Watching Lucy Worsley’s Royal Myths and Secrets on PBS—the actuality of the life and secrets of the British monarchy, as well as others throughout Europe from the 1500s to the present—stirs my curiosity. I am wanting to pay close attention to that which is in the organic character in the biography of the social order, driving its primal functioning in the hereditary history of humanity.
There are several fundamental issues at work here. There is an inherent fragmentation in what looks like a tribal hierarchy from the past which states that the leader has been appointed by God to govern the people. An unquestionable authority—”Do not question the will of God!”. This dictum being necessary for the coherence of the masses?
It appears as if human life cannot function without a social bond of some kind. Like a primal, neural compulsion—in order to function, the monarch will provide guidance for collective behavior. (As an aside, it would be interesting to see how a tribal chief morphed into a god-like authority)
All are connected through a neural matrix, with a dependence on leadership—father/mother, tribal warrior, king/queen, as a nucleus of social order in the tribe.
Then comes the content, the actuality of living together, and the circumstances that mold and shape the group, family, tribe. This changes according to the size of the collective social body. The task of meeting these new dimensions of its character, especially in its communications and the reach of knowledge, including the imagination, seems quite daunting.
Tribal dimension has grown from the family—37 or so people pre-community, to 370, to 3,700, to 37,000, to 370,000,000, landing us at the present—currently at 7.9 billion people living on the Earth. Each individual seeking connection organically, in search of commonality and needing mutual knowledge of each other, as part of our current need of functioning. Today, we are living the reality of this challenge like never before. As a humanity, our struggle to unify in this collective adherence of vision and overall knowing is suffocating under the weight of this continuously growing Empire!
So what remains is the ongoing challenge with our new reality—cleaved from previous expectations, including the foundational beliefs of our ancestors—to adapt and integrate. As we recalibrate survival in a new social order, understanding and meeting its rational demands is mandatory.
Leadership’s task is to integrate these new and extended demands with knowledge and understanding—to bring a coherence of new order and rational functioning.
Throughout this maze of becoming, we are well served as individuals to respect the integrity of the group dialogue. Today, this has been one of the first areas of inter-relations to have broken down, exposing our resistance to adhering to the good of the tribe. No longer having a leader appointed by God, with the ability to rule without questioned authority.
As individuals, we must be our own authority. Not as a service to self alone, that will not stand if we are to adjust and thrive. We are called to integrate our best selves with the whole of the world at large. Without collective cooperation we are doomed to self annihilation.