By this I mean, organize around some single person for leadership, or in other contexts focus on a popular figure. Even societies that tend to be described as more collectively-organized/oriented tend to do this.
People are people and are as flawed as one another, so this pervasive tendency to elevate others is odd to me. It can be fun and goofy as a game, but as a more serious organizing or focal principle, it just seems extremely fragile and prone to failure (e.g. numerous groups falling into disarray at the loss of a leader/leader & their family, corruption via nepotism and the like, etc.).
Human civilization has tended to always have a hierarchy with a leader at the top. Is this a natural phenomenon or a learned one?
Thanks, that does read as more balanced, I agree. I opted for what I felt more fitting for a casual community (which is how I see this community), but you’re right that in turn it’s more charged.
I think I would have been more inclined to write it your way if I were posing the question to a more academically inclined community like askscience or more specifically asksociologists. At the same time, though, I think the nature/nurture framing would lend itself to its own problems as one can readily find across various papers that brush against that sharp splitting vs. a more interwoven assessment (i.e. mixture of the two).