The neurobiology of authoritarianism

[aurum]

On 4/29/2025 at 6:32 PM, Emerald said:

I don't mean that their physiology is inert as that is always there and acting upon them.

I mean that the most negative expressions of their authoritarian physiology is inert/dormant until it's activated under the right conditions... which requires corrupt demagogic leadership and collective instability and trauma (financially and otherwise) to channel that otherwise neutral tendency into scapegoating. (which eventually becomes genocide if it fully takes hold in the collective)

Otherwise, the authoritarian physiology is just an expression of one of the variety of types of human natures that are necessary to make a society with many specialized professions run.

You need people who are able to defer to the leader within hierarchical structures to make certain societal systems run... and who see reality in a more black and white way because it has its function within society. And you need people who can just respect hierarchical structures within the workplace and follow orders without challenging the leadership.

It doesn't become a problem until people with that authoritarian specialization experience traumas and instabilities and have those vulnerabilities exploited, organized, and weaponized by a demagogue that uses them for their own authoritarian political ends.

Plus, you also don't even need authoritarian physiology to become a Nazi... you just need a rationale that fits with your framework.

That's why you see a lot of hippie dippie new age types going Fascist, because the Fascists might share their views on vaccines.... or engage in mythos in a similar way.... or might use anti-status quo contrarian rhetoric that strikes a chord with hippies, etc.

 

Really good. Although I'd argue it's still not as neutral as you are framing it.

Trauma only goes so far.

Negative manifestations of authoritarianism are not just activated, they are systemically emergent from those with authoritarian physiology and cognitive development. 

[Emerald]

4 minutes ago, aurum said:

Really good. Although I'd argue it's still not as neutral as you are framing it.

Trauma only goes so far.

Negative manifestations of authoritarianism are not just activated, they are systemically emergent from those with authoritarian physiology and cognitive development. 

With regard to the notion of activation versus systemic emergence... those are one and the same. It's just different vantage points on the same phenomenon.

At the deepest levels, all systems are operating interdependently in a very complex way in the direction of a gradual expansion of consciousness and love. 

So, any emergent property of the political system (for instance) is ultimately moving us all in the direction of expansion towards love. But these emergent properties can be the good, the bad, and the ugly.

And a demagogue is an example of an emergent property within these collection of systems we belong to that is harmful in the relative but arises to lead us more towards love and integration in ways that aren't immediately clear or obvious.

So, in this regard, a demagogue arises as a systemic emergence of the status quo... which then activates and weaponizes the authoritarian people in a certain direction and awakens the sleeping Shadows of humanity. And this creates polarization in the populace and causes opposites to grow out from one another, until a new status quo emerges.

And through this we learn very expensive lessons.

For example, Donald Trump himself is a systemic emergence of our system.

He is a perfect representation of America and the role it plays on the world stage... and is reflective of all the darkest things about us. But he's also seductive to people who only want to see the positives and block out the negatives.

And someone like him was always going to play that role because that is the necessary ingredient that lays bare the horrors of the status quo and the collective modern American Shadow.

It's through these emergent properties that some are spurred into authoritarian action. And through that, many learn about the dormant 'evil' that is there within us all.

 

[aurum]

1 hour ago, Emerald said:

So, in this regard, a demagogue arises as a systemic emergence of the status quo... which then activates and weaponizes the authoritarian people in a certain direction and awakens the sleeping Shadows of humanity. And this creates polarization in the populace and causes opposites to grow out from one another, until a new status quo emerges.

And through this we learn very expensive lessons.

For example, Donald Trump himself is a systemic emergence of our system.

He is a perfect representation of America and the role it plays on the world stage... and is reflective of all the darkest things about us. But he's also seductive to people who only want to see the positives and block out the negatives.

And someone like him was always going to play that role because that is the necessary ingredient that lays bare the horrors of the status quo and the collective modern American Shadow.

It's through these emergent properties that some are spurred into authoritarian action. And through that, many learn about the dormant 'evil' that is there within us all.

How exactly are you seeing trauma and the Shadow in this case?

Is it just about emotional healing and integrating polarities, or is it more than that?

I'm asking because this is an area we consistently diverge. So I want to make sure I'm getting this right.

[Breakingthewall]

On 28/4/2025 at 8:42 PM, aurum said:

Royal bloodlines is just a formalization of tribal authoritarianism. It's part of the scaling up.

It's also not historically accurate to say "almost no European king was ever deposed". A quick google / AI search will show you this. You have King Louis XVI during the French Revolution, King Charles I during the English Civil War, King Ferdinand VII in Spain (multiple times), and on and on.

You don't get it. In a tribe, members give power to a certain person they know well and take it away when they stop being what they want. In a kingdom, the subjects don't know the king; most have never seen him. They don't bow to him; they bow to the crown. The person himself isn't important; the institution is. This is authoritarianism.

Democracy returns to the tribal system because the citizens know the leader, listen to him, and observe what he does. If they don't like him, they expel him. The subjects can't expell the king except by war, because he is in another level, he is an institution 

[aurum]

4 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

You don't get it. In a tribe, members give power to a certain person they know well and take it away when they stop being what they want. In a kingdom, the subjects don't know the king; most have never seen him. They don't bow to him; they bow to the crown. The person himself isn't important; the institution is. This is authoritarianism.

