Origins of Domination

It's something I've wondered deeply about. I might be totally wrong, but my opinion is that first some people figured out the power of lying. It might be that at the early days of humanity, we were extremely gullible and those who realized this, exploited this gullibility for personal gain and control of other human beings.

I mean, political views and understanding of social systems; it would only make sense if that came after the actual societal systems had been established. So, someone could come up and say "this large area here belongs to me, so you can't be here without my permission" and because nobody knows or understands how that would be bad to let a certain someone have it, people just go along with it.

Anyway, that's just my opinion. I'm curious to know what actually started all of this social hierarchy stuff off. Perhaps before evolving to what we are now we were at some point a species that followed a centralised entity? Idk...

As I understand it, the earliest forms of domination were religious in nature. The priests who gave thanks to God(s) for food - and who claimed credit for attaining God's benevolence to allow for such bounty - were also the ones who controlled any surplus of food and, thus, formed the basis for domination and class society. So, arguably, it was fear and superstition that led to domination in early humans.

Anyway, each time I see the title of this threat I read it as "organs of domination" - don't know what that says about me!

Big question. Problem is the origins of domination lie back in the period before recorded history (so-called "prehistory") and we have relatively negligeable information about that time. What little we do know of that period is from archaeology. There has, however, been some really interesting and exciting archaeology is recent years, particularly in the Fertile Crescent and Asia Minor (and some in Meso-America). For example the Çatalhöyük site. To whet your appetite:

Çatalhöyük had no apparent social classes, as no houses with distinctive features (belonging to royalty or religious hierarchy, for example) have been found so far. The most recent investigations also reveal little social distinction based on gender, with men and women receiving equivalent nutrition and seeming to have equal social status, as typically found in Paleolithic cultures.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87atalh%C3%B6y%C3%BCk

Which is interesting because Çatalhöyük is a Neolithic site - i.e. after the introduction of agriculture, which is often seen as the trigger for the historical "fall" into patriarchal and class society in many traditional accounts of the rise of domination in prehistoric times.

Many social animals have strict hierarchies. So you have to go pretty far back to understand how it developed. One could assume it's a successful way of organising as it's persisted for so long.

As far as I'm concerned the above is no excuse for current human domination.

Scallywag

Yeah I guess this is one of those questions that's impossible to properly answer given we're talking about a timespan that covers all of human history and prehistory.

Anyway it seems we have no choice, but to accept 'misanthropic' explanations for this, I.E ideas which suggest that humans are stupid, irrational, easy to manipulate and tribal/hostile to 'others' for example:

The fact we are very dependent upon elders during our infancy stage, which gives them the ability to manipulate us.

That in hunter gathering communities woman are immobilised by children, resulting in a gender division of labour and development of patriarchy.

Awareness of the fact we are going to die, and fear of death means we are more easy to control by others who come to hold the power of life and death over us.

Self awareness, results in a need to explain the world, which can results in spiritual/supernatural explanations which can be irrational and result in the formation of religions as a means of control.

The desire for individuals to live as well as possible, which results in some trying to gain power & security to live at a higher privileged state of material wellbeing than everyone else.

That we are scared of others and have loyalty to our own social groups, in the Ecology of Freedom Bookchin suggests that this was the case in hunter-gathering societies, they had loyalty to relatives and members of there group through blood oaths, but could be hostile and scared of outsiders.

I really hope I am wrong about all of these, because these are the sort of arguments used to justify the need for a state, laws and 'civilized society'.

I guess the role of anarchists though is to contrast the more positive aspects of human nature, our desire for freedom, and our attempts at resistance to oppression and domination throughout history.

I would disagree; I don't think that all of these statements justify the need for a hierarchical society, but rather the exact opposite. I mean, it would make sense if people fell for some bullshit stories, because nobody would make critical/skeptical statements about them; there was simply no need for it and we were only starting to develop as a species back then (we still are, but at least we can critically think now). Okay, so, if say hierarchy's origins were caused by people being gullible, then, I would argue that more people are starting to learn from the mistakes that were made back then and so we can make a better society which does not require and also despises social hierarchy and up-right (pun intended?) claims without reason, logic or anything along the lines backing them up.

Back in the day, people depended on elders, okay, but they could have lived just fine if they didn't depend on someone who claims to be "higher" than them. Gullibility may have lead us to the wrong path (may be, idk) but that doesn't mean that because mistakes were made before, doesn't justify social hierarchy in any way today, or back then, or at any time of human history!

