Which would you prefer:
A) a psychopath or narcissist with no resources that could be controlled or plenty of alternatives
or
B) a situation where everyone around you is nice but your life and the lives of everyone in your community depend on a necessary resource that can be controlled with no alternative?
If people can walk away and ignore you, you can’t coerce or dominate them. That is, to dominate someone, you need a way to coerce them. If you can control a necessary resource with no alternative, you can dominate them.
Not only can you, for most of history, that condition—the existence of a necessary resource that could be controlled with no alternative—-led to dominance hierarchy. A resource can mean food or water. In a state, it could mean education, justice, or police protection. It could mean weapons or technology. It could mean your safety if the other person is stronger and you have no recourse to justice or protection.
People today talk about people with narcissism or psychopathy as the causes of tyranny, fascism, and other types of dominance hierarchy, but such people existed just as much in egalitarian bands but don’t form dominance hierarchy. Such bands exist today and were how nearly all our ancestors lived for nearly all of the 300,000 years of human existence, yet they show little to no sign of dominance hierarchy. On the contrary, their cultures show signs of protection from dominance hierarchy forming.
Returning to the original question of which you would prefer between A) a psychopath or narcissist with no resources that could be controlled or plenty of alternatives and a situation where everyone around you is nice but your life and the lives of everyone in your community depend on a necessary resource that can be controlled with no alternative…
I contend that situation A presents no problem, whereas situation B will result in a dominance hierarchy eventually. Moreover, situation A existed for about 300,000 years without forming dominance hierarchy, while situation B results in domination and coercion, no matter how nice the people are. You may even become the tyrant.
Would you prefer Vladimir Putin without access or control over fossil fuels or the state apparatus or Mother Theresa with such control?
