Ancient ideas of what is best for everyone have often been thought out by people in positions of power.  These did not have to use their children as manpower from a far too early age.  However, this does not help if one grows up with the possibility of absolute power over almost everyone around oneself.  People rarely dare to be honest to individuals with (potentially) absolute power over them.  Simply put, they are too afraid for this.  Such conditions limit one’s circle of acquaintances to siblings, parents and teachers.  At least if one only gets home-schooled which long remained the norm.  Other points of view than these individuals’, remained unknown as a rule.

It did not help that the living conditions of subordinate was often unknown to members of the upper class.  The only members of the lower classes they had immediate contact with were their own servants or house slaves.  Problems other subordinates had was usually unknown to superiors.  Instead they took it for granted that everyone could meet all demands.  Add the lack of systematic ways of limiting demands on subordinates.  Then one can in practice make any demands one wants.  This combination can explain the one-sided exploitation which was the norm in these societies.

Above all, the upper class had no idea any other organisation of society had ever existed.  Changes in society happened so slowly they were rarely noticeable over a lifetime.  There were neither any accessible knowledge on other contemporary societies.  At least not detailed enough to make it evident that other organisations of society were viable options.  The result was the organisation of their own society being mistaken for divine will.  Since it usually benefited them, it was wrongfully believed to benefit everyone.  Their own uninhibited egoism was routinely mistaken for altruism.

What such individuals wrote about society was based on own defiance in knowledge.  Much was misleading ways of thinking to justify already existing conditions.  A common theme was to believe that lower classes have to be ordered to prevent a violent chaos.  The ordering had to come from a class believed to be born to rule.  With knowledge of typical hunter-gatherer societies this thought appear preposterous.  We did not have any “super-humans” ordering everyone else around.  Instead, we had cooperation between more or less equal parts.  But this requires basic insight into what other humans can and want.  This insight was later lost as a consequence of absolute power.

Naturally, not everyone accepted the orders of the upper class.  Sooner or later, someone will protest against being treated as merely a tool for others.  However, this happened rarely enough for it being entirely unanticipated to individuals in positions of power.  Such individuals usually remained unaware of the protesting person’s point of view.  This way the myth of ill will could live on through millennia.  It was upheld by inevitable abuse of absolute power.  An abuse of power which its perpetuators did not know was perceived as abuse.

Uploaded on the 15th of June 2023.