ChieftainsAndDruids

ThoughtStorms Wiki

Context : PsychologyAmateurized

Ten years ago I remember a conversation with a fellow student, a Breton with an interest in ancient Celtic culture. He argued that celtic culture was a power struggle between the king and druid. These tropes are pretty universal : chief vs. witch-doctor, thinker vs. man-of-action, technologist vs. salesman, rapper vs. DJ.

As a first cut typology, it's horribly intuitive. And just plain horrible. It's less sophisticated than NinjasAndPirates or the Jungian classification scheme. Squint a bit and you can even squash the business-man vs. the academic, the conservative vs. liberal into it. Not as a deep explanation of what those positions really stand for, but as a proximal story of who gets attracted to which side.

Because this is not a story of innate qualities, but of the roles that are available to us. The duality of brains or brawn is really a choice of how one is going to get ahead in a competitive, pyramid building society. The king / priest pattern is a crude template for DivisionOfLabour horizontally, but which only makes sense if there is an unspoken division of labour vertically.

The two skills are in co-opetition, rivals for status and the fruits of success, but co-dependents bringing complementary skills to enable that success. The king manages social and aggressive power, the druid, knowledge power. The king threatens or uses violence. Transformed into the modern salesman, he has the capacity to interrupt, to seize attention and demand the sale. He leads through personality.

... TO BE CONTINUED

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