that got me questioning things I've not taken much notice before.
When I researched into Frans de Waal, he's also another thinker who recognised this early on. He saw how animals clearly exhibit empathy, cooperation and even moral judgement, but still, he faced resistance from the scientific community when he suggested that these qualities weren't unique to humans.
So in part, I am grateful that modern science is now circling back to what indigenous and animist traditions have always understood... that we are not as separate from the rest of nature as we were taught or like to believe.
Here's to making the implicit more explicit!
My pleasure. Grateful to be journeying together.
Thank you, Randolph. It is wild how long it takes to see these things. I honestly did not fully realise until my late 30s just how much I'd been conditioned to limit myself around my mother. It was my husband who noticed it first and he turned to me one day and asked, "Why do you do that?" - and that question hit me hard. I can never just be when I'm with her and there's always that instinct to hold back, soften my opinions, make sure I'm not "too much", too intense, too 'me'. Shrinking myself became second nature, and now I have some catching up to do!
I have to admit, I'm not familiar with this reference of Moon Goddess but I can't help but smile thinking that you have a universal guiding force nudging you ever so lovingly. Kinda reminds me of when I read the Alchemist's "when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it".
Here's to catching up, at any age, with the versions of ourselves we were always meant to be.