Democracy returns to the tribal system because the citizens know the leader, listen to him, and observe what he does. If they don't like him, they expel him. The subjects can't expell the king except by war, because he is in another level, he is an institution 

Look, we can absolutely draw distinctions between tribal dynamics, kingship, and democracy.

But I wouldn’t make those distinctions at the cost of missing the underlying similarities.

Removing a tribal leader is often not simple, democratic, or egalitarian. It can mean challenging the tribe’s entire mythos, social structure, and ancestral order. It’s not necessarily easier and often requires violence or exile. Surface-level consensus can mask deeper coercion. So this framing ends up romanticizing tribal life.

Just knowing your leaders isn’t the defining feature of a non-authoritarian system. Everyone in Russia knows Vladimir Putin, is he not authoritarian?

In fact, in many authoritarian systems, the individual becomes more powerful than the institution. They are a god-king, whose word overrides any law or structure.

Authoritarianism runs deeper than form. It’s about top-down control, power centralization, suppression of dissent, enforced conformity, and resistance to plurality. And that pattern can manifest in any system.

[Breakingthewall]

14 minutes ago, aurum said:

Russia knows Vladimir Putin, is he not authoritarian?

Putin is authoritarian with the tacit consent of the oligarchies and the majority of the people. It's a different kind of authoritarianism than, for example, Saddam Hussein, who was a kind of Mesopotamian satrap, a king. Both are authoritarian, but one is centered on the homeland and the other on himself, as evidenced by statues, giant paintings, etc. 

Regarding tribal leaders, a leader like Sitting Bull is very different from one like Genghis Khan. Both were leaders of a small, warrior tribe. One was, let's say, democratic, while the other drifted toward conquer and authoritarianism, becoming an institution. Each case is different. I guess that it depends of many factors 

Edited Thursday at 04:07 PM by Breakingthewall

[Emerald]

20 hours ago, aurum said:

How exactly are you seeing trauma and the Shadow in this case?

Is it just about emotional healing and integrating polarities, or is it more than that?

I'm asking because this is an area we consistently diverge. So I want to make sure I'm getting this right.

The collective Shadow is just things that are true about ourselves as a collective that we aren't conscious of.

And these times of upheaval reveal the collective Shadow to us and wake us up.

And polarizations and demagoguery are an emergent property of the system pushing those unconscious and un-integrated parts of the human Shadow up to the surface to be integrated... and for that to wake people up to broader paradigms that haven't yet been operated through.

And it involves both healing and harming at once... but leads us out into new modes of operating.

Every system has the seeds of its own undoing already inside of it. And all of these emergent properties of the system (including demagogues and the weaponization of authoritarian personalities) are part of the way that the societal system transcends the status quo and evolves past it... because opposites grow out of one another.

[aurum]

22 hours ago, Emerald said:

The collective Shadow is just things that are true about ourselves as a collective that we aren't conscious of.

Like what?

[Emerald]

1 hour ago, aurum said:

Like what?

Many systemic emergences can lay bare the collective societal Shadow.

Consider what the internet has allowed us to know about how humanity operates on a level that we weren't even capable of knowing before. Prior to the internet and social media, all of that was in a blindspot.

But now we can look in any comment section on the internet and see so much about how people operate.

But with regard to Trump's demagoguery in particular, it has laid bare many human vulnerabilities that were previously operating underneath the surface of consciousness individually and collectively.

And it has also given us a brand new angle through which to understand the internal and external happenings associated with authoritarianism.

Just think about how much more you know about humans and how we operate over the past 1 year... and the past 10 years. Then, imagine how much less you'd know if Trump never won a presidential race and if things had just continued like business as usual.

We only really examine things collectively when it gets shoved in our faces. And even if we are the examining type, things that are unconscious to us are just unconscious to us.

[aurum]

12 hours ago, Emerald said:

Many systemic emergences can lay bare the collective societal Shadow.

Consider what the internet has allowed us to know about how humanity operates on a level that we weren't even capable of knowing before. Prior to the internet and social media, all of that was in a blindspot.

But now we can look in any comment section on the internet and see so much about how people operate.

But with regard to Trump's demagoguery in particular, it has laid bare many human vulnerabilities that were previously operating underneath the surface of consciousness individually and collectively.

And it has also given us a brand new angle through which to understand the internal and external happenings associated with authoritarianism.

Just think about how much more you know about humans and how we operate over the past 1 year... and the past 10 years. Then, imagine how much less you'd know if Trump never won a presidential race and if things had just continued like business as usual.

We only really examine things collectively when it gets shoved in our faces. And even if we are the examining type, things that are unconscious to us are just unconscious to us.

I get that.

We could define societal Shadow as just unconsciousness, devilry, corruption, and all the different forms of selfishness that exist.

I think the issue is if you equate that to trauma.

Trauma, as most people define it, tends to be more basic, emotional and human-centered. Having trauma is not the same as unconsciousness. You can heal your trauma and still be deeply unconscious.

The trauma-frame also runs the potential risk of just becoming too reductionistic. You can easily miss the importance of something like biology, systems thinking or flatten developmental hierarchies. It suggests a previously "whole" state for humanity that has been lost, rather than seeing evolving complexity, morality and intelligence. I think you do a good job of avoiding that trap but many do not.

At the ultimate existential level, I see unconsciousness not as something humans either are or aren't, but more so as a feature inherent to consciousness itself. But that's probably another conversation.