Leadership as a deterrent to social progress

You’re all insane.  Humans organize themselves into tribes, families, nations, and other assorted social structures.  These structures often define how humans define themselves; we describe ourselves in terms of nationality or supposed race or ethnicity.  But we also define ourselves in terms of being leaders or the lead, shepherds or sheep.  This is a fundamental flaw in civilization and one of the most problematic issues in our social evolution.  The elevation of certain members of society to positions of authority and even worship creates a stratification of society in which there can exist no equality.  Because of this inequality and because of incorporating an economic system into the social structure human beings are permitted to have an elite or subjugated status which may not reflect their actual contribution to society.  Bill Gates did some small amount of coding early on in the Microsoft beginnings but he became a billionaire on the talents of many thousands of coders, coders who were willing to do the work and only collect a small part of the proceeds.  Adolph Hitler is often regarded as the greatest mass murderer in history but probably didn’t kill anyone, let alone the millions he is historically responsible for.  He was, however able to convince thousands of others to kill millions.  Joseph Stalin set up a bureaucratic apparatus that terrorized and often killed the population but after he assumed power he did no killing himself.  Humans and their tendency to promote the status of certain individuals and follow the orders of these elite has perpetrated the most horrific and macabre acts of human civilization.  This tendency, perhaps a genetic predisposition to collect into tribes and obey a leader has not diminished with the rise of democracies.  What is referred to as a democracy is in actually an oligarchy which merely substitutes the subjugation of the individual through economic and persuasive means rather than the physical repression of dictatorships.  There are still monarchies to this day.  Great Britain, the most prominent example still hangs on to the antiquated notion that because of an individual’s parents that individual is to rule a nation and live in luxury their entire lives.  The British royalty is secure in perpetuating this myth and is celebrated and supported by the majority of British people.  While the United States in no longer a British colony, we still exhibit the same dysfunctional social structure.  Instead of a institutionalized monarchy, we worship athletes, celebrities, and politicians to the detriment of society as a whole.  This is evident in the copious advertisements that use a celebrity status sell their products.  Advertisers do this because it works.  Placing a familiar and well-liked celebrity in front of their product sells that product whether or not the celebrity is knowledgeable about the product or not.   In any college level logic course this is dismissed as being an argument from authority.  An argument from authority, also known as an appeal to authority, is a type of informal fallacy where the validity of a claim is asserted based on the authority or expertise of the person making the claim, rather than on evidence or logical reasoning. Essentially, it assumes that because someone important or knowledgeable said something, it must be true. However, this is not always the case, as even experts can be wrong or their expertise may not be relevant to the specific claim. Yet it pervades advertising and social discourse.  Because humans call on their emotions, intuition (whatever that is), and prejudices before their analytical abilities they will always be victims of persuasion.  There will always be members of society that understand the mechanisms of propaganda and disinformation to gain an economic or political control of the masses.  These people are known as leaders.  There are citable and historical leaders who have used this control of the masses to create or enhance societies.  These cases are the minority.  While societies have become more egalitarian, they are not by any definition completely egalitarian as long as leaders have the wherewithal to direct the masses to the leader’s benefit.  There are many justifications, usually by the leaders themselves, such as social Darwinism or some sort of monarchial inheritance but any justification for the submission of an individual by another individual is without merit.  The human fault to allow and encourage their submission to another appears to be inherent in our existence,  We build social structures, economic structures, and physical structures with the few being ruled by the many as an integral part of our lives.