October 10, 2025
Quo Vadis? On the End of “Democracy” and the Dawn of the “Magical Society” (3)
According to a historical theory which seems to me not without foundation, the state — as we generically call today the form of organisation and functioning of human society (in fact all forms of human organisation, from tribes to modern states) — is founded upon
AUTHORITY / FORCE — the right of the state to impose its will by force upon its subjects and to CONTROL VIOLENCE; and upon
BUREAUCRACY / KNOWLEDGE — the science of the current administration of the community’s affairs and of its resources, and of CONTROLLING KNOWLEDGE.
The third, CHARISMATIC POWER — the ascendancy over the community of a figure with exceptional traits (strength, military or administrative skill) — appeared when and where human societies gave up the form of organisation of the theocratic or dynastic state. This “CHARISMATIC POWER” is characteristic of HEROIC SOCIETIES, a type of society to which the society in which we live also belongs, what we today call “DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY” (I know, it may seem shocking, but so it is!).
Today the majority of anthropologists and historians have reached the conclusion that the first forms of human organisation were theocratic in nature, the purpose of the existence of the first states being the aggregation of resources not for the “civil” chieftains or for the community, but chiefly for the rites owed to the divinity and for the cult of the dead. Only after the temples and the tombs were satisfied were resources distributed to the temporal power. Archaeological evidence gathered throughout the world from the predynastic and protodynastic period of Egypt (roughly 4000-3100 BC) invariably indicates the same reality: from the beer and leavened bread of ancient Egypt, to the grain stores and the systems of inventorying them in Mesopotamia, to the treasures gathered under enormous earthen mounds by the natives of the Ohio valley in the Adena period (roughly 1000 BC) for the exclusive use of priests and shamans, all ancient human societies had initially as their centre of power the SACERDOTAL power, which held under its control spirituality and KNOWLEDGE (with the secondary effect of mastery over administration).
In a process that lasted several thousand years, control of society was taken from the priests by the warriors, who made FORCE/AUTHORITY prevail over KNOWLEDGE/ADMINISTRATION — yet not without “borrowing”, in reality taking over, the attribute of KNOWLEDGE from the sacerdotal authority and combining it indissolubly with FORCE/AUTHORITY. And thus, from the Egypt of the First Dynasty with its Pharaohs descended from the gods, to Peru; from early dynastic Mesopotamia — made up of dozens of city-states, each governed by its own charismatic warrior king with certain individual qualities that were said to be recognised by the gods as well — to the Mayan *ajaw* rulers of the classical period, “these kings almost never claimed to be gods themselves (with the exception of the pharaohs), but rather adjutants of the kings and sometimes their heroic defenders upon earth: in short, delegates of the sovereign power which resided (still) by right in the heavens.” Sovereignty, in the last instance, belonged only to Heaven, to the Gods!
For example in ancient China, in the late Shang period (1200-1300 BC), the kingdom had its capital at Anyang, a city conceived as “a cosmological anchor for the whole kingdom, designed as a grandiose stage for the royal rituals”, and where (!!!) divination was of exceptional importance. In practice, any royal decision — whether it concerned war, an alliance, or even trivial matters — could be taken only if it was approved by the supreme authorities, which were the gods and the ancestral spirits — the sacerdotal attribute of KNOWLEDGE determining, or merely justifying, the decisions of the holder of the attributes of FORCE/AUTHORITY, of the charismatic hero who was the king.
This legitimation and justification of the FORCE/AUTHORITY held (and manifested at times through acts of exceptional violence, doubled by the creation of a complex social and administrative machinery) and exercised directly by the “charismatic heroes” through the KNOWLEDGE of a sacerdotal elite, I would call a MAGICAL SOCIETY.
This MAGICAL SOCIETY was no longer a sacerdotal society (where, socially speaking, there was a hypertrophy of the principles of KNOWLEDGE and ADMINISTRATION and a complete absence of competitive politics), nor yet one led exclusively by charismatic heroes, as the post-Homeric societies would be (let us not forget that in the Homeric world the heroes were still “possessed”, “inhabited” or at times directly under the total control of the gods!) and on into the twenty-first century.
