The anti-freedom conspiracy – Part I – Background reading

It is generally accepted that from the earliest development of settled communities it was necessary for the community to be organised and controlled by a leadership class. The concept pervades every branch of thinking about community, not just in humans but expanded out into nature from insect nests to wolf packs. The problem is that this is rather more about anthropomorphising animal groups than about reality, and is based on pattern recognition which is highly prone to inaccuracy. If you make the effort to view the World dispassionately and without reference to societal norms what you see is rather different. Lets start with one of the most often used examples in nature, the bee colony. The mainstream view of a bee colony is that the colony is organised by the Queen who through pheromone messaging gives orders to the rest of the colony which are carried out to the benefit of the colony as a whole. This makes a certain sense when looked at in a cursory fashion but fails to stand up to analysis since it relies on the Queen having the ability to plan and develop strategy when this is patently not the case. Even if we consider that the Queen is merely acting in response to environmental cues this still suggests a level of interaction which is simply not possible. The reality is rather more prosaic. In the colony each individual acts autonomously in the best interest of the individual. The consequence of this is that a colony which is populated by successful individuals is a successful colony and is more likely to expand than one in which individuals are not successful. The interaction between individuals operating as a collective is irrelevant.

More of a challenge to analyse is something like a wolf pack. With higher mammals it is less easy to dismiss the anthropomorphising on the grounds that the capacity to plan is absent. Clearly, higher animals are well able to establish strategies and to formulate plans, but does this necessarily equate to the assumption that groups of animals act collaboratively because of the actions of a leader? It may seem likely on initial investigation, particularly when viewing the actions of a pack of hunters, but again, all of the activity can be explained by individuals acting in their own best interests, successful individuals leading to a successful group, without the need for the individual to be managed, or told what to do. The same can be suggested for human societies. There is no fundamental need for a leader role within human societies if we move away from the mindset that individuality is the same as selfishness. We can move away from this because it simply isn't true. Going back to the animal Kingdom we see many examples of individuals operating together without any formal structure simply because co-operative effort is more effective for each individual than operating alone.

Despite this we have a situation where we are consistently told that leaders are essential. We are told that the earliest small hunter gatherer groups were controlled by a single leader, and that as we settled down this leader transformed over time to a concept approaching kingship. As communities came together and expanded the role of a leader, or king became embedded as a necessity and any other possibility was rejected. Supposedly as societies expanded further the complexity of those societies required an expansion of a ruling class, advisers chosen by the ruler to act of their behalf, the earliest politicians. From here the structure expanded and became ever more complex until the concept of a single leader was replaced by a ruling group, demonstrated by the general move to replace monarchies with elected and unelected parliaments depending on political flavour. In reality this lends further credence to the argument that this is all a fiction, because 500 years ago the idea that a society could operate without a monarch would have been laughed at, yet here we are today. If we don't need monarchs, does that allow us to question whether we need leaders at all? Of course, that would leave us with anarchy, and we have been conditioned to fear anarchy above all else.