I keep seeing complaints that social media is making narcissism and cult worship of a figure explode but this seems mild compared to when people would literally build statues of themselves as gods, building pyramids and other immense religious structures in order to control entire populations. And they were worshipped because in prehistory it was a successful strategy to submit to another's experience in an area one lacked (without even mentioning the violence and trauma that went into exaggerating these levers on human psychology for exploitation). Seems obvious to say, doesn't it? Even now, you can see people praising others for being a god, using celebrities as yardsticks for skill and ethics. And that's a very ancient impulse in action, left to find expression in an environment somewhat different now than the one it developed for. And institutions built by slavers using slaves reward and shape the slaver's ego. I've started identifying this aspect of inflated narcissism as the slaver's ego. I wanted to know when slavery started, and the answer to that is unknown, because it's likely been happening for at least 10,000 years. After chasing that question for a while, I realised I needed to pivot to a new question.... how complex does an organism need to be to take slaves? And the answer is.... at least as complex as an ant. Which then leads to me to reason that it's not something necessarily innate, but an emergent property arising between the interaction of organisms that have a specific set of traits and the environment that makes it possible to express those traits within the logic of slaving. And sometimes, subsequently in slave rebellion. #history #biology #psychology #systemstheory #shitpost https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2999504