Chapter 17: - States and Nations

Summary

For the last 5,000 years humans have been steadily transitioning to state/kingdom power structures. This chapter explains the demographic and political causes of the transition to institutional power, most frequently vested in lineages, and the ways in which institutional religions have supported institutional power in states and kingdoms. Personal and institutional power are inversely related in states and kingdoms, and this chapter explorea some examples of authoritarian and libertarian regimes, as well as the conflict within our own (US) society on these questions. Following on the idea of structural power, it reviews various aspects of institutional coercion (laws, taxes, conscription, slavery), as well as the ways institutions regulate the flow of information to control populations (the execution of William Tyndale, Spanish burning of Mayan texts, Nazi book burning, etc.). It finishes by discussing the expansion of empires and the resistance some populations show to externally imposed institutional authority.