The MAGICAL SOCIETY was a combination of the two societies, in which a KNOWLEDGE HIDDEN OR UNAVAILABLE TO THE GREAT MASS OF MEN (does it begin to sound familiar? Remember the COVID era and the “hidden knowledge” of the men of science, of which we shall speak below!) JUSTIFIED THE AUTHORITARIAN, ABSOLUTE AND INCONTESTABLE MEASURES OF THE TEMPORAL POWER, OF THE “CHARISMATIC HERO” WHO HELD EXCLUSIVELY THE ATTRIBUTES OF FORCE AND AUTHORITY.
The MAGICAL SOCIETY died out gradually, replaced by the HEROIC SOCIETY, a society dominated for well over two thousand years by “CHARISMATIC HEROES” who held POWER either by seizing it by force, or by designation, or by hereditary line, and who exercised FORCE and AUTHORITY in an absolute and apparently discretionary manner.
Arriving at last in our own days, we find that the regimes we call democratic over the past century and a half have as their predominant trait the HEROISM and the CHARISMA OF ELECTED LEADERS. In practice this is what “ELECTIONS” consist of: the choice among a number of persons who theoretically possess certain special if not exceptional qualities — SKILL IN ADMINISTRATIVE AFFAIRS, STATE OF HEALTH, PROFESSIONAL AND SOCIAL PROBITY — all doubled by two traits: one expressly and explicitly admitted, moral and family probity, and another implicit and rarely acknowledged as an advantage — PHYSICAL APPEARANCE! All these elements make us CHOOSE THE HEROES OF OUR DAY, whether they be local councillors, mayors, presidents of Regional (in Romania, County) Councils, parliamentarians or Presidents — they are all our “HEROES”, whether we like to admit it or not.
Yes, for though we may find it hard to admit, OUR LEADERS ARE OUR HEROES… whom we endow with the right to govern our destinies authoritatively for determined periods, accepting that in their name (let us not forget that the classical formula of endowing a court judgment with executory force is “WE, THE PRESIDENT OF ROMANIA”!) we may be punished if we break the laws of the state which HE leads, at least symbolically.
And now comes what is probably the most surprising element of what we call democratic society: although it is an eminently “HEROIC” society, it has continued to preserve within itself a seed, an embryo, of what I have called the MAGICAL SOCIETY: “THE POWER OF THE GODS”, which legitimated and mandated the “HEROES” of the first “MAGICAL SOCIETY”, has been replaced by “THE POWER OF THE PEOPLE”, which legitimates and mandates the “HEROES” of our day. Thus we all OBEY THE ORDERS OF THE HEROES WE HAVE CHOSEN, being at the same time absolved of moral responsibility for the deeds committed in carrying out those orders and submitting to them unconditionally, even when we know they harm us… a constant of the exercise of every power is the obedience and submission, before the one who exercises the power, of the majority of the many at the base of the pyramid of power. So it has been since the world began… only that today, in the HEROIC-MAGICAL society in which we live, we accept the power and its eventual abuses because we gave the power to the HERO/HEROES, and because, for a determined period, we cannot withdraw the attributes of FORCE and AUTHORITY from the “HEROES” we have invested with them. If this observation seems “odd” to you… well, it is! But it is at the same time proof that you are still part of the “magic” of this “HEROIC” system whose sole purpose is the exercise of POWER! Not representation, not our protection and care — ours, of the nation that legitimated and mandated our “HEROES” — but only the exercise of power, for and in the interest of the one or the ones who hold POWER.
Does it seem sad to you? Unfortunately I believe the future holds something still more dramatic for us, for we are at the point where mankind is turning back towards an eminently “MAGICAL” society, in which we, the citizens at the base of the social pyramid, will play a still more decorative role than we do at present. Yes, only now, after establishing some landmarks and spheres for notions such as “power” and “state”, as primordial elements in the organisation of human society, and the attributes of power (AUTHORITY/FORCE, KNOWLEDGE/ADMINISTRATION and HEROISM/CHARISMA), do we begin to approach the burning core of the problem set out in the title: “the end of democracy and the dawn of the magical society”. (TO BE CONTINUED)
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