Quote:
Originally Posted by ceptimus
Groups of humans exhibit very different behaviour patterns to individual humans. Most species of animals do the same.
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That's a characteristic of social animals: to identify with their herd, pack, troop or tribe; to support fellow members and defend the group, its territory and feeding grounds against both predators and rivals of the same species.
In complex civilizations, this group identity gets all twisted up in stratification, specialization, amalgamation of different groups and other kinds of sub-grouping. A civilized human has affiliations with the larger society, and also with many smaller sub-groups. At any given time, any given human's "us" identity may be as small as his nuclear family or as large as her ethnic origin - and there may be a conflict of interest between any two of those affiliations.
When an individual has so many competing group loyalties, the day-to-day decision of their order of priority becomes exhausting and confusing.
Comes a "leader" who can convince a large number of people that he represents the common interest of
all of their sub-groups and will make the decisions for them.