gestures broadly at world history
Long-term successful areas did not have authoritarian rule. Take Europe for example. There were all the many states, and even within them lots of struggle for power. Then there was the church (even after splits based on the same faith) as an additional layer parallel to the worldly powers. As far as I an tell it handily beat authoritarian competition.
Sure, there existed plenty of local authoritarian rulers, but how did those places do long-term and not just during there often short rule?
Maybe somebody knowledgeable could talk about China? They sure had plenty of strive and competition, but then they had dynasties and centralized rule. As far as I know, which is very little, European powers were quite successful in direct competition (when the two met) and also indirectly (overall results, not of direct encounters).
This is something for reddit's (heavily moderated) /r/AskHistorians, and I highly doubt the TL;DR of a historian's reply would support the assertion or would boil down to the above "gestures broadly at world history".
Genghis Khan or Alexander and other authoritarian rulers sure were great at conquering, but after that it was already over. And they accomplished it mostly by killing an incredible number of people, so instead of actually competing they just removed the competition altogether. Which only ever works temporarily.
> Human thinking naturally aligns towards authoritarianism
In addition, when we look at ape society and tribal humans, the statement is not true at all. Even the ape society is one of alliances, and brutal rulers are eliminated, for example "Scientists show that chimps will murder and eat their dictators" https://www.inverse.com/article/27141-chimp-murder-kill-cann...
Human monarchies often (usually?) had religious leaders with independent power rivaling that of the monarchs as far as I know (e.g. ancient Egypt)? For example: https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1026/clergy-priests--pr...
> Throughout Egypt's history, the priesthood would serve a vital role in maintaining religious belief and tradition while, at the same time, consistently challenge the authority of the king by amassing wealth and power which at times rivaled that of the crown.
Given that we don't live in a LitRPG or Xinaxia fantasy universe where individuals can gain world destroying god-like powers, and that humans naturally are all about equally powerful and not orders of magnitude different in the abilities of their bodies and brains, authority always is a question of the network and not of just that particular single individual appearing at "the top". Keeping that network in sync and focused seems to be very hard judging by the history of actual usually short-lived (by history standards, it may well last the lifetime of a person) authoritarian rule. So maybe the attempt may be natural, actual success not so much.
Have you not wondered why the Divine Right of Kings was so heavily promoted? Or why - until Henry VIII - the Pope could veto any aristocratic marriage he disapproved of?
The Church had an almost total lock on political power, moral authority of all kinds, class relationships, and intellectual enquiry. It was at the top of the feudal hierarchy - the biggest landowner, the biggest collector of feudal tribute (both voluntary and forced), the sole repository of all knowledge, and the biggest organiser of military campaigns (the Crusades.)
Which is why it maintained power across Europe for a millennium.
That is not what I wrote. I would appreciate responses to what I actually wrote.
Authoritarianism - there is one absolute power. I pointed out that this was far from true in Europe, church being just one of the things I mentioned.
> Kings and local war lords were its executives, not its competitors.
Of course they were competitors! They were both! That is the point! Of course they did not have only eternal war between them, that is the magic. They cooperated and were competitors. The Walk to Canossa only being the most famous example, it usually didn't end that spectacularly. Even within the church there was struggle, there even were two competing popes once (Western Schism).
Given that history is littered with monarchs, emperors, pharaohs, popes, with democracies being more of an exception than the rule until industrial times I'd say that's well established. Going back to pre-ancient times all tribes typically had one person in charge.
Even today we really can't help ourselves electing presidents, mayors, deans, CEOs, chancellors, etc. even in places that all have well established democratic decision making. There always has to be one person at the top or we apparently lose our collective shit.
This isn't true. All social animals have hierarchies, but leaders in pre-agricultural human societies aren't "in charge" in the way that monarchs or emperors are
Yes, and I responded to that, because of that.
> Even today we really can't help ourselves electing presidents, mayors, deans, CEOs, chancellors, etc.
Uhm... if this is what you cite as evidence for authoritarianism then I really don't know what to say. Choosing leaders is not authoritarianism.
All society in existence is authoritarian to some extent, otherwise you just have chaos since nobody enforces the rule of law. Some are just far more than others.
No it is not. This "argument" is getting a bit stupid.
Authoritarianism is defined as a form of government of a state, so calling any leadership that word is just plain wrong. A company with a CEO is not "authoritarian".