Page 51 - Psychoceramics and the Test of Fire

Cabalocracy and the Hall of Mirrors

increasing opportunities for individuals to gain disproportionately
large amounts of wealth. At that point, argued Capra, conspiracies of
the type we recognize today began. Prior to that, if two or three
people went off in the bush to plot the violent overthrow of their
leader, it was an ad hoc affair not significantly different from young
male gorillas ganging up to challenge the dominant silverback’s
monopoly of a troop’s harem. Human conspiracies—decisive blows
against entrenched and well-armed ruling elites—require patience,
secrecy and careful planning; not to mention the skills of dissembling
and subterfuge necessary to execute such radical tactics and strategies
and get away with it.
But each violent or veiled change had a limited lifespan, resulting
in further conspiracies. What worked in one era would not work in
another, and the same people were no longer around. Even if the
conspirators tried to create a private dynasty it had to come undone:
the course of human events was a constant ebb and flow around
shifting centers of command and control. But the populations of
modern mass societies are biologically identical to the people living in
those early settlements of the Fertile Crescent and the Indus Valley.
Thus, concluded Capra, the “open” type of CT begins with the fact
of historical change and the fairly safe assumption of human
constancy. He then elaborated upon the latter, giving a
sociobiological justification for his “safe assumption.” I have no clue
if this is accepted evolutionary theory, but Capra claimed that
deception is hardwired in humans, as it confers an advantage in the
competition for mates and resources, and that it operates in very
different ways in the struggles of the individual (selfishly) and the
group (co-operatively). Early man developed his tribal society around
this potentially dangerous characteristic, controlling it, as he did many
other instincts, within a tightly-knit social unit in which people and
their roles were well understood. Time replaced those polities with
ever-larger political and geographical conglomerations characterized
by anonymous or distant relationships between its members. But the
genes remained intact.
The animal drive to succeed by any means, including deception, in
this new context, led inexorably to the formation of conspiracies.
But now it was an attempt to retain or regain small group advantage
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