Cooked

Many social animals have strict hierarchies. So you have to go pretty far back to understand how it developed. One could assume it's a successful way of organising as it's persisted for so long.

As far as I'm concerned the above is no excuse for current human domination.

Agreed it's no excuse (we're as close to bonobos as chimps, and have much more complex and varied social worlds than either...), but there's interesting evidence of behavioural variation even in primates with normally strict dominance hierarchies. E.g. This baboon troop became more egalitarian when many of the aggressive males died in a short period, and new males in the troop subsequently adopted those new behaviours (i.e. cultural transmission, not just chance elimination of 'aggressive genes').

In terms of the OP, calorie surpluses would seem to be a necessary condition for class domination, but not a sufficient one. But yeah, it's a huge question. I'm sympathetic to the argument that understanding the origin of something can't explain its persistence though, so it might not matter if definitive answers aren't possible.

Scallywag

Yeah I guess this is one of those questions that's impossible to properly answer given we're talking about a timespan that covers all of human history and prehistory.

Anyway it seems we have no choice, but to accept 'misanthropic' explanations for this, I.E ideas which suggest that humans are stupid, irrational, easy to manipulate and tribal/hostile to 'others' for example:

Cooked

Many social animals have strict hierarchies. So you have to go pretty far back to understand how it developed. One could assume it's a successful way of organising as it's persisted for so long.
As far as I'm concerned the above is no excuse for current human domination.

Scallywag - I see your query partially answered by Cooked.

To expand using essentially an evolutionary perspective - we can imagine that cultural traits (including social organization) are not to unlike biological traits in that over the long run - certain traits are selected for an against.

What implication does this have for the origins of domination?

It seems likely that hierarchical social systems evolved independently in several places around the globe. Some feature or constellation of features within those societies allowed them to survive and thrive. Now, those original adaptations live on.

I know that this may make some folks uncomfortable (a hierarchical system arising and being selected for), but remember the arbitrary and fickle nature of evolutionary selection. Biological traits can be positively selected for millions of years only to suddenly become deleterious with a slight change in environment. Some dinosaurs - whose massive size was selected for big time - found that trait to be a pain in the ass when trying to survive a global winter.

Now bringing us up to current times. It seems that we are stuck with deleterious cultural traits that may have - at some point in the distant past - gotten humanity through a rough patch - and now those same traits are strangling us! As I've discussed, this development is not unprecedented in nature.

Was originally a double post but wanted to add a final thought regarding cultural evolution:

In genetics - certain alleles that happen to be close to each other on a chromosome can be a inherited together and are understood as 'linked'. We can imagine that a similar situation may occur in cultural evolution.

Lets say that a certain subsistence strategy is highly effective and promotes great success for the group that uses it. The thing is, that strategy is culturally 'linked' to a hierarchical social system. During the process of cultural transmission, the strategy (which could be employed horizontally or vertically) is almost never inherited without the hierarchical social system. Thus they are 'linked' in a similar fashion that proximal alleles on the same chromosome can be.

This could mean that hierarchy and domination were never directly adaptive in the first place. If this analogy holds, it could mean that hierarchy has always been maladaptive (or at least neutral) and that the other traits that it piggybacked with made up the difference and then some. And again, here we are stuck with them.

Finally, one last analogy.

Natural selection for adaptive traits is only one of several mechanisms of evolution. Could other mechanisms be ported into this idea of cultural evolution?

Genetic drift - an evolutionary process whereby the vagaries of chance produce changing allele (trait) frequencies in subsequent generations. One feature of this process is the possibility of fixation; where a single trait achieves 100% incidence in a population, completely by chance.

It could be that the hierarchy / domination trait has reached fixation by no other process than luck. The fun part of this analogy is that another evolutionary mechanism is typically needed to break 'fixation' up; mutation.

What does this mean for communists? Basically, we're mutagens.

Chili Sauce:

As I understand it, the earliest forms of domination were religious in nature. The priests who gave thanks to God(s) for food - and who claimed credit for attaining God's benevolence to allow for such bounty - were also the ones who controlled any surplus of food and, thus, formed the basis for domination and class society. So, arguably, it was fear and superstition that led to domination in early humans.

This rings true. I just disagree that it occurred 'in early humans'; I think that it happened very late in the prehistory of our species.

ocelot:

Which is interesting because Çatalhöyük is a Neolithic site - i.e. after the introduction of agriculture, which is often seen as the trigger for the historical "fall" into patriarchal and class society in many traditional accounts of the rise of domination in prehistoric times.

This statement is worth repeating.